What's Wrong with Female English Teachers?

Abstract

RECENTLY, WHILE COMPILING A BIBLIOGRAPHY on Black English, I became aware of a startling and disturbing tendency among many linguists who write about the use of Standard English by black students: those authors who most adamantly oppose the forced acquisition of Standard English often make deprecatory and calumnious remarks about female teachers. That is, those who most vehemently voice opposition to what they perceive as racial injustice are often the same ones most inclined to perpetuate prejudice based upon sex. In his now famous article, Bi-Dialectalism: The Linguistics of White Supremacy (English Journal, 58 [1969], 1307-15), James Sledd almost savagely attacks the pretty lady teacher of Standard English whose inability to understand her black victim is so great that she cannot detect the imprecations he utters unless she watches his lips. Sledd further assails this prototypic witch-inteacher's-clothing for her prissy white model sentences and rampant hypocrisy. And in Doublespeak: Dialectology in the Service of Big Brother (College English, 33 [1972], 439-56), he again vilifies female condescending culturevendors and maintains that they are the types young black males hate most. (It is curious that Sledd consistently polarizes the female teacher and the black male student. If he believes that the linguistic tug-of-war is truly of a racial, not sexual, nature, it seems he should consider all black students as victims-not the males only.) J. L. Dillard employs a similar tactic in his book, Black English. In writing about the black tradition of Fancy Talk he says: