Talking Black in America – Social Justice

- But I'm tired, I'm tired America, from being shot down like dogs.

- Without a doubt.

- I'm tired.

Keep on a-talkin' Marchin' down to Freedom Land Ain't gonna let them stop - Hands up.

- Don't shoot.

- Hands up.

- Don't shoot.

(protesters shouting) - Until this hour, and in spite of the danger in which we stand, and all that I know is happening all around us every day, we forged ourselves out of this fire.

- Tell them.

- Tell them.

(audience members applauding) - And if we could do that, and we have done that, we can deal with what now lies before us.

(protesters shouting) (people singing) We shall overcome (siren wailing) (soft thoughtful music) - In the middle here, I walk up - Every year they know me now.

It's like, "Yo, hey, what's up?"

- Girl, sit down.

I ain't gonna tell you no more.

And I meant that!

- He can't sing, he can't sing, but that's all right.

Come on, big Daddy.

- When I was an undergraduate, James Baldwin published an essay about Black English, and declaring that it was a language.

I think it was in the "New York Times", like an op-ed page.

- [Actor voicing James Baldwin] "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.

Now if this passion, this skill, this sheer intelligence, this incredible music, if this absolutely unprecedented journey does not indicate that Black English is a language, I am curious to know what definition of a language is to be trusted."

- I had never taken a course in linguistics.

I didn't know what a dialect was, what a language was.

But I do know that so much that's peculiar about the African American experience manifests itself in language.

- I wait for whatever, for whatever they want me.

- You're being is manifested in language, and each people have a unique way of being in the world.

So I find the way that African American culture expresses itself in its full variety, totally fascinating.

(lively hiphop music) So much that is unique about African American history and culture and thought is contained in the way we use language.

(soft thoughtful music) - African American language, or African American Vernacular English, whatever you choose to call it, like any other language, doesn't exist in a vacuum.

You know, it's a part of the fabric of people's lives.

There are a lot of beautiful ways in which we can see African American English expressive, you know, in music and preaching and just the everyday flavor of conversation.

But there are also ways in which because African Americans don't live in a vacuum, they live in a larger society, there are ways in which it's sometimes used to discriminate against speakers of African American English.

- We are always met with acoustic cues and a signal that allow us or help us to map a person to several categories at once.

We hear something, "I think that's a boy, that's a little boy.

That's a little boy from Mississippi," right?

We do this all the time.

This is how we negotiate the world as we go through, and we map people to different categories.

The problem is when that mapping to a particular category denies people of certain rights or opportunities, and that is what we see a lot in racial profiling.

We deny people of the right to peacefully drive home, the right to, you know, feel like they can speak safely in the classroom.

It's like we deny you of these little comforts that we take for granted sometimes, right?

In the American, broader American society.

We deny them the comforts of just being able to traverse that space, as any other human being would.

(soft thoughtful music) (faint hiphop music) - One thing that I want the public to sort of think about is, when you evaluate somebody's speech and you hear them and you say, "Hmm, that's a Black person," what ideologies and stereotypes are coming with that?

Can that be a neutral observation, or does all of the racist history of this country have to come along with it?

And I think when people are sort of reflective and introspective about that, they can start to break down some of their internalized linguistic prejudice.

(soft thoughtful music) (bystanders chattering) - Now, it's important to recognize that when you answer the telephone, one of two things happen.

You either recognize the caller or you don't.

- It's your papa.

- If you don't recognize the caller, you will draw demographic inferences.

It doesn't make you a racist or a sexist.

We judge whether or not we're speaking to a child or an adult, a man or a woman, and often we're drawing conclusions about the region of the country where they grew up, or their racial background.

All of that is not linguistic profiling.

Linguistic profiling occurs if you're in a position to deny someone goods or services, and you act on those demographic inferences in a discriminatory way.

So the question regarding linguistic profiling is fairly straightforward.

Can you discriminate against someone, sight unseen, just based on the sound of their voice over the telephone?

And the average person recognizes that yes, there is a real possibility that that can happen.

The cure for this particular problem does not lie with those people telling minorities that they need to reduce their accent, or replace their accent.

Indeed, there are many well-educated Americans that mistakenly believe that they don't have an accent.

If you think you don't have an accent, it's because the manner in which you speak doesn't trigger a negative reaction to you.

- Discrimination is real, but we have to do something about it and stop accepting it.

We gotta, you know, try to interrupt that.

(lively upbeat music) - We're born into these environments, we're getting a lot of feedback and stimuli from all around us, and we just take it up.

