I often encounter African American college students (and to a lesser extent, AfroCaribbean students, at least those who genuflect to what they call “British culture”) who speak with great pride about only speaking/writing what they call “Proper English,” never speaking a word of Ebonics which is often erroneously interchangeable with “street slang.” These students often cite this ability as the reason for their stellar, academic performance in school. Despite the fact that we are not at a national, competitive university, these students often think they are at Hahvahd, all because their teachers have emboldened and praised them for their acquisition of a standardized English (if you saw their writing’s content and style, even this, however, is questionable). Besides the anti-black nature of this sentiment (if black people speak it, it must be wrong) and the utter inability of any of these students to offer any accurate definition of what Ebonics is, the ideology of American empire is fiercely evident. Only in the United States can you be considered educated or intelligent because you only speak/read/write one, standardized, school variety of a language. Continue reading
Category Archives: Writing While Black
Digital Labor, Race & Gender in the Academy
This fall, I taught a writing class where I introduced students to color as design and rhetoric, the CSS of their ePortfolio platform, and a rich text module (where they would write reflection on what they had done in the class and explain their visual design decisions). The agenda for that day of class was posted the night before, like every day of my teaching this year. The “lesson plan” was hosted at my own ePortfolio so students could experience the text and weblinks on that platform. There was also a 4-page handout, my personal worksheet and guide to CSS, all of which was followed by an exit slip as students left the lab. Just a regular day of class really: tasks you need to complete, things you need to get done… with students who work hard to meet your expectations. The pinch in the system on that day, however, came from an assigned observer of my class who claimed that no writing happened in the class and that I seemed unprepared for the day. Yeah… you heard that right…UN-PRE-PARED. So some 50 emails later and another 10 pages of 5th-grade-level explication of basic digital literacy practices in 21st century writing classrooms, I came to a crossroads where I DEEPLY understand the WORK of my digital labor… and the necessity that a black female professor always be able to PUBLICLY SHOW what she has done and what she can do. After all, it is difficult to make the case for unpreparedness if you have even casually perused the items that I list in just this blog post (unless, of course, you have NO clue how to work a web browser or google search). It offers a digital visibility when an ideological imposition of invisibility tries to strike its ugly, white blows. It won’t save or protect you, but it WILL throw a whole other kind of monkey-wrench in the mix, pun intended.
For each class that I taught this year, I created a class agenda that guided what we would do. The agenda is meant as a guide rather than a script to keep me moving towards the goals and promises I have made on my course syllabus which is usually 12-15 pages long. Each agenda for each day of my class is posted to the course website.
In addition to this website/blog, I have:
- a professional ePortfolio that archives all of my teaching, research, and service since I secured tenure two years ago now
- a wordpress site for my English 101 course (Public Writing, Rhetoric, and the 21st Century)
- a wordpress site for a class that I taught last year and hope to build as ongoing archive of black women’s rhetoric
- a weebly site for my English 201 course, Digital Rhetorics (with a companion weebly demo site as a skeleton for the websites that students create)
- two demo sites on digication as a skeleton for the ePortfolios that students create
- a website on digication for a series of workshops that I did for sophomores and transfer students designing digital resumes (with a companion weebly demo site as a skeleton for the websites that students create)
- a website on digication that explains the CSS of the platform
- a forthcoming website on digication for an honors seminar in writing and rhetoric that I will teach next year
- a website (not fully public yet) on digication for an online journal of first year students’ digital projects and essays (launched in fall 2013)
- a forthcoming online, undergraduate journal
- the beginning stages of a scribd account, youtube channel, and soundcloud account in order to upload media to my websites in different ways (I plan to create some apps and screencasts this summer also)
Black Language Matters: “If You Don’t Like My Peaches, Then Don’t Shake My Tree”
As soon as I hear someone say it, I bust out laughing: “If you don’t like my peaches, then don’t shake my tree.” I love the self-assuredness and, well, the bit of threat and warning that come with these words. I consider this a very nice way of saying: YOU BETTA BACK UP! I AIN’T HAVIN IT!
