Podcasts about black english

A proposal in California is drawing national attention after educators introduced Black English lessons for K-12 students. Supporters argue the curriculum recognizes linguistic diversity and improves educational outcomes, while critics question its impact on academic standards and classroom instruction.

You’re listening to American Ground Radio with Stephen Parr and Louis R. Avallone. This is the full show for July 10, 2026. We open with a Senate map conversation nobody on the left wants to have — Democrats need to win every single toss-up race in November to take control of the chamber, while Republicans need only one. We walk through the Cook Political Report and Sabato's Crystal Ball projections, the four toss-up races that will decide everything — Alaska, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and North Carolina — and why Republican overconfidence is still premature even with the structural advantage. We also explain why Graham Plattner's implosion in Maine may not be the gift Republicans assumed it was, why Roy Cooper is very likely to pick up North Carolina, and why Ken Paxton is making a race in Texas far closer than it has any business being. In our Top 3 Things You Need to Know, President Trump refused to sign the bipartisan housing bill — saying he won't put pen to paper until Congress passes the SAVE Act — but the bill will become law without his signature anyway, and House Republicans plan to celebrate its passage regardless. Then Trump fired the remaining members of the Election Assistance Commission, citing the Seila Law decision as precedent and issuing a statement that the president reserves the right to remove individuals not fully aligned with the task of securing America's elections. And eight men from across the country — Ohio, Nebraska, Missouri, Washington, California, and West Virginia — have been indicted for plotting a drone and sniper attack on the UFC fight at the White House lawn, with all eight now arrested and facing life in prison. We also cover Joy Behar warning that President Trump is practically destroying democracy — and we note that the one place in America where a democratic election result was genuinely made null and void was the 2024 Democratic presidential primary, where Kamala Harris never won a single vote outside the convention floor. The Democrat Party is the party of projection. Whatever they accuse you of doing, they have already done. Our American Mamas Teri Netterville and Kimberly Burleson answer a listener question about Type 1 and Type 2 fun — and the conversation becomes a beautiful tribute to feral childhood. Type 1 fun is a roller coaster — thrilling in the moment, forgotten by morning. Type 2 fun is hiking in sleet, throwing rocks at alligators on the bayou, going off into the woods alone for hours while your parents had absolutely no idea where you were. The kind of fun that shapes you, scares you, and becomes the story you're still telling at 50. Teri and Kimberly worry that today's children — tracked by phones, sheltered from consequence, raised on Dateline — are growing up on Type 1 fun and missing the Type 2 experiences that built the people they became. We dig deep into California's 2022 decision to decriminalize loitering with intent to commit prostitution — signed by Governor Newsom on the grounds that 56% of those arrested were Black women, making it, in his telling, a racist law. The results, documented by City Journal and investigative journalist Abigail Schreier, are exactly what common sense predicted. Prostitution spiked immediately. Human trafficking followed. LAPD officers at the 77th Street Station rescued 123 children in 2024 — nearly eight times the number rescued in 2022, the year before the law took effect. Police now report seeing 14-year-old girls in G-strings on Los Angeles streets and having no legal authority to intervene. We make the case plainly: the left is not trying to reduce crime. It is trying to reduce the number of people arrested for crime. Those are not the same thing — and the difference is being paid for by the most vulnerable people on the streets. We also revisit a 1950 speech by Joseph McCarthy — and note that whatever his excesses, his core distinction holds up: there have always been two kinds of Democrats, the millions of loyal Americans who vote the ticket and want safe neighborhoods and stable jobs, and a small activist class that has been dragging the party toward something that looks less like democratic socialism and more like the thing McCarthy was warning about. The question in 2026 is whether that activist class is still the minority. Then it's Fake News Friday — including a California HOA fining residents for flying the American flag, activists pushing schools to teach Black English and girl math, Adam Sandler officiating Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's wedding, a BB gun attack on a mosque that turned out to be carried out by a Muslim man, Iran threatening to kill President Trump at Khomeini's funeral, a new Broadway musical called Dolly about Dolly Parton, and CNN airing a quote from a fake congressman who runs a parody account. Justin Trudeau is now a backup dancer in a Katy Perry video. Spoilet Alert: that one's real. For our Bright Spot, weekly unemployment claims came in at 215,000 — with the January through July average of 213,000 representing the lowest sustained jobless claim numbers since 1968 and 1969, when the country had a third fewer people and the Vietnam draft was pulling hundreds of thousands of men out of the civilian workforce. We call it what it is — a labor market that is outperforming history in a country that was told it couldn't. And we close with words of wisdom on patriotism — from Calvin Coolidge, Edward Abbey, Adlai Stevenson, and Charles de Gaulle. You've got to love your country enough to tell the truth about it, defend it when it's right, and fight to make it better. May your pursuit of happiness bring you joy. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, visit AmericanGroundRadio.com, and join the conversation at 866-AGR-1776!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Flock camera helped police identify the wrong woman. She needed her own cameras to prove the government was wrong. In this Dumb Bleep of the Week, Nate and Chuck examine Flock surveillance cameras, license-plate tracking, police certainty, and the growing infrastructure of the surveillance state. They also react to a city official discussing AI-equipped trash trucks that could scan homes for broken windows, bad roofs, and unpermitted remodeling. Zoran Mamdani invokes Friedrich Hayek while blaming capitalists for New York City's problems. The guys break down rent control, regulation, taxation, socialism, Austrian economics, and why government interference keeps getting mislabeled as free-market failure. Also covered: offensive-speech tickets, Mitch McConnell's hospital stay, congressional age, the 17th Amendment, Scott Jennings' circular Israel argument, Trump's "Freedom Fuel," Black English in California preschools, and US Soccer's equal-prize-money policy. Chapters 00:00 Dumb Bleep of the Week begins 02:00 Mamdani invokes Hayek 12:15 Flock cameras and false certainty 27:15 Ticketed for offensive speech? 29:15 Mitch McConnell and Congress's age problem 34:45 The case against the 17th Amendment 36:45 Israel and circular logic 41:00 "Freedom Fuel" and the gas-price victory lap 47:00 Black English in California preschools 55:00 US Soccer and equal-prize-money economics Links Watch All Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi78svKlBr_8o0dDOX8DxO_Wwxu6WYhhA Watch Host Favorites: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLi78svKlBr__Zu40RL7mWxCuOOe54zgy2 Join the Fed Haters Club @ https://www.goodmorningliberty.us/fedhatersclub Join GML: https://joingml.com All links @ https://gml.bio.link Subscribe for more Good Morning Liberty. Like the video, tell us which dumb bleep should win, and share it with someone who still thinks more cameras automatically mean more safety. Podcast listeners can help by leaving a rating and review.

