Comments on: fluency and coalition

By: Royce

Royce — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:23:02 +0000

“To be taught a cartography that is not my map.”

One of the most powerful statements I have read in a long time.

By: where ive been « guerrilla mama medicine

where ive been « guerrilla mama medicine — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:12:14 +0000

[...] fluency and coalition 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. [...]

By: Delux Vivens

Delux Vivens — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 19:54:13 +0000

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.

By: Jen

Jen — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:17:38 +0000

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.

By: Noir

Noir — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 00:28:52 +0000

Thank you for this.

By: links for 2009-06-21 « The Mustard Seed

links for 2009-06-21 « The Mustard Seed — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 14:00:55 +0000

[...] fluency and coalition : Flip Flopping Joy "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’. [...]

By: maia

maia — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 10:07:35 +0000

thank you!

By: Blackamazon

Blackamazon — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 03:59:32 +0000

YES!

By: steph

steph — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 10:38:29 +0000

thanks for this post.