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13 Cau g h t i n a f i r e s to r m A Harsh lesson learned Teaching AAvE Barbara Gordon Note found under my office door November 21, 2002: If you would like to know what or better yet, how a black person writes, then maybe you should focus your time and efforts into something a little more worthwhile than a guide or checklist to critique them on. Who are you to tell a certain people what is acceptable for them to write, think, or express themselves as? You are merely a tutor. Nothing more, nothing less. Just a little fragmentation fo yo ass. Obviously, it is not okay for anyone to use double negatives, cut off words, or phrases that don’t match a sentence. If you think it is okay then you use them, or teach your kids to. Our professors don’t agree that it is all right, because we get marked down for mistakes like that, and yes they are mistakes. Don’t teach racism, or demeaning attitudes to people that come to help others. How dare you try to set blacks back in such a way? Is it okay for poor white trash, such as yourself, to use those phrases? Is it all right for the leading dependents of governmental welfare (white women) to use certain phrases? You are obviously unaware of the hundreds of black universities and colleges that you could utilize if you would like to further your knowledge of what is acceptable FOR A BLACK PERSON. I was slack-jawed and incredulous. With a thumping heart, a dry mouth, and that odd sensation of parting with mundane reality, I read this note repeatedly before admitting to myself what it was—hate mail. When I got my bearings, I wanted to meet the author. I wanted this person to come forward to talk with me and in so doing realize that I was not an ogre, that I was attempting to stop, not promote, prejudice, specifically linguistic prejudice. I thought the pointed sentiments in the note hit the wrong mark. I suspected the negative energy discharging through these words was the result of a string of affronts, perhaps on my own campus and surely in the larger society. This bolt of anger could have struck a number of places, but here it was sizzling in my hand. 274 WRI T I NG C EN T ERS A N D T H E N EW RAC I SM I doubted the author was a student since she or he did not realize that I was the director of the writing center. I suspected a university employee or someone in the surrounding community had written the note. Whoever it was had heard something about what happened the week before in the writing center class, a class I was teaching for secondary -education English majors and others who were interested in being consultants in the university’s writing center. As I put the note away, I contemplated how widespread and out of hand things were becoming. I feared the writing center’s reputation was being compromised. I feared I could lose some students’ respect, and I felt a tinge of concern for my personal wellbeing. This writer’s outrage was palpable. In addition to being a little frightened, I was moved and saddened by this author’s sense of victimization. I was beginning to feel victimized too. excerpts from the handout i Passed out in the Writing Center Class, november 14, 2002 Students from black American Communities: There is no single dialect spoken by black Americans. Students living in a community in which a variant American dialect is spoken have often been exposed to a large range of dialects. Some black speakers use a variety of dialects that have many features in common. Areas of greatest difference between Black English dialects and dominant English dialects include: (Seven examples follow starting with: 1. It will often be used for there in situations like “It’s a book on the table” for “There’s a book on the table.” 2. The verb “to be” will tend to be absent in situations where a contraction may be placed in standard written English. This is especially true of the present tense, e.g., “I here” and “we going.”) This handout dates back to when linguists, particularly William Labov, first described Black English Vernacular in detail. Though I have conducted searches over the years for other descriptions...

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