I have always heard these kinds of expressions from working class/working poor black folk (these lines were ubiquitous in the Blues in the 1920s, what we call floating verses from the black oral tradition, but these lines still float now). Many still make the sad mistake of relegating that to some kind of “folk wisdom,” which is just a white, western trick of pretending to value you but really marginalizing you and calling your wisdom subpar instead. There are many things that you can learn from this philosophy that shape how you understand and do your daily living:
1) don’t mess with something you have no business (or talent in) trying to shake up;
2) if you know those peaches have nothing in common with you, your tastes, your likes, your life, then move on… otherwise, it will be assumed that you WANT to get it started;
3) when that shit falls on your head—and it WILL— that is the consequence that you shoulda KNOWED you had coming.
Because, you see, that peach tree (and the person who uses this expression) is rooted and strong enough to NOT care nuthin about you and bend back on everything you try and touch.
There are so many contexts in which you can use this expression, it just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside, but for today, I would like to discuss one specific context that is related to the maintenance of institutional racism in colleges and universities where I have worked: white women who (attempt to ) correct my language. At each and every institution that I have ever taught, a white woman has, in some way, sat me down to explain to me the inappropriateness of my language and/or my “allowances” with students of color, an occurrence always more pronounced at public universities than at private universities. There is always some kind of overture where they explain academic discourse and academic writing to me. Now, don’t me wrong, if you have some good advice for me on how to publish more than I already have, I’ll listen with deep seriousness. However, in each case that I describe, the speaker did not have a Ph.D., OR had never published any academic writing (and by this, I am talking in terms of an R1 discourse so I mean research articles, not poems or novels), OR had not published anything rigorous or significant on this side of the 21st century. If I did need some advice, these wouldn’t be the folk who I would go to, so now why on earth would these fools, who so obviously KNOW they do not like my peaches, think they should and could shake this tree? Credentials and experience in academic publishing, online or print, clearly aren’t how these people construct their knowledge of academic writing. Biological whiteness and occupation at a university seem to be their sole practice of academic language and since I disrupt that, they seem to think they can come colonize the way the peaches grow in this orchard. Except, of course, it just don’t work that way.
Here’s just one example. In 2005, when I was finishing graduate school, a white female professor overseeing a professional development project I was part of, told me that she thought I was using too much Hip Hop/youth language in what I do. She wrote me an email detailing my “slippages.” Yes, you heard that correctly. She called herself an expert because her 17-year old white son was an avid consumer of Hip Hop so she knew that language. Yes, you heard that correctly. And, yes, she got her feelings hurt. For a little chronology here, I’ll just say that I was 34 years old at the time when I received her email. For some more chronology: 1) I was eight years old when The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” came out in 1979; 2) that was 10 years before this white professor even met the sperm that become her wanna-be-hip, white, suburban son; 3) that was 26 years before this woman’s son discovered Hip Hop by listening to Jay-Z. As to whether or not I use Hip Hop language to semanticize my life is open to debate since this is not deliberate or conscious, but like I said, The Sugarhill Gang was my Sesame Street; Native Tongues gave my morning college lectures so, yeah, they are the soundtrack to which I hear words and I am proud of it. All this is to say, I haven’t been copying white kids in white suburbia; they have always copied us and I let this woman know as much in my email reply back to her. I also gave her a detailed analysis of the many things she had gotten wrong in the articles she had published, years before, about black culture and black language, since the white editors and white reviewers of this journal let her get way too sloppy, an obvious fact since she was thinking, years later, that her doofus, white, privileged son was the center of Hip Hop. To this day, I look her up, every now and again, just to make sure she hasn’t published something out-of-pocket about black people in case I need to get at her ass again. She hasn’t. Like my family and communities taught me long ago: if you don’t like my peaches, then don’t shake my tree.
I do find it curious that white women in the academy have been the ones who embolden themselves so constantly to correct my language. When white men come at me, they always do so with a white woman on their side. None of this is a surprise. Every wave of feminism has witnessed black women pointing out to white women how their notions of gender equality are constructed for the maintenance of white supremacy. Nothing new there.
