Leslie Savan’s Essay

The struggles of being an African American is not very well understood by the majority of the population. For hundreds of years, there every day challenges – that privilege people would not bad – have become their own normal. Many authors have taken it upon themselves to write about their experiences and to educate the public. They use different types of literary devices to reflect their true intentions. In James Baldwin‘s “Notes of a Native Son” and Brent Staples’ “Just Walk On By: Black Men and Public Spaces,” the authors use language and punctuation to show their true emotion behind their words. The combination of syntax and diction allows Baldwin to develop his angry and bitter tone, in addition to Staples’ contrasting light-hearted tone.

She states, “White standards of English persist, supreme and unquestioned, in these United States” (124). White english is hardly doubted as the only language accepted in the United States. Jordan acknowledges many of the African American students in her class don’t relate with the language they speak everyday. The class pinpoints their discussion of The Color Purple around the

The black race has faced many hardships throughout American history. The harsh treatment is apparent through the brutal slavery era, the Civil Rights movement, or even now where sparks of racial separation emerge in urbanized areas of Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit. Black Americans must do something to defend their right as an equal American. “I Am Not Your Negro” argues that the black race will not thrive unless society stands up against the conventional racism that still appears in modern America. “The Other Wes Moore” argues an inspiring message that proves success is a product of one’s choices instead of one’s environment or expectations.

But [she] didn’t ‘hear’ it until it was said by a small pair of lips that had already learned it could be a way to humiliate [her]” (Naylor, 411). This not only supports the fact that the boy had been taught or heard this word by someone older like a parent, but it is also sad that a nine-year-old had to be taught that such a nasty, ugly word was created to make her and people like her feel ashamed and embarrassed to be black, or that are worth less as human beings, which is absolutely false. That is why slurs are created though, to make groups of people feel less “human”. This essay explored the most infamous slur against the black community. The fact that slurs like this are prevalent in today's society is extremely upsetting and wrong. There are plenty of racial slurs that are so casually used today, it makes one's stomach ache in distress. Ableist slurs are even less reprimanded, a high school student walking through the hall will hear the r-word too many times to count during the course of a day. Just as commonly used are homophobic and anti-LGBT slurs. A high school student will hear the f-slur and the q-slur plenty of times, and even more will “that’s so gay” or “you’re so gay” be whipped from the mouth of students without a second thought. It’s disheartening.

In this essay, June Jordan primarily focuses on explaining what Black English and how it’s become oppressed by Caucasian Americans throughout the years. Jordan believes African Americans have been raised to modify Black English to Standard English in order to be accepted into the societal and scholarly norms of America. Jordan states early on her essay, “As we learn our way around this environment, either we hide our original word habits,or we completely

One of the points Raspberry makes in his essay that the definition of being black is limited. Raspberry uses basketball for his first example. He writes, “If a basketball fan says that the Boston Celtics’ Larry Bird (3-time NBA MVP and 12-time NBA all star) plays ‘black,’ the fan intends it—and Bird probably accepts it—as a compliment.” Raspberry (485). The author uses mild sarcasm in this passage to compare how people consume the word “black.” He continues, “But name one pursuit, aside from athletics, entertainment, or sexual performance in which a white practitioner will feel complimented to be told he does it ‘black.’ Tell a white broadcaster he talks black and he’ll sign up for diction lessons.” Raspberry (485). Raspberry compares these two situations to show the limitations. Yes, us blacks can bring

W.E.B. Du Bois, a prominent African American scholar in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wrote many significant essays that challenged the dangerous societal view that black Americans weren’t capable of progress. In one of those essays, Strivings of the Negro People, he develops new terminology to discuss the many forces that act upon black Americans in a white dominated society, the most important of which is double-consciousness. The phrase, “double-consciousness”, refers to the division of the African American self into conflicting two facets: one being the American and the other the Negro, ever being forced to look at themselves through the eyes of a racist society.