(lively drum music) But when they learn that certain styles of speech have been attached to, again, deficit or disability, what does that do to a child's self-esteem?

- "She carried him home in her basket."

- These messages come from going to school, being told by our teachers that, "You need to speak properly.

You need to speak the standard language."

They come from being at home and being told by parents that if you speak your language, then you're not gonna be able to be educated, or people are not gonna think that you're intelligent, that they're not gonna think that you're intellectual, if you don't, if you're not speaking just the standard.

- Without a doubt, you know, your communication is what people hear, what they feel, what they see, and it truly represents you.

And so when you are told that you are speaking incorrectly and this is the way you've communicated for years, it cuts at the core of the being of the individual.

- When we separate or try to separate the individual from their language, we are taking away what makes them who they are.

And so it's really important to recognize that they're not two different things.

They are one, and we come as a package.

And so when you wipe out my language, you also wipe out my identity and my pride in myself.

(audience applauding) - I don't have to imagine what it's like to be Black, to be brilliant, to be misunderstood by the same people who only seem to understand you after you've exfoliated, after you've scraped yourself down to the white meat, to expose that layer of skin where color and soul meet, where tongues split, pitchforked learn to spit and speak and sing and scream and stand on stages while the world bets and bids and bargains and debates about your ebony brain, and your Black boisterous body.

And you begin to question your value, askin', "Is speakin' like dis e'en werf it?"

Look, I know what it's like to.. - Like how a child feels when an adult tells them that they're wrong, it's disheartening and it's also confusing, because you don't really know what exactly is wrong.

You're just being told that that's an incorrect word, or a word choice, and you, I don't recall understanding why Because I think that my understanding of what race was as a kid, my understanding of the power dynamics in classrooms between Black kids and white teachers, I didn't understand those things I was just told, "Go to school, do what the teachers tell you."

And when a white teacher tells you not to speak this way, you don't speak this way.

- [Elaine] Our teachers used to tell us stuff like, "You gonna end up like them wine heads on the corner if you keep talkin' like that."

Everybody row the boat ashore - I interpreted it as, you had to learn how to speak correctly, right?

And not only interpreted it, that's what they were saying, is that you're speaking wrong, even though they themselves used Black Language.

But they still said, you know, "This is not how youre supposed to talk."

And maybe they didn't see themselves as using Black Language, but they did.

There was a lotta, you know, contradictory information.

Like that was the era of Jesse Jackson telling everybody, "I am somebody," you know?

"I am somebody, but I talk wrong."

It's something, you know, that's a contradiction, right?

- Me telling you what you just said is said incorrectly, is like telling you that your mama is not smart.

What I just said, my mom said to me, that's where I got it from.

Or my dad, or my people or whatever.

If I said, "That's not how smart people talk," 'cause that's what teachers say, right?

"That's not the correct way to say that."

Then what you're not saying is that everybody in my life doesn't speak correctly, right?

What you're not saying is that everybody other than you, right, is wrong, which can't be right.

- I think it's very confusing for people, for young kids especially, to be corrected about their speech rather than to be taught that, "Oh okay, you're speaking, you know, you're Creole," or, "You're speaking African American," you know, and "Oh, what else do you know how to speak?"

Or you know, it doesn't have to have a negative connotation.

(children chattering) - The beauty about language to linguists around the world is how systematic and regular, and kinda constrained and conditioned it is.

We find this in any language we look at, and we find this in African American Language too.

But people outside of the community and people outside of linguistics think it's something that, anything goes.

- People have the impression that African American English is nothing more than a collection of errors, because that's how they've been socialized.

If it's not standard English, its wrong.

So we have this framework that all of us have been indoctrinated into, that there's a right and a wrong in language.

And the reality of course, language itself is always right because theres always a systematicity, a patterning to it.

- Black English, just like all languages and dialects of languages, does have a certain structure that has to be followed.

So if you take a sentence from the vernacular form of African American English, like, "He done left, he'd done left," you can't say, "He left done."

You have to say, "He done left," Because those rules of grammar or rules of structure require a certain order of the words.

- I think it's really, really important to understand that language is a representation of culture.

And so the culture of, and the history of African Americans is encoded in the African American Language.

So you'll see a lot of that history in songs, you'll see a lot of it in poetry you'll see a lot of it in written documents.

And I think that just as mainstream American English has a history, African American Language does as well.

And I think that's really important for people to understand that this just didn't happen a few years ago, we just decided to talk differently.

