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This moment in Black History.
Feb. 8th, 2006 01:48 pmWe the wise-yet-highly-abusive nuns of your all-Black Catholic grade school are going to diligently and throughly teach you the ways, means, and know-how of correct pronunciation, spelling and grammar of the English language. By the time you graduate and enter high school, you will now how to do archaic things such as diagram sentences, understand the proper structure of a paragraph and know how to use parenthetical statements, especially knowing where and when to use them (em dashes and semicolons included).
You will be as educated as our best and brightest people who have graced our inspiration and pride in the annals of African-American history such as Frederick Douglas, Elizabeth Wheatley, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, the Reverend Dr. King, W.E.B. duBois, Mary Bethune, Sojourner Truth and many more who have come before us. Like them, your speaking, reading, and writing skills will be well above and beyond expectations. We do this because we remember that it was once a crime punishable by prison time to even teach an African to comprehend any more than "yes" or "sir".
What we will fail to do is give you one piece of warning, information that may haunt you until your death. We will not warn you that once you speak your well-trained english, not one of you will be taken seriously. This is because there is still a low expectation -- even among our own people -- that you will speak in nothing but slang, speak it poorly and proudly. As a result your commitment to uplift the qualities of our people, you will be shunned, hated, and mocked as "trying to be white".
We will at least tell you that nothing breaks a stereotype faster than achievement and striving to be the cream of the crop. What is also unfortunately true is that this wisdom is largely ignored by the same people who are comfortable in their own ignorance and see your lovely souls as a threat to their own existence.
You will encounter people who will embrace the stereotype by teaching slang as a serious pursuit in schools. Some will even think it is a duty to learn how to speak in this manner as a means to understand Black culture. These people, despite their well-meaning intentions, are wrong. Attitudes such as theirs only set us back.
If even these accusatory fingers point your way, remind them of Maya Angelou, of Langston Hughes, of the eloquence of "Letter from Birmingham Jail".
What of the infamous White Guilt? If that exists any more, it now only does so only to provide a comfortable repast of they who refuse to look into the shadows of themselves, accept their prejudice enough to move on from it.
Forgive us for not fully preparing you for this. We pray you refuse to stray into the depravity of the sluggish, literally slavish embrace of any caricature of what we truly are, human beings capable of the Greatest Things our Creator has given us.
You will be as educated as our best and brightest people who have graced our inspiration and pride in the annals of African-American history such as Frederick Douglas, Elizabeth Wheatley, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, the Reverend Dr. King, W.E.B. duBois, Mary Bethune, Sojourner Truth and many more who have come before us. Like them, your speaking, reading, and writing skills will be well above and beyond expectations. We do this because we remember that it was once a crime punishable by prison time to even teach an African to comprehend any more than "yes" or "sir".
What we will fail to do is give you one piece of warning, information that may haunt you until your death. We will not warn you that once you speak your well-trained english, not one of you will be taken seriously. This is because there is still a low expectation -- even among our own people -- that you will speak in nothing but slang, speak it poorly and proudly. As a result your commitment to uplift the qualities of our people, you will be shunned, hated, and mocked as "trying to be white".
We will at least tell you that nothing breaks a stereotype faster than achievement and striving to be the cream of the crop. What is also unfortunately true is that this wisdom is largely ignored by the same people who are comfortable in their own ignorance and see your lovely souls as a threat to their own existence.
You will encounter people who will embrace the stereotype by teaching slang as a serious pursuit in schools. Some will even think it is a duty to learn how to speak in this manner as a means to understand Black culture. These people, despite their well-meaning intentions, are wrong. Attitudes such as theirs only set us back.
If even these accusatory fingers point your way, remind them of Maya Angelou, of Langston Hughes, of the eloquence of "Letter from Birmingham Jail".
What of the infamous White Guilt? If that exists any more, it now only does so only to provide a comfortable repast of they who refuse to look into the shadows of themselves, accept their prejudice enough to move on from it.
Forgive us for not fully preparing you for this. We pray you refuse to stray into the depravity of the sluggish, literally slavish embrace of any caricature of what we truly are, human beings capable of the Greatest Things our Creator has given us.
