Race Talk, Race, and Contemporary Racism (original) (raw)
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Race, language, and representations
International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 2020
In her contribution, Adrienne Lo reflects on how scholars of language use have engaged with issues of race and racialization in the United States since the 1970s. She traces how scholars' emphases have shifted between a focus on the "real" and authentic productions of language varieties by racialized groups and the ways political, economic and cultural forces shape how that language use is represented and (de)legitimized. Lo concludes with a discussion of the stakes of sociolinguistic study of race given the contestations around "race" as a concept, and argues that research in this space should seek to engage broader publics.
Racializing language: Unpacking linguistic approaches to attitudes about race and speech
Is race a legitimate category of linguistic differentiation? In other words, can someone's race shape how they speak or how they sound to others? If so, how does this come to be? In which contexts and according to whom do links between race and speech style become assumed as real or meaningful? In this chapter, I explore various ways that linguists have attempted to answer these questions, framing the larger issue of attitudes about African American Language (AAL) and the construction of research on them.
Academic Questions, 2016
It's not me, it's you. Owing to pervasive racism, says Asian American Columbia University professor of psychology and education Derald Wing Sue-along with many others-life weighs down oppressively on black people (and other minorities). We cannot probe the roots of this racism with the hope of destroying it, Sue argues in Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race, without fully and honestly addressing relevant issues and without whites admitting their part. Sue is far from wrong, of course; unless toughened by engagement with contrasting ideas, brains turn to mush. But to what extent is he right? Are whites the proper targets for Sue's totalizing condemnation, as delivered in this book? Can whites help solve problems facing our black brothers and sisters? Suffice it to say, for what it is worth, that no one I know would fail to thrill to the long overdue realization of full equality for black people in America. What precisely led to Sue's "conspiracy of silence" that can be broken only with "difficult dialogues"? Black people do not speak their piece, he explains, because, as a subordinated group, they worry about losing hard-won gains. White people, by contrast, hold their peace, fearful that anyone speaking out will be labeled a "racist," perhaps the most damning pejorative used today. As a consequence of the cultural hypersensitivity of our times, I might add, whites understand today that any comment about black people can be instantly perceived as a microagression. An illustration: A declaration that "All Lives Matter" is understood by many today as an in-your-face rejection of "Black Lives Matter," and not as a friendly reminder to a high-spirited, combative movement that protestations not with standing, all lives door should-matter. Another factor affecting white speech in Sue's psychosocial view is that knowing that they are widely
Language and Race Constructing the Self and Imagining the Other in the U.S. and Beyond
“No, no, no, no. You gotta listen to the way people talk! You don't say "affirmative", or some crap like that. You say "no problemo". […]. And if you want to shine them on it's "hasta la vista, baby". In this famous exchange from the 1991 blockbuster Terminator 2, the young hero of the film was teaching his cyborg friend (Arnold Schwarzenegger), how to speak like a “real person”. These famous lines epitomize what has become the rather common conversational practice of interspersing English with Spanish (or Spanish sounding words). In a similar fashion, the rising popularity of hip-hop culture contributed to spread among US urban youth linguistic practices that were once considered to be a prerogative of the African American Speech Community. Standard American English has gradually incorporated lexical items and expressions traditionally belonging to linguistic minorities. But what is the semiotic and cultural logic underlying these habits? What are the implications of these conversational practices for the reproduction of certain cultural representations of historically Spanish-speaking populations in the US? How does the appropriation of African American Vernacular English by white upper middle class American teenagers participate in the production of certain forms of youth identities? How can we interpret these forms of cultural mimicry and appropriation? How does language operate as an index of distance, solidarity, and power among social groups? How do social actors use language to craft racialized representations of individual and collective “selves” in colonial and post-colonial contexts? This course explores the varied and sometimes surprising interconnections between language and race. The aim will be to show how language is a primary locus for the production of stereotypes, the performance of identity, the presentation of the self, and the reproduction (or the challenge) of social inequalities. We will scrutinize the role of linguistic ideologies in the colonial encounter, explore the interplay between language and the construction of hegemonic power, and examine the connection between communicative practices and the reproduction of racial discourse and racial stereotypes. This course explores the interplay of language and race in the communicative practices of social actors. Race and racism will not be investigated as dimensions of the individual’s moral consciousness. Indeed, rather than focusing on people’s minds and intentions, we will concentrate on what people do when they interact with one another. Moving away from the idea that racism is a phenomenon of the past or a prerogative of conservatives and uneducated others, this course constitutes a reading (and hopefully an experiential) journey through the interplay between language and race. This course will not offer a history of the evolution and transformation of racist discourse in the United States. It will not provide a thorough overview of the controversy over biological and cultural ideas of race. It does not aim at charting out the sociology of racial groups in America, nor does it plan on investigating quantitative data about the interplay among race, class, and social inequality in institutional settings.
Racism, Colorism, and Language within Their Macro Contexts
The Oxford Handbook of Language and Race, 2020
This chapter contends that scholars of language and race have insufficiently attended to the constraints imposed by a pentad of forces that (re)produce racialized hierarchies. These macro-forces include the global capitalist system, the nation-state, political economic stratification, and other forms of socioeconomic inequality. It argues that racism in the United States emerges from the social inequality imposed by global capitalism and the hegemonic influence of institutionalized racism rationalized by ideologies of white supremacy. This emphasis on disclosing the basis for racialization and the deliberate construction and maintenance of racial hierarchies is a critical step in revealing and undermining the historical arc of racist thinking. The terror, violence, and brutality of these systems are not only the macro-contexts within which race and language are produced, but white supremacy comes to depend on the idea of race, and therefore, processes of racialization for its contin...
EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages
This text is a review of The Anti-Racism Linguist: A Book of Readings, edited by Patricia Friedrich and published in 2023 by Multilingual Matters. The volume features nine distinct chapters written by authors from Brazil, Thailand, Japan, and the United States who, via personal narratives, share their experiences with (anti)racism in teaching, research, and publishing in applied linguistics and other related fields. The authors explain key terminology, concepts, and theories needed to understand and discuss anti-racism in language use. Authors also provide recommendations for change in editorial, research, and pedagogical practices that readers could implement to help counter racism in their contexts.