(inquisitive music)
Growing up in Detroit, Black language
always reflected people's lived
experiences, their ways with the world; it
reflected the culture, it reflected so
many things. My parents were big on black
history, they were big on activism. And so
you know, this is this is how I wanted
to be in the classroom.
And it's important that make sure the kids stay
focused and not falling out of education
because you think they not talking properly.
-However it wasn't until I started
teaching on the east side of
Detroit when I entered into what Geneva
Smitherman calls the language wars.
My name is April Baker-Bell, I am an
Assistant Professor at Michigan State
University in the Department of English
and African American and African Studies.
I am a language literacy and English
education scholar.
The title of my book
is Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy.
When you grow
up in a black space like Detroit you're
gonna hear people speaking black
language. I always marveled at the way
that people in my community would use
language; for me, black people use
language in a way that was powerful,
colorful, and very unique.
Marcelina Morgan calls this concept the
mother tongue; this black language is the
language that, you know, socialized me
and nurtured me, and it really taught me
how to understand the world and how to
participate in it.
I started working with students who were communicating
in black
languages just like me, but I remember
feeling pressure by school
administrators to get these kids to use
the language of school, if you will. And
so I do remember this conversation with
my students, this myth of standard
English, and one of the students said
"What I look like speaking like that? It
don't even sound right." And then there
were other students in the class that
said "Well you can't go anywhere talking
ghetto like that." And I remember, you know, 
as a teacher not having the tools to
talk about language politics, not being
properly prepared to have that
conversation, although I knew the kids
were speaking the truth.
What were your initial thoughts when you read those two language samples?
It reminded me of, like someone that's not as educated.
-I disagree. That's how we was raised and we grew up on, so...
-I agree — it's the language you use when you're around  your friends and family.
Right, we tend to think of somebody that
communicates this way as uneducated, and
then you all are pushing on that and
saying that doesn't mean you're
uneducated, because this is the way we
communicate with our family and friends.
-The challenge for me was, you know,
dealing with that pressure from school
and working with the students who were
having, like, you know real conversations
about language and race, and language and
culture, and things that I didn't have the
opportunity to speak back to. That's
where my research started, but what I
found out was that many classrooms
operated like linguistic and cultural
battlegrounds. Students were being
silenced and alienated just because of
the way that they talk, in some ways
internalizing what I'm calling
anti-black linguistic racism. They were
experiencing anti blackness in and
through their language. This
internalization, it's not just with
students—you know my mother have told me
stories about how she experienced
anti-black linguistic racism, so then my
goal began to really respond to those
needs, like how can I change you know the
attitudes that they have about
themselves, you know that they have about
their language.
Linguistic Justice, the book and the
framework, is about black language and
black liberation. It's really about
dismantling anti-black linguistic racism
and the white linguistic hegemony. Getting
black youth to really feel proud of a
language that their ancestors created.
Black language was once the most studied
and written about language in the world.
You know, but here I am, you know, this
teacher teaching in Detroit—and I had no
idea that this existed. The pedagogy
that I'm working with, it's really
looking into the history, it's really
allowing students to have an opportunity
to talk about language and race,
the things that they experience.
-So what happened is despite that, enslaved
Africans created black language out of
the remnants of their mother tongue like
West African languages, and part of the
English language, to create their own.
It's important for me to be in
classrooms working alongside youth,
working alongside teachers, and getting
this work in the hands of folks that
need it the most.
-I think it'll help kids
know that they can be themselves in the
classroom and they can be where they're
from, and not be looked down upon based on
where they're from or the language that they're using.
if kids feel inferior that they're
not gonna they're not gonna learn anyway,
if you feel inferior, so I don't think
it's even just for teachers and kids, but
it's for anybody—black, not black, you
know I'm saying that want to learn more, I
think that the book is there.
-But ultimately my goal is to get them to see
the beauty in it, you know, and that
there's nothing wrong with the way in
which they communicate.
That's what the goal of this pedagogy is ultimately to do.
(music)
