Kristen Billings
During the introduction and chapter one I found myself thinking that I can’t understand where this person is coming from. I speak English and with that I speak the language that most people in the world find acceptable. I personally would want to learn different languages especially if I lived in another country where English wasn’t spoken as the primary language. However, I know that Joanne Dowdy wasn’t in that situation. She was being forced to speak a different language from her native tongue because it was thought that her native tongue wasn’t proper enough even in her own native country. I see this as being like American’s taking over Mexico and making them all learn Proper English. Like I said though, I can not relate to her because I am not nor will I probably ever be in that situation. I speak the language that most people find “appropriate.” I congratulate Joanne on showing her true self when she became the “good girl” of her school. I applaud her on keeping her roots close and knowing that she is who she is and we can accept that or we can’t because she isn’t going to change who she is just because people think it isn’t proper. It is a lot like the persecution of different religions in a way. If you don’t believe the way I believe then you are different and you are wrong. Why we as a society think that anything different than the norm is wrong I will never understand.
Then in Chapter two I found a similar story to the first. Ernie was also born and raised into a family that spoke Ebonics and so then found himself in the same situation as Joanne. He spoke a language that was considered to be wrong because it wasn’t the norm. One thing that struck my attention was that his teachers would go so far as to suggest that Ernie had lower mental capabilities than other students because of the way he spoke. It made me wonder if I ever did that unconsciously to any of my students. I am a special education teacher and I do find myself sometimes listening to students and seeing how that work in order to identify who might need help or who doesn’t. I can only hope that I have never judged a student based on his language alone.
I don’t know what Ernie felt was more difficult; learning the language itself, or knowing that this language was the key to any success that he would ever have. All of his college success and all of his job success were direct results of his knowledge of the “Proper English” language. I was shocked to learn that he was arrested for using his native language. To say that he was vulgar or indecent was just an excuse to shut him up. And here it is again, the theme of the first two chapters; when you are different than the norm, you are wrong not matter what your message is.
Overall I think that chapter two had more of an impact on me. I can see where he was oppressed and thought of as unintelligent whereas in Chapter one, Joanne was brought up by her mother and grandmother to speak a certain way was to be smart and accepted and if she spoke her native “dialect” then she was wrong. I hope that as a teacher I never judge a book by its cover or a child by their language.