- You know, it's kinda chaos in the city, 'cause you got everything on top of you.

- For so long, they don't remember what love feels like.

- Play the radio.

- I say yeah, it sounds good.

- Like they say that's a lot, they'll be like, "I'm fixin' to slide to the crib - When people hear the term Black English, they associate it with a particular kind, the vernacular kind.

There are many, many types of Black English here in the United States, and it differs according to region, gender, age group.

African American standard English is the type of African American English that doesn't have any of those stigmatized features.

- When we're talking about standardized African American Language, we're talking about a variety that, that variety that's gonna slip past the ears of people who think they're looking for proper white English or formal white English.

And they're not going to hear the pieces of Blackness.

- We're asking folks to- - [Jessi] But one of the things I think that happens, especially for middle and upper class speakers, is that they're playing with the degree to which they're using a form that is, the linguistic term is more marked. So sometimes you want to be using something that is really obvious, and so maybe you do want to say, "Okay, didn't nobody do nothin', we was all hangin' out."

And you want that really salient "Hey, here is my language, here is my person," as a Black person.

But then sometimes you want to be read as a Black person by the Black community around you, but to slide past the white people who might be gatekeeping your ability to succeed as an upper class person.

- We all know about camouflage, we usually think of the military uniforms, but you can camouflage grammatical features too.

In other words, they occur in the speech of someone, but they slip by, so to speak.

- If you say "ain't," if you say, "I been had that," you know, if you do anything lik people might be likely to say, "Oh wait, that's bad grammar."

But if it's just your tone, that's like, "I'm doing Blackness, but I'm doing Blackness in a way that's not going to be negatively evaluated by anybody here."

- "No, he choose that boy for the farm.

Potatoes, tomatoes - "He will sell corn and potatoes, peas and tomatoes."

- Michael talks about becoming a doctor, a surgeon.

Sylvia certainly to a basic undergraduate education, and if any graduate school, but certainly- - You often hear people say, "Oh, you should pronounce your endings, and you should be articulate."

And that demand to be articulate has led many upper class, and of course very upper class Black speakers to actually pronounce in a way that white speakers also don't do.

It's actually a little bit beyond.

And what that ends up doing is creating a sound that is uniquely Black, but it's also really upper class.

- A good marriage yes, but that comes much later, I think, in my way of looking at things.

- I am concerned that people who that they have escaped the racism that is attached to speaking African American Language still get discriminated against because of things like that.

You still sound Black, even if you're not doing the thing that people imagine as bad grammar.

It was never about the grammar, it's always about the racism.

(soft thoughtful music) - Bear it in mind children, I mean that.

When the Americans talk about progress, they mean how fast I become white.

(audience laughing) And it's a trick bag, 'cause they know perfectly well I can never become white.

- That's right.

- I have drunk my share of dry martinis.

(audience laughing and cheering) I have proven myself civilized in every way I can, (audience laughing) but there is irreducible difficulty.

(laughing) (audience laughing) Something doesn't work.

- It's the stigma around being Black, and it's racism that makes people feel that African American language is worthless and it won't get you anywhere.

But it is people's culture and it is people's identity, and it's nothing to be ashamed of.

(soft thoughtful music) (bystanders chattering) - The world will never know how the language was developed.

They will never know all the different nuances and the pieces that went together of constructing what we speak.

But it's not wrong, and it's not bad.

It is a legitimate linguistic system, rooted in West African origins, that was created by enslaved Africans for the purposes of surviving.

The rest of the world, and especially the American public, needs to know this so that they can stop telling Black kids that they speak wrong, and that they write incorrectly, that there really is an actual need to understand the language.

- Then that man had another tiger.

A police came to the house and shot that one, and they got another one.

- [Interviewer] This is all on "Wildlife?"

The elephant and the rhinoceros, all of this happened on "Wildlife?"

Wow.

- And then another one came on about the white lions and stuff.

Don't you know 'em white ones?

- White lions?

- Tigers, I mean.

- [Teacher] White tigers.

Tigers are orange with black stripes, thank you.

- No, they white too.

Yeah, uh-huh, they got white, they got white, then they got, I mean black stripes going down.

- That's a zebra.

- Mm-mm, it's another one.

- It's a snow tiger.

- [Interviewer] Oh, the snow tigers.

Oh, okay.

- And then that man had one.

(bright funky music) - [Teacher] Do you think that her point, that the jury- - [Walt Wolfram] The question of African American language and educational achievement, is of course a really complex one.

