For this post I’m going to have to bite my tongue so hard that it’s going to take a fistful of Tylenol™ to numb the pain. Personal opinion on the article aside, it’s time to sympathize!
As a college English professor, June Jordan views “Black English” not as a bastardization of the English language, but as a cultural literary and communicative device. Under the influence of her students’ reaction to the use of “Black English” in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Jordan felt compelled to create a course in which rules were created for the use of Black English. The focus of the essay then switches to an individual student who happened to be doing an independent study project on racial inequity in South Africa. Coincidently, this student, Willie Jordan, had a brother who was murdered by the police in Brooklyn in what was presumed to be a classic police brutality case based on the race of the victim. June Jordan and her students felt so deeply about the murder that they wrote a statement to the Brooklyn police department in Black English. Professor Jordan believed strongly that the use of Black English in a statement issued to a major police department would get the message across about the affect of police brutality in the black community. In order further develop this issue of social inequity and racial prejudice , June Jordan’s essay concludes with a personal statement written in “Standard English” by Willie Jordan about how his brother’s death influenced his views on the injustices in South Africa.
Avoiding being critical of this essay took a lot of effort on my part. I’ll try not to hurt myself patting my own back.
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