With a background affected tremendously by the dark history of African Americans, language has become a significant problem to what the term Black English really means to different people. In If Black Language Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is, James Baldwin attempts to analyze what a language really means and how Black English evolved to fulfill an important role for Americans. Black English sounds proper to blacks, but to whites it may not be a proper use of language. Throughout this essay, Baldwin uses a specific tone and relates to his audience by opening his mind to both emotion and logic while still upholding his credibility. Baldwin tries to persuade the audience to respect the language of Black English using his personal experience. The history of different languages mentioned in the essay is used to help convince the audience of thinking about the term language from a new perspective. Whites and Blacks both may speak the same language, but that does not mean that they understand each other because the language can be spoken in different matters. As Baldwin states, “The white man could not possibly understand, and that, indeed, he cannot understand, until today”. A white man or black man had to be careful about the words they used in front of each other because some words would be considered offensive for one another. Baldwin uses African American language and culture to reveal the impact that the English language Americans use has created.

“You are a nothing little nigger” is one of the demeaning phrases African American human beings have heard over the years in an effort to keep them in a state of persecution. This paper will discuss the persecution of the African American. The following documents the struggles, gut wrenching pain, and heart ache of African American people have endured and are still suffering with today.

In the civilized society that everyone lives in today, all languages and culture should be equal. That is the main idea in both Gloria Anzaldua’s essay, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, as well as James Baldwin’s “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?”. The authors in both these texts support their argument in various ways, and in doing so, manages to effectively persuade their audience. The ways that each author approaches their argument is different in their appeals, evidence, and styles. Similarities also exist between the texts of the two authors. The rhetorical strategies that Anzaldua uses makes her argument much stronger than Baldwin’s argument.

In this unit I have learned many interesting things about being Black. For example, in the article by Awad El Karim M. Ibrahim, Becoming Black, I learned about BE meaning Black English and BSE meaning Black talk. Because where I am from I never was taught that there was a such thing as Black English, only talking black. Also, I did not know about Code meshing, which was mentioned by Vershawn Ashanti Young in the article, Should Writers Use Their Own Language.I have always mixed formal and informal talk my whole life and I never know it had a proper name for that style of talking. I thought it was intriguing that in the article written by Johannes A. Smit, Black Women, Writing and Identity, that women should be housewives and nothing else. I was told since birth that

Something Genava said was, “Ebonics: neither “broken” nor “sloppy” speech nor merely “slang” nor some bizarre lingo spoken only by baggy-pants-wearing black kids.” The dominant group or white supremacy want us as blacks to believes that it’s something wrong with the way we speak, or pronounce our words. I personally believe they want blacks to have little to know confidence, so we can start acting like them, and not embracing our culture. I remember one time in class the white teacher name Mrs. Beltowski asked me “Do I know my dad?” and I said, “Yeah” then she said “You mean yes?”

What this source talks about is the southern african american’s language of how it reflects the identity of them. Living in the south is different from living in the city. One way both of these places are different is because of the way that people speak. In the city people talk more of a civilized tone while the south people tak in more of a shortened tone words. In the text it states “So most of us black folks who mommas and daddies grew up where everybody be lookin’ and soundin’ like us and didn’t

Through her African American plays, A Raisin in the Sun and The Drinking Gourd, Lorraine Hansberry uses her race’s own patterns of pronunciation, vocabulary, and usage to disrupt the common American notion of African Americans as lazy, uneducated, mammies, a race without identity, culture or dreams. She shows how language is powerful and can give people a sense of identity. Steven R. Carter in his book Hansberry’s Drama: Commitment and Complexity quotes Hansberry’s own words: “Language symbols, spoken and written, have permitted Man to abstract his awareness of the world and transmit his feelings about it to his fellows. . . . That may be the most extraordinary accomplishment in the universe for all we know. . . .” (153).

Mr. Smith started off explaining how Ebonics was a genetically related “African Language System.” The room went silent with the discussion of this new word as people knew around here racism was a sensitive topic and nothing Mr. Smith or the board members said made this seem right. The next segment of the lecture was spent reading what they