Wild new evidence involving Tyler Robinson's "furry" boyfriend Lance Twiggs was shared in the Charlie Kirk assassination trial. The Media is desperately trying to save face in the fallout of the Graham Platner disaster. RNC Chairman Joe Gruters believes the "GOP Midterm Convention" will be essential for party unity. Woke activists in California are trying to have "Black English" taught in pre-schools.   LIVE CALLS: 631-527-4545   Join UNGOVERNED on LFA TV LIVE every MONDAY - FRIDAY from 10am to 11am EASTERN!    www.FarashMedia.com www.LFATV.us www.OFPFarms.com https://www.SLNT.com/SHAWN  https://www.CovePure.com/SHAWN  

A group of prominent black activists are calling on California to teach preschoolers how to speak "Black English." The activists say they don't want their children talking like white people. They say cultural linguistics make it appropriate for black children to "axe" questions and to use words like "finna do something" or "how you be?" Sounds like they want to create a modern-day Tower of Babel. Be sure to click here to get a copy of my new book, "The Golden Age: How Trump Saved America."See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Morning XTRA with Tug and Los delivers conservative talk on the biggest political, cultural, and news stories of the day. Smart analysis, unapologetic opinions, and real conversations every weekday morning. Every weekday from 6a to 10a! The 6 o'clock hour is brought to you by Subaru of Gwinnett Graham Platner is out in Maine / Trump at the NATO Summit They now want to teach “Black English” in schools Atlanta's ONLY All Conservative News & Talk Station.: https://www.xtra1063.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In part one of Red Eye Radio with Gary McNamara and Eric Harley, Marconi award winning talk show host Dan Mandis fills in for the guys this week and we begin by discussing Iran. U.S. Central Command on Tuesday said American forces had begun launching “powerful strikes” against Iran in response to attacks on three commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Three commercial vessels were struck by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz between Monday and Tuesday, prompting the U.S. to claw back oil sanctions waivers offered to Tehran. Also woke activists want to teach "Black English" to California students / audio from Jasmine Crockett comparing her "professional" narrative versus her "Ebonics" street talk / an update on an ailing Senator Mitch McConnell / new federal rules sharply cap graduate student loans, ending the ability to borrow the full cost of tuition and living expenses for many degrees / and the Trump Accounts take effect. For more talk on the issues that matter to you, listen on radio stations across America Monday-Friday 12am-5am CT (1am-6am ET and 10pm-3am PT), download the RED EYE RADIO SHOW app, asking your smart speaker, or listening at RedEyeRadioShow.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dan is joined by Brian Wilson to hit a few topics, and then he wonders why someone would want to teach "black english" in schools | aired on Wednesday, July 8th, 2026 on Nashville's Morning News with Dan Mandis Produced by Samuel RutherfordSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Black English is older than America herself. The language is rooted in African American history and has become ubiquitous on social media and pop culture, yet it hasn't been embraced in the classroom. But one Bay Area woman wants to legitimize Black English starting in the early years. Reporter: Daisy Nguyen, KQED Salinas is temporarily putting the brakes on new tobacco retailers. The move comes as city leaders consider stricter rules to prevent children from accessing tobacco products. Reporter: Gabriela Fernandez, KCBX Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Last Dekrepitzer follows the life and spiritual quest of Shmuel Meir Lichtbencher a/k/a Sam Lightup, from his isolated shtetl in the mountains of southern Poland, where he is brought up to be the future rebbe, to the wharves in Naples, where he jams with Black soldiers waiting to ship home at the end of the war. Dressing him in the uniform and dog tags of an AWOL soldier, they smuggle him home to rural Mississippi. He lives for years among Blacks, speaks Black English, preaches and plays the blues with the Brown Sugar Ramblers trio. His marriage to a Black woman, Lula Curtin, results in a cross burning that forces them to flee to Manhattan. He plays on the streets of Harlem and Midtown with the Reverend Gary Davis, the great blind guitarist whose mission is saving souls for the next world. Through it all, Shmuel Meir fiddles his prayers in defiance of God. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