We do know this, that there seems to be a correlation between educational achievement and speaking a vernacular or a standard variety.

So we know that much.

Now, to what extent speaking a vernacular dialect is an impediment in reading and writing, we're not quite sure, because there are a lot of complicating issues.

But the fact of the matter is, it certainly doesn't help education when the language of the classroom is more radically different for African Americans than it is for whites.

- Post-integration of public schools, people were still seeing that Black children were, you know, not doing as well, but the materials were never designed for them.

And that's the sort of constant that we're dealing with.

This is a system that is designed for the benefit of white people, and particular types of white people even.

And we've always asked people of color to accommodate themselves to that system, and to try to achieve within it.

That creates a situation where they are perpetually disadvantaged at every turn.

So there's no way to study a variety other than the standard without it being about social justice, because we're still fighting for our right to exist in this country, to be in public spaces, to get an equal education.

That's the fundamental enterprise.

(soft thoughtful music) - Where American educational policy is failing is that it doesn't know enough about the relationship between culture and education and achievement, and there is this tendency to think that a one-size-fit-all works in a country of 330 million people with, you know, tens and tens of millions of school-age kids.

- In Little Rock High School I tested in the low average intelligence range by earning an IQ of 82.

I barely missed being placed in the special education classes by three IQ points.

My counselor placed me in a vocational trade curriculum.

She told me that I did not talk and that I did not have college She told me that my grammar was poor.

I spoke Ebonics.

- I had to do speech therapy when I was younger.

I think I got lucky, insofar as I was able to get out, I couldn't tell you how.

But there are students who are not able to get out, and it continues to follow them such that, again, maybe they're denied more rigorous work, they're more likely to be put into classes that aren't as challenging, or seen as, you know, mentally challenged because of a difference in dialect, which, again, to a sociolinguist sounds bizarre, but to people who don't know about dialect differences sounds sometimes, "Oh, that's about right, because they think those things track.

And it impacts their ability to be mobile through middle school, high school, and to become professionals.

- We have a overrepresentation of Black and brown youth in special education and it also connects to the school-to-prison pipeline And so once we begin to track them into the special education system when they don't belong there, we affect their intrinsic motivation to academically succeed.

And so the youth starts to believe that the way that they speak, and the way that they present information is not okay, and it affects their self-esteem as well.

- When a child is misdiagnosed as having a communication disord they're typically pulled into speech and language therapy.

And the impact that that has on children in general has been widely researched, but the extent to which a child starts to recognize that there are aspects of their identity, their language, and the language of their community, that are then questioned, or that are identified as wrong or incorrect or bad in some way, I think could have significant effects on kids.

- It's just unfortunate that so many things happen to our Black kids in classrooms by way of language barriers, by way of inequities, and the way that they're treated in classrooms that by the time they leave, you know, lower grades, primary grades, the joy of learning is no longer there, because who's now in control of that learning, and what are you actually learning?

- Anthropologists show that African American kids grow up in communities where they volley, they do this verbal volleying with each other, and when they bring that energy into the classroom, that could come across as being abrasive or confrontational.

And teachers who don't come from those backgrounds can misread that, and those kids get sanctioned.

And so when those kids get sanctioned, they also become defiant in the process, some of them do, or some of them become disillusioned because they don't believe that the educational space is really for them, or allows them to be who they are.

(soft thoughtful music) (students chattering) - You want me to navigate this, and you won't even tell me why.

You wanna use your language to explain to me why I should wanna have access to your world.

That doesn't seem safe for me, because I don't fit.

- Teachers even from early as preschool, four-year-old children, they will automatically assume when they hear a specific phrase or when they hear a student speak a certain way, that they're going to be more aggressive, or they're going to cause problems in their class, or they're going to be disruptive.

And that leads to a completely different relationship for Black students with education throughout their entire lives.

- So there's this big issue of school discipline and how it's being administered, and what are the reasons that certain students are being disciplined and others may not be.

And as you can imagine, there's a huge racial disparity in who gets disciplined and who doesn't as often.

There's research showing that language comes into play.

- Part of it is a language barrier of understanding that not just language as in the words that we speak, but the way in which we communicate.

It can be mistaken and misunderstood as being disrespectful.

- So there are huge things at stake for people who speak African American English.

These things can have really harmful consequences on people's lives.

- [Amelia] There is decades and decades of research around African American English, how it affects children in the classroom.

And so we're tying academic achievement and then discipline within schools to whether or not like a child's trajectory through life will end them in the prison system.

