Quarter 2 Benchmark

" You sound stupid! Use the right grammar; I don't know how you get straight A's. People judge you by how you talk, you know that?"

In my head, I’m saying It’s you and me here mom. Nobody can hear me.

But I whispered “Ok”

I never understood language. We all say the same words. If you understand what I’m saying than, why speak exactly proper? People going judge you anyway. If you really got something wrong with you then you get picked apart piece by piece. “Language is power!” That's what my mother always says. I just thought language is one part of the puzzle to how someone can judge you. Race and language relate in away. A black person talk ignorant it's "normal". A white person talk ignorant, they are considered to be talking "black". A black person talks proper they are consider to be talking "white".

“Hey Guys, how are you?”

“Yo Sarena, You black! Cut that shit out!”

“What? I was serious.”

“Why you talking like you white?”

“I was talking normal, I always talk like this.”

“You irk* Me, I swear!”

Just the thought of getting judged by the way you talk, is mind-boggling. You use language to communicate, if you understand me why should I change the way I talk to you? Now when I approach my friends, I talk to them like I’m from the “street”. I speak differently all the time. Speaking to my friends is totally different from when I speak to a teacher now.

“Yo, Sarena”

“Wassup, what you been up to”

“Chilling you know girl”

When I talk to my teacher we have the same conversation just with different words.

 “Hello.”

*Irk- means annoy

“How have you been Sarena?”

“I have been fine, and you?”

“I have been fine, thank you for asking.”

James Baldwin once said, “What joins all languages, and all men, is the necessity to confront life, in order, not inconceivably, to outwit death.” Meaning the way my friends and me speak is not taught in school. But proper English is. So the way I talk to my friends and to my teacher is totally different. I wonder, do I change my speech for acceptance? Makes me think about my Identity and who I truly am. I told my great grandmother about my thoughts. Here comes the lecture!

“You got two strikes against you. Being black and being a woman. You can give people excuses to bring you down. If you do, they will use it to their advantage."

“But how, Granny?”

“Most white people think that African Americans are stupid and can’t do what they do.”

“But I’m smart period.”

“By not talking proper, dressing right, and looking presentable. They will look at you like the average black woman. When I was growing up, woman cooked and clean. We spoke our proper English down Flordia, no education really. But the white folk just acted and treated us like we were stupid. When we were slaves, they didn’t even look at us like we were humans. I’m 89; African Americans can do so much now. Including getting an education. Don’t mess it up! That’s all I’m saying, baby.”

I nodded in agreement.

I looked into my great grandmothers eyes, and saw how much she cared. She made me realize that it’s not all about language. I had the pieces to the puzzle but it was never coming together. Language, race, environments, and society are all joined together, most of the time. When my grandmother said, “We spoke our proper English down Florida, no education really.” I formed a question, what’s proper English? Maybe that’s not the question, what’s proper English to people? Where you come from can determine how you talk. One area can think a person from a different area is talking incorrectly. So when my mother said " You sound stupid! Use the right grammar, I don't know how you get straight A's.” She was questioning my education, which is what many do. The reason my mother tells me this is because she didn’t teach me to talk that way. The environment I’m in the most is the way I talk, but sometimes when I change my environment I may speak how I do in a total different environment. They tell me to talk “proper” because the way they talk is different or somewhat “correct”. But didn’t someone create English and other languages. Why can’t I create words and language? New words get added to the dictionary everyday. Maybe you have to be a professor to makes words. Words have meaning, vowels, and letters. Easy to make, but why call my words or words that’s not “correct”, slang. Strangely, what they don’t know that I know is, Race, environments, and society makes up the way a person speak. Not how educated you are, and how well you follow the rules of “proper” English.