Reading both Crip Linguistics Goes to School and Baker-Bell's chapter on Anti-Black Linguistic Racism reshaped how I think about language education and its entanglement with systems of power. What struck me is how both texts challenge the myth of "neutral" or "objective" standards in language. Whether it is fluency in ASL or "proper" English, the yardsticks we use are never just about communication - they are saturated with racialized, ableist and classed ideologies. The demand for linguistic purity often functions less as a pedagogical necessity and more as a form of gatekeeping, drawing invisible lines around who is seen as capable, intelligent or even fully human. Crip Linguistics insists that no way of languaging is broken, yet recognizes that the refusal to acknowledge disabled languaging perpetuates deprivation. Similarly, Baker-Bell names the daily violence Black students endure when their language practices are demeaned, corrected or erased. Both frameworks push me to think about how the classroom itself is not a neutral space but a site of constant policing. Teachers may see themselves as "helping" students by enforcing fluency or "standard English," but in practice they are often reproducing white, abled norms that marginalize the very communities they are supposed to serve. What stood out to me is the paradox of visibility. Black Language, for example, is appropriated, commodified and celebrated in pop culture, yet treated as deficient in classrooms. Deaf languaging is celebrated when it provides access for hearing audiences, but devalued when judged against ableist metrics of fluency. In both cases, the community's authentic voices are sidelined in favor of sanitized or white-adjacent versions of their language. This double standard is the very logic of white supremacy and ableism working through language. I find myself asking: what does it mean for educators of emergent bilinguals to hold space for variation without slipping into neglect? There is an ethical tension between honoring all linguistic practices and ensuring access to broader communicative capital. Yet, both readings suggest that the danger lies not in variation itself, but in the hierarchies imposed upon it. Perhaps the role of educators is not to "correct" but to expand - helping students navigate multiple linguistic worlds without demanding they abandon their own. Essentially, these texts remind me that language education is always political. To teach "English" or ASL without interrogating the racialized and ableist ideologies behind those labels is to collude with oppression. As future educators, we are challenged to move beyond technical skill and toward justice - to recognize that every lesson is also a lesson in who counts, whose voices matter and what ways of languaging are allowed to thrive.
Hi Hillary!
I really appreciate what you said about measures of fluency being judged not just by communicative ability, but also being heavily shaped by racist, ableist, and classist ideas. What I found especially powerful about Baker-Bell’s chapter, “What’s Anti-Blackness Got to Do Wit’ It,” was her decision to write it in African American English. This choice challenges the common argument that "Standard American English" is necessary in order to create a universal way of communication for clarity and efficiency. By writing the chapter in AAE, Baker-Bell shows the reader that academic writing does not have to be in "Standard American English" for it to be easily understandable to the reader. Once this is made clear, the myth of "Standard American English" begins to unravel. Because AAE conveys information just as clearly as Standard English, it shows that pushing for Standard English isn’t really about clarity, but about upholding racist, ableist, and classist ideas of what ways of languaging are "correct." As you said, language education is entangled with systems of power. Placing value of "Standard American English" above all other ways of languaging is really about privileging white, able-bodied, middle-class ways of speaking, not about clear communication.
I really appreciate what you said about measures of fluency being judged not just by communicative ability, but also being heavily shaped by racist, ableist, and classist ideas. What I found especially powerful about Baker-Bell’s chapter, “What’s Anti-Blackness Got to Do Wit’ It,” was her decision to write it in African American English. This choice challenges the common argument that "Standard American English" is necessary in order to create a universal way of communication for clarity and efficiency. By writing the chapter in AAE, Baker-Bell shows the reader that academic writing does not have to be in "Standard American English" for it to be easily understandable to the reader. Once this is made clear, the myth of "Standard American English" begins to unravel. Because AAE conveys information just as clearly as Standard English, it shows that pushing for Standard English isn’t really about clarity, but about upholding racist, ableist, and classist ideas of what ways of languaging are "correct." As you said, language education is entangled with systems of power. Placing value of "Standard American English" above all other ways of languaging is really about privileging white, able-bodied, middle-class ways of speaking, not about clear communication.