I wish that policymakers knew that Black Language is important It's important to the development, it's important to the understanding, it's important to the growth, it's important to the nurturing of a Black child.

Like you can't take, and it's not just for Black children using African American English or Black Language, that's for any child.

Like, you can't take away and separate language and say that we're being culturally inclusive, because language is a part of who we are.

(soft ambient music) - If we really celebrated them and made them feel a part of the learning environment and felt like they belonged in a classroom, I think we'd see a few different things.

One, I think we'd see better performance on test scores, standardized test scores.

Even though I think generally the tests are culturally biased, I do think that we would see better performance, we would see less of an achievement gap.

I think we would see higher graduation rates.

And so if we make them feel like they belong in the classroom, they will excel.

Not saying that language and language appreciation is going to fix everything, right, but it's a start.

- [Tester] I'm gonna show you some pictures, and I need you to give me the word that goes at the end of the sentence.

Here is one watch, here are two... - Watch.

- [Tester] Here is one tooth, and here are some... - Mouth.

- Okay.

And what's in the mouth?

Some- - Teeth.

- Okay.

Here is a foot, here are two?

- Foot.

- Mm-hmm.

Here is a man and here are two?

- Man.

- Right.

Now as you're going along- [Sharlene] - So in looking at this video, you see that the child is a clear user of African American English.

For instance, she may not be marking, as we would consider in mainstream English, marking the plurality.

So instead of saying, she's not saying two dogs, she's saying two dog, because two already marked that there's more than one dog.

- [Tester] Whose bike is this?

It is- - Matt.

- Hmm?

- Matt.

- [Tester] And whose bike is this?

It is...

Okay, the children's names were Matt, Ann, Butch.

- Ann.

- [Tester] Okay, so whose bike is this?

It is- - Ann.

- She's not using possessives, which are characteristic of mainstream English.

And it's acceptable for her not to be using those in African American English.

She's not using the 'be' form.

Again, that's an acceptable form in African American English.

So again, these are some things that clinicians need to take into consideration when diagnosing children who are using African American English, so that they are not misdiagnosed.

- A few decades ago, a test was given in the city of Washington DC.

Over 70% of the population was African American at that time.

Over half of the kids in that population were determined to have a disorder.

That was on the basis of using norms that were different from the students' dialects.

What happens with that?

Kids are referred for speech pathology, for therapy, they may end up in special education.

And what this ignites is the whole trajectory of educational inequality, in which kids who are simply different are judged as disordered.

- We essentially want individuals to be able to be effective communicators.

So they have to understand that African American English serves that purpose for a large number of people.

They also have to know that it doesn't need to be fixed, that there's not a need for us to go in and correct African American English.

(soft thoughtful music) - If you want to reduce the achievement gap in American society, you have to narrow the empathy gap.

And the most effective teachers, I would suggest to you, are the ones who can actually meet children where they are, including where they are linguistically.

(soft thoughtful music) - I get a lot of people in my classes who don't wanna talk, because you know, they're in education, and so they don't want people to hear anything that they don't think sounds standard.

And I tell them that, "If you keep listenin' to me, I'm'a sound like a Black chick.

If you keep on listenin', you gonna hear that I sound Black, and it's okay, and you can sound like you sound This is what we are here for, we're all here for, to mutually understand each other."

That's what education is about, understanding each other and trying to learn from each other.

I don't think you're a good educator if you're not trying to understand the people that you're working with, the people that you're teaching.

- No student is gonna learn from a person that they don't think cares about them in some sort of way, cares about their best interests and is trying to help them and understand them in the context they're in.

So with that comes understanding their language.

And I'm not saying the teachers need to use African American Language if it's not their language.

But I do think you need to be able to approach kids with a respect of that language, and an understanding that it is systematic, like any other variety.

- If all teachers knew that African American English was a language, I think that our educational system would change drastically.

I think that teachers would be more accepting of some of the students, and you know, you have to give some credit to them.

A lot of times they just don't have the training or the knowledge or the background, and they're doing their best.

But I think the educational system would shift.

I think that students would in some ways be more trusting, and recognizing that, "You're accepting me for who I am.

You're accepting me that this is the way I speak, this is what I use in terms of my culture, it's part of who I am," and I think that the students themselves would feel more empowered, and be more willing to work with these teachers, so that then you can see their fullest potential.

- When you think about your pedagogy and the development of your curriculum, what are the kinds of tools that you can use that will allow those kids to learn American standard English, which is what you're teaching, but also draw on the very vitality and vibrancy of their native home languages.

