Based on this week’s readings, which demonstrated that language functions as a delicate social construct that institutions use to create harmful social boundaries. April Baker-Bell defines anti-Black linguistic racism as the “linguistic violence and persecution and dehumanization and marginalization that Black Language speakers face in schools and in everyday life” (Baker-Bell 9). The definition stands out to me because it shows that school-based language correction functions as a racial enforcement mechanism. When teachers mark AAVE as "wrong" or "unprofessional," they create an environment that shows Black students their cultural identity holds no worth. Baker-Bell draws on Richardson to show that this process leads to internalized racism, where students come to associate their own ways of speaking with inferiority (Baker-Bell 15).
Henner and Robinson extend this critique to ableism through their framework of Crip Linguistics. They argue that “good language in the United States is a proxy for proximity to whiteness” (Henner and Robinson 5). The new perspective changed my entire approach to understanding fluency. I used to assume fluency was simply an educational goal, but the authors show that it is an ideological benchmark tied to white and able-bodied norms. Educational institutions often create narrow criteria to evaluate fluency, but they fail to assess students' actual language proficiency. The assessment of Deaf students and disabled speakers as “non-fluent” actually evaluates their deviation from white-coded standards rather than their genuine communication abilities. Baker-Bell supports this analysis by showing how code-switching serves as a form of respectability politics that upholds oppressive social norms (Baker-Bell 21).
Together, the two readings demonstrate that many language “problems” are produced not by students but by the ways teachers are trained to hear and judge them. Baker-Bell argues that code-switching cannot protect Black students from racism (Baker-Bell 21). Henner and Robinson similarly identify fluency as an ableist and white-coded measure of competence (Henner and Robinson 8). The authors in both texts endorse educational transformation because teachers need to create new listening methods that acknowledge different language abilities.
This now raises concern. The future education environment will bring multiple complex issues that will impact my teaching performance. How would assessment need to change if classrooms truly accepted all students’ languages as valid? The educational system should consider translanguaging and Black ASL and stuttering as signs of learning development rather than educational shortcomings. I need to understand the ways I can prevent myself from supporting racial and ableist systems of oppression through my neutral stance. The process of achieving linguistic justice demands the elimination of language myths together with the systems of whiteness and ableism, which enable their existence.