Equauiy vs. uberaton
ttUT AT WWAT Cost?
By Etica K. Smiley
smileyt^)einail.unc.edu
"History is his story, and my
story is a raystery"
-Baibaim Stnittt
April 5,2001* wlien I thought
I was gai»dtog groiHid, 1 fowid
myself having to ptow sny experi
ence (aot my opinion) to yet another
white man. My own word about my
own background was not enough.
The same anger filled my brain
when I found myse!# pouring
through the shelves of Davis Library
trying to find references to validate
my own thoughts in a paper. Would
my intellect be insufficient without
the re-enforcement of a random pro
fessional white guy who writes for
the Journal of "Everything that is
Rational and Good?" Guess not. So,
this last editorial is in honor of all the
womyn of color who were and are
jiist as intelligent and enlightened as
Malcolm X and Gandhi; to all those
sisters and mothers who spoke the
theories of Marx, Rousseau and dare
I say Jesus, but went unheard and
unwritten. This piece is for you.
Black people, what exactly are we
asking for when we demand equali
ty? A job? ... working for whom?
An education? ... learning what?
The freedom to speak? ... to speak
how? Let us focus in on this last one
for a moment. You, the readers, will
be lucky if you have the opportunity
to read this in its true linguistic form.
The all-knowing standard book of
correct grammar prohibits it as
always. But what exactly is the stan-
upper class white man, or a black
man imitating such. Even the latter
has a term all its own in the
Linguistics department. Black
Accented Er\glish (BAE), or Black
Vernacular English (BVE), if you
want to ^ 'ghetto/ All variation
blade people make on the English
language typically qualifies as
^slang,' and is looked down upon in
so-called intellectual circles. (That
is, of course, until it is co-opted,
manipulated and sold back to us in
an Uncle Tommy Hilfiger commer
cial.) What is this Standard English,
and why is it so difficult for us to
speak it? Some would argue that
our brains are incapable, but I think
it is just them. In fact, many who
speak English only as a second lan
guage comment on how limited it is.
A friend of mine once told me that
there were at least five words in
Hindi meaning five different and
wonderful things, but in English,
they could only be translated into
one word, love. Black people have
known this as well for a while now.
When we're lost for words to
describe a situation, when we
change words to match the meaning
behind them, when we stutter, it is
not a disability but a signifier of the
limited language we have been
forced to speak in order to meet the
standard.
The standard shows up in other
places as well, like in school. For
example, we could claim that origi
nally there were no subjects, no spe
cialized departments and no aca
demic majors. Originally, we just
learned. African American studies
as well as aU other 'ethnic' studies
were history and culture. Geology
was the world around us, and math
was the
pyramid we built.
But before 1 take it too far, let me
be concrete. V/hen white men
accuse people of color, immigrants
and even white womyn for "steal
ing" their jobs and spots in college,
we wonder who guaranteed those
positions to them in the first place?
When young black children are con
fronted with headlines reading that
they are performing at sub-standard
levels, and they are at the bottom of
a gap between them and their white
counterpcirts, we ask what is the
standard? When in law school
debating the interpretation of the
First Amendment, ask what is the
standard; because if the standard is a
white man reading books by other
white men, speaking white man talk
and debating a law, that was not
written for us, by us or with us in
mind. If this is what the standard is,
we will never meet the standard!
I am not suggesting even that we
do better than 'the standard,'
because it is not ours. Our standard
is something completely different, 10
times taller and pointing in the other
direction. Why attempt to meet a
standard when in doing so you have
to deny your own inherent intellect,
beauty and talents? Yes. I am talk
ing about those who are asking for a
place in the market. 1 am talking
about those of you who think that in
assimilating, you are successful, and
in doing so, you may one day be
equal. Asking for equality is asking
to meet that ambiguous and unat
tainable standard. However, asking
for the freedom to achieve what we
define as our own standard... now
that is liberation, and liberation is
what we must continue to demand.
dard? Standard speech in the United
States is typically spoken by an
May 2001