- African American English has a lot of history in this country, has a lot of vibrancy.

I mean, you read some of the most seminal literary texts in this society, and they're written with that speech.

And so one of the ways you can incorporate it is through the use of texts you use, right?

And ask kids to translate.

I can envision, and I don't teach K-12, all kinds of ways that you can actually center or show the value of that language in the process of teaching American Standard English, through literary texts that have already been produced.

- [Teacher instructing] So what do you think about that?

That Miss Maudie, through dealing with Jem and Scout, that a lot of the... (soft thoughtful music) - When I was in college, I was an education minor, and the class that really stood out to me was called Race, Class and Gender in US Public Schools.

So that was the class that really caught my attention in learning about learning more about inequities, seeing that I could play a role in reducing inequities by being a high school teacher.

Okay, and our other questions are asking about race and the social hierarchy.

What's another word for hierarchy?

- Ladder.

- Ladder.

The social ladder.

We also wanna pay attention to characters of various races, socioeconomic classes... - By the time they get to high school, they've already learned how to code switch.

So the side that I see of them in class and even the side that I see of them during break, when they say they're more relaxed, they're more themselves they're still editing how they speak and how they present themselves around me, just because I'm a teacher.

So I think understanding that so many of them have already made that decision, made that habit, and in a lot of cases it's probably worked for them.

It's probably worked for them to code switch in that way, and to, as they would say, hide a certain part of themselves in school.

But I think we have such an opportunity to help them see that both parts are valued, and really making this a safe place where they can sort through, even their identity development in terms of language.

And we really try to open up that conversation, so that they understand that they're gaining more language varieties, but that doesn't mean they need to change who they are at their core.

They don't need to become a different person in order to be successful in academics, or to be successful in the workplace.

- I think it's very important for us to recognize that we don't have to sacrifice our identities by learning another variety.

In fact, it can empower us to navigate more spaces.

(soft thoughtful music) (children chattering) - At this point in society, speech and language pathologist plays a major role in educating the community about African American Language.

We have a strong understanding of the social and cultural differences, and our role is major because not only can we train just the lay person, but also law enforcement and attorneys and court personnel.

(traffic whooshing) (soft thoughtful music) - The area where I think we now have to do a lot of work is criminal justice.

Language can enter into issues of criminal justice in many ways One of the first ways in which it can enter has to do with understanding.

People could be an accused person who is trying to say, you know, his version of, "I didn't do it," or, "I need an inhaler," or, "I can't breathe," or whatever it might be.

It's hard to imagine that those phases themselves are not being understood, but who knows?

And it could also arise at a level of people who are serving as witnesses.

So in the testimony of Rachel Jeantel, it was the trial of George Zimmerman, she was by far the most important witness for the prosecution in that case.

And it was very discouraging to learn at the end that at least one juror and possibly more said, "You know, we couldn't understand her.

And then secondly, we didn't believe her."

- [Juror] She just wasn't a good witness.

- Did you find it hard at times to understand what she was saying?

- [Juror] A lot of the times, because a lot of the times she was using phrases I have never heard before.

- So you didn't find her credible as a witness?

- [Juror] No.

- It's very clear that people, whether in the courtroom or outside of the courtroom, could not understand and could not believe Rachel Jeantel's testimony.

It's like, here's a speaker who speaks a really stigmatized variety of African American Language, and they're not given the decency of being believed, even though they were the last person on the phone with the speaker.

- [Rachel] He was a calm, loving person, loved his family, definitely his mother.

- [Kelly] She's essentially the only witness that they had, because she was on the phone with Trayvon Martin while he was being pursued.

[Attorney] I'm not quite clear on what you're saying.

You're saying, first of all to the jury, that what you said is, "I could hear it was Trayvon."

- I could hear it's Trayvon.

- So linguistic profiling is at play here in a number of ways.

The prosecutor having this ability to pull her language apart, to ask her what words mean, to tell her what her words mean, and it never is challenged in the Court.

It's not only not challenged, it's accepted as evidence.

- [Attorney] And you didn't say, "I couldn't hear it was Trayvon, or "I couldn't know it was Trayvon?"

- I said, "I could hear it's Trayvon."

That's how I speak, you cannot hear me that well.

(soft thoughtful music) - So Rachel Jeantel, this national moment, because there's been work on it, a lot of us point to this example.

I think it's important to remember that linguistic profiling is always at play.

