Jive Talking

 

One of my students, attending University of Indiana as an international student, has been assigned an article by James Baldwin titled “If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?”

English, French, German, and Spanish are languages. “Black English” is a dialect.

Baldwin’s first contention: “People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate.”

Rather, people evolve a language in order to communicate. To suppose you can control your circumstances (or “reality”) by the language you use is the premise behind George Orwell’s sinister Newspeak. It is a delusion of the power-mad.

While insisting that “Black English” is a separate language, somewhat paradoxically, Baldwin insists that standard American English owes much to it. I grant him the term “jazz.” He could have cited many more. But he cites, falsely, “beat generation” as coming from the black expression “beat to his socks.” The term was coined by Jack Kerouac, who ought to know, and he said it was a reference to the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount. Even if it weren’t, “beat” has perfectly reasonable and applicable senses in English that do not rely on any reference to that idiom. One can be beat without being beat to one’s socks.

Baldwin describes “black English” as “a language, that the white man could not possibly understand, and that, indeed, he cannot understand.” Of course white Americans can understand most of what is said in “black English.” Few white people learn it, or use it, because it has no utility for them. Its only value is as a mark of ethnic identity, a cant or jargon; they are not going to convince anyone they are black in any case.

But look at how that premise harms black people. If “white” people are unable to learn black English, you have to entertain the parallel argument that black people may be unable to ever learn to speak standard English very well. You have no defense, now, against that claim. Perhaps they are also unable to learn algebra, then, or medicine, or science, or law…not a road you should want to go down.

“If this absolutely unprecedented journey does not indicate that black English is a language, I am curious to know what definition of language is to be trusted.”

The author has not considered any definitions of language. Here’s the one that is tenable in linguistics: a language, as distinct from a dialect, has a standardized written form and a literature. All Englishmen, regardless of their local dialect, can read the London newspapers. They can read Agatha Christie’s novels. All Chinese can read the Chinese classics, even though they often cannot understand one another when they speak. Conversely, Hindi and Urdu, although mutually comprehensible, are considered different languages: they are written in different scripts. The same for Croatian and Bosnian.

Black English is a dialect, not a language, because books, magazines, newspapers, and epic poems are not printed and read in black English. Perhaps in some future they may be; but it is unlikely. An author does not want to limit his audience, and all speakers of black English can also read standard English—along with about a billion others.

Tellingly, Baldwin himself chooses to write this article in standard, not in black, English. He should not demand otherwise from black youth. He is crippling them.

Language is communication. The best language is the language that can communicate with the most people.

Black English is a millstone around the neck.