Dismantling anti-black linguistic racism in English language arts classrooms: Toward an anti-racist black language pedagogy

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this article, the author historicizes the argument about Black Language in the classroom to contextualize the contemporary linguistic inequities that Black students experience in English Language Arts (ELA) classroom. Next, the author describes anti-black linguistic racism and interrogates the notion of academic language. Following this, the author provides an ethnographic snapshot that shows how Black students in a ninth grade English Language Arts (ELA) class perceptions of Black Language reflected internalized anti-black linguistic racism. The author offers Anti-Racist Black Language Pedagogy as an approach that English Language Arts teachers can implement in an effort to dismantle anti-black linguistic racism and white cultural and linguistic hegemony in their classrooms using Angie Thomas’ (2017) novel The Hate U Give. The author concludes with thoughts about how an Anti-Racist Black Language pedagogy can help ELA students develop useful critical capacities.