So every case, every time someone goes into a courtroom, how they're using language determines how trustworthy they are, how much we believe what they're saying to us, and it can, you know, affect their perception of criminality.

So someone might come in with an accent, tell the full truth and get, you know, a heavier sentence because of how they sound, not necessarily like, what they've done or what they've said.

- [Sharese] Part of this goes back to people not understanding the systematicity of African American English.

I believe we just need to be more careful about the way in which we judge people who speak a particular dialect.

- This issue of people's credibility being diminished, not being listened to, not being believed, is really pertinent when we look at the medical community.

Many people have to call a doctor's office to get an appointment, to find out if they're accepting new patients.

There are a number of studies that show that Black people, and especially Black women, are told "no" on the phone, even when they are accepting new patients.

Like, people will call later in the same day and get an appointment.

We also find that once you've made it into the room, once you have a doctor and you're there and you're in the room with them if they don't share the same cultural background as you, there are a whole host of issues that are introduced with care.

- [Reporter] During her pregnancy, Rodney had life-threatening blood clots in her left leg.

She says she repeatedly told doctors about her symptoms, and was repeatedly ignored.

- [Rodney] I was also navigating institutionalized racism and felt the need to somehow prove that I was worth listening to.

- I was just at the doctor last week and I will intentionally speak in standard English and as eloquently as possible, because that's somewhere where I know from personal experience that they're gonna look at you as less intelligent, and that's just a place where I don't want to gamble with that.

- I think it affects people that there is a stigma around the way they sound, and people are hyper aware of the fact that people are judging them by how they talk.

I think everybody's been taught that it's wrong in one way or another.

Even if you come from a home of a linguist or someone who studies Black Language, they're gonna tell you the other part of it too, is that you know, people gonna think, that you know, it's nothing, or it's, you know, you're ignorant if you speak this way.

So it's like you're getting at the complexity of it, that's, you know, rooted in racism and social inequality and oppression and all of those things.

That's why I love Black Lives Matter so much, because that's a powerful statement to me.

It shouldn't be, but it is.

I mean it shouldn't be, but it is, that Black lives matter, Black Language matters.

- When say Black lives matter, we mean- - [Crowd] All Black lives.

- You have a right for justice.

We don't need no two justices here in America, we're not second class citizens.

(crowd cheering) We are a part of this country, we've given our lives in this country, and we want the best in this country that the country has to offer, and we gonna keep on fighting until we get it!

(soft thoughtful music) - When I think about social justice in the internet age, I look to Black Twitter and specifically point out the hashtag Black Lives Matter as the use case for understanding how social media and social justice can go hand in hand.

So Black Twitter, because of its structures and bringing together people who have conversations about racial justice, about police brutality, about resistance, sort of created this backdrop or this infrastructure for the movement to take place.

- Black Lives Matter.

- Black Lives Matter.

- Hands up.

- Don't shoot.

- Hands up.

- Don't shoot.

- When the hashtag was created, it caught on like wildfire, because people were already having those conversations.

I can only hope that 10 to 20 years from now, the conversations that Black people had on the platform have some long-lasting and long-range impact on the way we think about political processes, on the issues that float to the surface when we talk about social justice, even on the ways that other groups interact with Black people, being able to learn more about Black people and Black culture by listening to Black conversations, and perhaps being more knowledgeable about their neighbors and friends.

- I think one thing that we have understudied and explored is the use of Black Language as a sort of universal language of resistance, which makes sense when you think about the history and the roots of this language, and how it has come out of oppression and slavery and segregation, and this beautiful gem that came out of all of these terrible, horrible, negative things.

You see it in those protest settings, doing that same interactional social work that it has always done for the Black community.

(crowd cheering) (soft thoughtful music) (bright funky music) and right foot stomp and left foot stomp you cha cha with your right you cha cha with your left - So there's one piece of it that's linguistic discrimination but I think the other side of that is linguistic appreciation.

I've always been sort of amazed, if you think about the type of situation that African American Language originated in, it's like you took the worst situation possible and developed these linguistic features that I think are very, you know, quite beautiful and eloquent.

So there's also the capacity to sort of appreciate the language for the interesting things that it does.

I mean, it doesn't really seem like a social justice issue, but I think having pride in the way that you speak natively can be a social justice issue as well.

That's also really important in validating kids' identity, people's identity.

It's outta sight, outta sight It's outta sight, it's outta sight It's gone, it's gone - Black people were as inventive in their use of the English language as they were in the way they used musical instruments and European musical forms.

