Although this is a teaching writing course, I sometimes can’t help but to view our readings through the lens of a social scientist. I am a Justice Studies major after all. Thus, it was no surprise to me that when I came to the section about Black English Vernacular (BEV), my ears pricked up. Calderonello describes BEV as a dialect spoken by African Americans that has several distinct language characteristics. For instance, BEV may use different verb tenses in the same sentence, or it may drop the s in third person verbs. But no matter how different BEV is from Standard English, the authors stressed, it must not be viewed as “bad English” or “wrong English.”
Yes, I agree with the authors that BEV is not bad or wrong English. What I don't agree with is the name that we have given the this dialect : Black English. Essentially, what we have done is racialized a language dialect that is not based on race. The term "Black English" makes it seem as though all African Americans, and only African Americans, speak this specific dialect. From my experiences growing up in a lower-class, predominantly white neighborhood, I know that people of all races can speak a form of English that this textbook would classify as BEV. It seems that the real determining factor of who speaks BEV is region and economic class rather than race or ethnicity.
Furthermore, the textbook refers to Standard American English as the form of English "used by the educated middle class in the United States and represented in the media and education." As far as i know, the majority of middle class Americans are white, and the vast majority of the media is owned by whites. So why isn't Standard English called "White English?" Just a little food for thought.
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