1. We as a society give so much more credit to a white person who is fluent in a third world or people of color language, cultural style and lifestyle than we give to a person of color or third world person who learns intimately a white person’s language and cultural style.
For the white person who masters the others language he or she is made into a ‘master’ of that language and culture. And of Language and Culture in general.
In a person of color such parallel mastery of white folks language or another poc or third world communities language is considered to be ‘par for the course’. In other words it is to be expected of a poc with any ambition to be able to mimic the language and cultural norms of white folks. I am not sure why this is exactly.
I think that it is because white folks language and culture is seen to be by the majority of the powerful as the words and actions of the ‘norm’. the ‘natural’person. The fundamentals of a basic human being. Of a civilized human being. So a person of color is learning the basics of human existence. Of how to be an evolved human being. Since we (poc) are so close (in terms of evolution) to our primate (chimp and gorrilla) genetic cousins.
2. And as for a poc learning another poc’s language and culture…that is just the blind leading the blind. The uncivilized leading the uncivilized. A Portuguese learning to speak Spanish.
3. When folks ask why are women of color in coalition with one another. Why are woc, from various backgrounds, model immigrant meets indigenous, meets slave descendent meets immigrant slave, in coalition. The answer is simple: We believe that those of us under the heavy umbrella of being a person who is racialized have ‘common differences’.
While as a descendent of slaves and indigenous persons I can understand what it means to be taught a history that is not my history. To be taught a cartography that is not my map. I still see that those who are more recent immigrants, those who identify more strongly with mestiza than I, those who speak in alterations of the standard American English. Have something to teach me.
And while I understand that many women populations’ histories are repressed. And erased. Our womens history is being deleted as it is being written.
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June 20th, 2009 at 2:38 am #
thanks for this post.
June 20th, 2009 at 7:59 pm #
YES!
June 21st, 2009 at 2:07 am #
thank you!
June 21st, 2009 at 4:28 pm #
Thank you for this.
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:17 am #
Quite recently I saw a feminist website refer to a Jamaican woman’s English as “broken syntax”.
Not broken! There is such a thing as Jamaican English, dammit! It’s scary how we have all these debates about how we must reform language, and how not being sloppy with semantics is somehow conservative. You get into a debate on a point of semantics, it’s like you’ve got a beard, testicles, and a large collection of tweed suits, and you’re trying to preserve the English language from a horde of rampaging vaginas. But as soon as someone steps outside of received pronunciation or white-person English, or even uses working-class-person slang, all of a sudden we’re all supposed to turn into William Safire and call it “broken English”. So you can throw around as many spurious portmanteau words as you want, but a variation of English with its own historical and cultural background, that’s “broken syntax”.
And a bunch of inferences about noble savages that I needn’t go into *spit*.
So, I should imagine it’s a lot more frustrating to be on the receiving end of that, rather than just enraged on behalf of the people who are.
Well, it’s not just that, I’m a linguist by trade, so I have an academic and professional stake in being enraged too.
June 24th, 2009 at 11:54 am #
Excellent post.
Re: #1, I was just thinking about the kudos and acclaim that white people get for mastering blues and (any kind of) african music.
August 10th, 2009 at 4:23 am #
“To be taught a cartography that is not my map.”
One of the most powerful statements I have read in a long time.