That it was just another outlet for their uniqueness and their creativity, at the level of sublime genius.

Back up!

And jump!

- [Tracey] American English owes much to African American English, and yet it's so stigmatized.

- In America I feel like we take on certain things, and we don't know the name of it or we don't know where it originates from, so we don't pay homage to that or respect that, but we use it and say that it's American culture, and it's really derived from African American English or Black Language, Black people, Black culture.

'Cause I'm a pro, make ya bend ya back low den just pound it real fast just like purkulator - Quick, what's the definition of the word kitchen?

And I don't mean the room in your house with the refrigerator.

Well, a new dictionary can give you the answer.

"The Oxford Dictionary of African American English" will define and trace the origin of words established and reinvented by Black people.

- I want people to see that the way we use language is as sophisticated and as rich and as nuanced as the way any other community of English speakers use the English language.

That's my goal with this dictionary project.

Turn to the right, and move to the left - Before we get into some of the words, what led to this project, and why did you, why- - It's a dictionary that takes the time to actually look at the historical origins of the words.

It's not always easy to identify the origins of certain words.

Words are always created, you know, within communities of speakers in ways that are not necessarily documented at the time that they are first used.

- My hope is that this work continues for future generations to look at and to take pride in and to feel empowered.

The work is important because it is going to allow us to really have a fuller description of African American English.

I also think the project connects us.

I have never felt more connected to Black people in my life, like across regions and across time.

I really feel like I'm spending time with Black people that I will never know, and for me I think it's so important, because when I look at these words and when I look at my family and when I look at pictures of my family, people I've never met in my family, for me it gives them a voice, because now I know what dances they might've been doing.

I know what words they might've been saying.

I know what words they might've been saying that I still say, you know?

And for me, I think being able to connect Black people across time and across region, to me that is really important.

(lively percussive music) - I think it'll be a surprise to many that a dictionary like this even exists, just to show that these are words that are legitimate, they're validated, and now they are in an Oxford dictionary that people will look at as a source of authority.

- When you slap Oxford English Dictionary on something, you are making it proper, you are pushing back against these ideas that, "Okay, this is an informal, it's just slang, it's just a thing that people do."

And so it does elevate, and allow people to see the value in something that they might not have seen the value in before.

That being said, African American Language is valuable and important and just as rich, whether it has a dictionary or not.

- Our language is a part of who we are, as individuals but also as communities.

African American English is as much about the culture of African Americans as hairstyles and clothing, and you know, our own histories.

It is a part of who we are as a people, and so we should celebrate that.

(bright funky music) You cha cha with your right You cha cha with your left [Sharese King] Every American needs to know that they're interacting with African American Language all of the time.

It is such an important thread to the fabric of society.

- Black people and Black communication is going to go on into the future.

It doesn't matter the medium, doesn't matter the technology, it doesn't matter how it gets used.

Black people, Black speak, Black talk, it will continue to be there.

(lively funk music) - African American English is dope.

Its not going anywhere.

It's just like being Black, it's not goin' anywhere!

So we have to just understand that it's a part of our culture, it's a part of who we are.

It's a part of the American culture at this point.

You know, we call it pop culture sometimes.

I know I'm usin' air quotes a lot, but it's real.

So it's like we say that things are pop culture, but really they derive from African American English and our sayings, and who we are.

So it's not just, even though it's African American English or Black Language by name, if we had to label it, it's still a part of the American language.

And if we understood it and treated it as such, then I don't think so many people would have as many issues - If we begin saying, "African American English is a language, it's legitimate, it's beautiful, it's worthy of praise," then people are gonna begin to tell that story, and the narrative will change.

(soft thoughtful music) (crowd chattering) - You know, it's about African American resistance, it's about African American identity, African American history and culture.

It's a ongoing experience.

- It's here to stay, it's not going anywhere, so you might as well embrace it and just, you know, understand and enjoy the culture (soft thoughtful music) (crowd chattering) - [Obama] Yes, African Americans the cold weight of shackles and the stinging lash of the fie but we've also dared to run Nort sing songs from Harriet Tubman's We have shown the world we can float like butterflies and sting like bees.

We can rocket into space like Ma steal home like Jackie, rock lik stir the pot like Richard Pryor, and we can be sick and tired of being sick and tired, like Fannie Lou Hamer, and still rock steady like Aretha Franklin.

Our stories have shaped every corner of our culture.

(crowd cheering) (bright percussive music) (soft thoughtful music) Oh Oh