THE BULLPUCKEY TRICKLES DOWN FROM THE IVY LEAGUE TO THE MID-MAJORS.

Poor Northern Illinois University has gone from being honored by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, now the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression with a "Speech Code of the Month" recognition to ... not being listed at all in the Foundation's Free Speech Rankings, mostly a rogue's gallery of progressive intolerance practiced each day.  I'm mildly annoyed by that, as it was their awarding a "Red Light" ranking to the university's speech code that inspired me to invent what became the Foundation's "red light warning" Internet gadget.

But the head zampolit at Northern Illinois got hired by Harvard as a diversity deanlet there, and there are people on faculty who might aspire to the same sort of social promotion.  By ending "white linguistic hegemony."  Of course.

Black students should not be penalized for using “Black Language” and college courses should critically interrogate “white linguistic hegemony and anti-Black linguistic racism,” said a scholar who gave a presentation recently at Northern Illinois University.

“People’s language experiences are not separate from their racial experiences,” the University of Michigan’s April Baker-Bell told an online audience during a November workshop for faculty and graduate students at Northern Illinois University.

The way black language is “devalued in classrooms reflects how Black lives are devalued in the world,” she told attendees. “Similarly, the way we think about this notion of standard mainstream English is directly connected to the invisible way that White culture is often deemed normal, neutral, and superior in the world.”

Best known for her book “Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy,” Baker-Bell is an associate professor of language, culture, and justice in education, and was one of six professors who co-authored a 2020 document calling to abolish “White Mainstream English.”

Obviously, because my private vocabulary is my truth, and the rest of the world is full of liars. Interrogate that.  But politicians panic and lock down the country, and a career criminal overdoses during an arrest gone wrong, and the opportunists see the opportunity to piggyback on the madness.

As with previous CCCC/NCTE resolutions and position statements, we situate this demand in our current historical and sociopolitical context. Our current call for Black Linguistic Justice comes in the midst of a pandemic that is disproportionately infecting and killing Black people. We write this statement while witnessing ongoing #BlackLivesMatter protests across the United States in response to the anti-Black racist violence and murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and a growing list of Black people at the hands of the state and vigilantes. We are observing calls for abolition and demands to defund the police. We are witnessing institutions and organizations craft statements condemning police brutality and anti-Black racism while ignoring the anti-Black skeletons in their own closets. As language and literacy researchers and educators, we acknowledge that the same anti-Black violence toward Black people in the streets across the United States mirrors the anti-Black violence that is going down in these academic streets (Baker-Bell, Jones Stanbrough, & Everett, 2017). In this current sociopolitical context, we ask: How has Black Lives Mattered in the context of language education? How has Black Lives Mattered in our research, scholarship, teaching, disciplinary discourses, graduate programs, professional organizations, and publications? How have our commitments and activism as a discipline contributed to the political freedom of Black peoples?

In the same way that the rage mob has rendered South Minneapolis and much of Chicago uninhabitable, the Ebonics Caucus will render much of the population illiterate and inarticulate.

Tellingly, neither the presenter nor the university's event planners responded to The College Fix.

On the other hand, if each student uses his own private language, it's going to be harder to plagiarize.  Which will no doubt please presenters of a recent talk at the University of Cincinnati.  "Anti-plagiarism policies 'harm Black and Latinx students,' professor argues."

On June 30, Antar A. Tichavakunda, an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati (UC), published an article on Inside Higher Ed that argued exam surveillance, zero-tolerance policies, and fraternities and sororities harm “Black and Latinx” students.

On the issue of technology, Tichavakunda claims that “proctoring software built to monitor students during remote exams… perpetuates racial biases and stereotypes.”

Fraternities and sororities, dear reader? Yes, because there are files of term papers that earned good grades and old examinations there.  And those are all cast in Standard English.  How soon until some conscience-cowboy insists that those files be translated into the local dialects of color and made available to the relevant affinity centers?

Fortunately, some faculty still understand the role of the educated man.

Campus Reform spoke with Erec Smith, a professor at York College of Pennsylvania, about the argument Tichavakunda presents.

Smith said that “[a]ssuming the general incompetence of minorities because they are minorities is a violation of… academic integrity.”

Professor Tichavakunda has not responded. Presumably Professor Baker-Bell would call out that "general incompetence" as unfairly expecting students in an English-speaking country being able to speak and write in English.