Since none of these women are people who I would ever call my friends, people who I would choose to hang out with, or people who I even want to have much conversation with, it is curious that they seek me out— I have never initiated any of these conversations. I mind my business, do my work, do it well, keep to myself, keep it movin, and only talk to the handful of friends who I like and trust, those folk who understand and theorize oppression. These initiated discussions are an obvious and deliberate attempt at colonization and, each time, that I respond back, I get rendered as the angry, oversensitive black woman…or the mean, black girl. The colonized are always rendered as subhuman, stupid (too stupid to know what REAL oppression is, at that), and violent when they resist/speak back to their colonization. It is inconceivable to power that we might have an analysis of THAT power. That’s how institutional racism in universities works, what we might call the daily microaggressions necessary to maintain racist culture, and there are always clear actors who deliberately maintain it. It ain’t a mystery, it ain’t subtle, and it ain’t difficult to pinpoint.
At the end of the day, we can’t be faded though by white women with such limited ideological lenses and vocabularies that they need to label black women angry instead of analytical, loud instead of logical, mean instead of methodical, sensitive instead of smart. There’s only one message to send here: If you don’t like these peaches, then don’t shake my tree.
Witness to the Archive
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From One Black Home…
Since my father (unlike many of my OTHER family members) does not read this blog or any blog and hates the internet, I can tell all his biz’ness here with impunity. I will use him here to think about digital archiving and its implications for my classroom.
As I seem to always stress, my father’s working class status and disposition have never meant intimidation or lack of confidence, as many seem to associate with working class folk of color. As a heating and A/C specialist, he works in many homes/churches/companies to install heating ducts, central air, etc. If it has a motor, engine, or some such, he can fix it …BUT if you start telling him what he should do when it is obvious that you have NO knowledge or scientific background with the task at hand, he will nod, tell you to do it yo-damn-self since you know so much, pack up his stuff, and walk right back out the door. If you can’t see that he has knowledge and a skillset that you NEED and do NOT have, he ain’t dealin with you. Ever. If you don’t know how to talk or respect someone like him, well then he ain’t gon give you the time of day. He will watch you freeze to death, quite literally, without a morsel of regret. It should go without saying: I think this is one of my father’s greatest attributes. I aspire to be like him each and every day!
And this is where technology comes in. Just so he won’t forget your dumb behind, my father will add you to his archive, a routinely UPDATED database (names and all possible phone numbers) of people who shouldn’t get any answer when they call. He prints these out and posts them by the phone and at other strategic locations. He has other uses for technology like keeping up with sports stats and staying in touch with his 14 brothers and sisters, but maintaining his database is a main priority. I love to dig through the database rather than just read the posted lists because it gives so much more detail. I am wildly entertained by the new names and the things folk have pissed off my father about. I even like to issue warnings: “watch out now— you bout to get on the list.” Hours of entertainment right there! I don’t have a database like my father’s, but these days, I am certainly considering it and have plenty names and attributes ready.
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…to Other Black Homes
As a child, I often went on jobs with my father. Yes, I enjoyed when he would get mad and leave because, then, I could do my special dance on the walk to car: a bop to match our walk, quick pause every now-and-then for an “in yo face” side-to-side head bap, and then bop to the car door some more. On the occasions where we stayed, I loved that too. I got to sit down and read Ebony, Essence, and Jet magazines and, since I was appreciative of the content, I was always given access to the stash of back issues that were always stored somewhere close by. No one threw these out— they were archived as data of our lives. And, yes, I consider these archives, NOT collections, ones that were freely accessible. What was the point of collecting black wisdom if you weren’t going to share it? I loved flipping through the well-worn pages and seeing which articles were the most read. That’s where I would sink in. Of course, those times do not match the politics of these magazines now, but they once offered dynamic polemics of and representations into black life.
With every fix-it job that my father did, I was immersed in some kind of an archive. It is a memory that I would like to carry with me as I imagine how to re-frame the annotated bibliography that is part of the freshman comp curriculum in my program. While the digital component of my assignment was clear enough (students had to create e-pages for different kinds of websites, articles, videos, etc), I didn’t make the scope and purpose critical enough. Archives help you live your daily life; they are not just the purview of privileged digital scholars who use the newest tools to (re)center the same white actors of history and aesthetics. I needed to offer my students the opportunity to create their own archive of knowing and I needed to allow them more control of what that should look like and do. Once again, it is a black framework that gives me this new approach and disposition. I am never without a model in this newly technologically automated world, even for alternative archives.
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