Michigan Professor Among Those Declaring Correct Grammar Is Racist

by Ethan Khaldarov

 

Speakers at Towson University’s virtual “Antiracist Pedagogy Symposium” criticized university writing curriculum and programs for being racist and perpetuating Whiteness.

The event occurred on June 17.

April Baker-Bell (pictured above), associate Professor of Language, Literacy, and English Education at Michigan State University, argued that idea of Standard English among teachers is used to maintain racist assumptions about “Black language.”

Bell stated it is evident that “anti-Blackness that is used to diminish black language of Black students in classrooms is not separate from the rampant and deliberate anti-black racism and violence inflicted upon black people in society.”

“Teacher attitudes include assumptions that Black students are somehow linguistically, morally, and intellectually inferior because they communicate in Black language,” said Bell.

Bell’s Michigan State University biography lists her as a “national leader in conversations on Black Language education, her research interrogates the intersections of Black language and literacies, anti-Black racism, and antiracist pedagogies, and is concerned with antiracist writing, critical media literacies, Black feminist-womanist storytelling, and self-preservation for Black women in academia, with an emphasis on early career Black women.”

Indiana University of Pennsylvania English professor Cristina Sánchez-Martín stated that her efforts are designed to contribute to “undoing Whiteness” in university students’ writing.

“The repeated references to ‘correct grammar’ and ‘standard language’ reinforce master narratives of English only as White and monolingualism and a deficit view of multilingualism,” said Sánchez-Martín.

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Ethan Khaldarov is a New York Campus Correspondent with Campus Reform. He is a sophomore at St. John’s University where he majors in Legal Studies. Ethan will be attending St. John’s School Of Law in the fall of 2021. Academically Speaking is a new Campus Reform series dedicated to keeping our readers up to date with the latest examples of liberal bias in scholarship, op-eds, and speaking events. Stay informed and current with what’s being said in higher education.
Photo “April Baker-Bell” by Michigan State University and “Michigan State University Campus” is by Jeffness CC2.0.

 

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8 Thoughts to “Michigan Professor Among Those Declaring Correct Grammar Is Racist”

  1. Deborah

    Very sad that ignorance is promoted by people who joined a university faculty under the very system that they now wish to destroy. Why don’t they start their own academies, if they want to teach according to a different ideology? Let them see who wants to sign up for that kind of “education.”

  2. Jeffrey Charles

    She is most likely among those who also adhere to the notion that matth , written history and science itself,are all racist in origin. If this type of inferior teaching is allowed to continue , our children will grow up to live in mud huts and mistrusting those in the hut next door The promotion of racisist ideologys as part of the curriculum at any level is inherently wrong and the damage to our children ,therefore damage to the future of our nation will be felt for a 100 years.

  3. Joan Brooks

    These Professors are the biggest racists.They are saying black people are so stupid that they aren’t capable of speaking or writing correct English. Then they have the audacity to call others racists for not dummying down the English language to accommodate the inferior black population. (this is what THEY believe).

  4. Connie Bellamy

    She stated “Teacher attitudes include assumptions that Black students are somehow linguistically, morally, and intellectually inferior because they communicate in Black language,” said Bell.

    Does she think teacher attitudes assume country white folk are intellectually inferior because we speak in country folk language?

  5. Ron W

    Bell stated it is evident that “anti-Blackness that is used to diminish black language of Black students in classrooms is not separate from the rampant and deliberate anti-black racism and violence inflicted upon black people in society.”

    Hey! Wait! It appears Bell, the accuser of racism, used correct English there. Well, It appears she’s doing what leftist political guru, Saul Alinsky, counseled, “accuse others of what you do, while you’re doing it.”

    LOL! I’ve noticed these judgmental leftists do that all the time!

  6. Mark Knofler

    Cuz speaking dem words is hard, soon it will be just grunts.

  7. Russ Crouch

    Sorry, it’s called NOT being ignorant. From someone that is supposed to be a teacher, it shows how really ignorant she is.

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