The Last Dekrepitzer follows the life and spiritual quest of Shmuel Meir Lichtbencher a/k/a Sam Lightup, from his isolated shtetl in the mountains of southern Poland, where he is brought up to be the future rebbe, to the wharves in Naples, where he jams with Black soldiers waiting to ship home at the end of the war. Dressing him in the uniform and dog tags of an AWOL soldier, they smuggle him home to rural Mississippi. He lives for years among Blacks, speaks Black English, preaches and plays the blues with the Brown Sugar Ramblers trio. His marriage to a Black woman, Lula Curtin, results in a cross burning that forces them to flee to Manhattan. He plays on the streets of Harlem and Midtown with the Reverend Gary Davis, the great blind guitarist whose mission is saving souls for the next world. Through it all, Shmuel Meir fiddles his prayers in defiance of God. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In this episode, you're getting a preview of the types of conversations happening with educators in our bonus subscription episodes.   This month, Shannon and Mary chat with Dr. Jasmine Rogers, a reading specialist and college educator, about her dual roles in literacy.   Dr. Rogers discusses her research on African American English (AAE) and structured literacy, emphasizing the importance of affirming behaviors in promoting student motivation and effective communication. Drawing on personal experiences and professional expertise, she emphasizes the importance of affirming diverse dialects, including Black English, and fostering an inclusive and supportive classroom environment. The episode also covers translanguaging and strategies for teachers to support multilingual students, highlighting the significance of creating a positive, inclusive, and affirming classroom environment.  Tune in to learn more about effective teaching practices, the science of reading, and how teachers can better support students from diverse linguistic backgrounds.0:00 Welcome to the Reading Teacher Lounge01:09 Introducing Dr. Jasmine Rogers02:37 Understanding Black Language in Education04:34 Research on Affirming Student Language07:32 The Importance of Cultural Awareness in Teaching13:55 Personal Experiences and Reflections15:48 Journey into Structured Literacy17:37 Merging Identity with Teaching Practices22:14 Reflecting on Teaching Practices23:03 The Power of Translanguaging24:57 Effective Communication Techniques26:55 Building Positive Classroom Environments30:04 Supporting Teachers and Students31:29 The Importance of Authenticity in Teaching32:59 Insights from Research36:12 Morphology and Language Learning39:50 Final Thoughts and FarewellsRESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE EPISODEDr. Jasmine's websiteConnect with Dr. Jasmine Rogers through her websiteConnect with Dr. Jasmine Rogers through LinkedIn44 Phonemes Video from RRFTS (Rollins Center for Language and Literacy)DC Public Schools Reading ClinicFrayer ModelStrive for Five Conversations by Tricia Zucker and Sonia Cabell *Amazon affiliate linkEducation Week:  What is Translanguaging and How Is it Used in the Classroom?Buy us a coffeeGet a FREE Green Chef box with our linkBonus Episodes access through your podcast appBonus episodes access through PatreonFree Rubrics Guide created by usFinding Good Books Guide created by usSupport the showGet Literacy Support through our Patreon

Returning as the primary hosts of Lexicon Valley, Mike Vuolo and Bob Garfield speak to John McWhorter about understatement and hyperbole in Black English. Twitter: @lexiconvalleyFacebook: facebook.com/LexiconValleyWebsite: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley

In her debut poetry collection, What Had Happened Was, Therí Alyce Pickens investigates the complex structures of Black storytelling. Addressing topics ranging from Black life, popular culture, and history to individual encounters with emotion, love, and chronic disability, Pickens crafts and questions the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and who we want to be. Throughout, Pickens mines the formal structures and the play of Black English within the lives and afterlives of Harriet Tubman, Mary J. Blige, Lil' Kim, Breonna Taylor, and figments of our collective imagination. Her singular poetic voice effortlessly flows between what she knows and what she's heard and between everyday Black conversation and her work in cultural criticism and disability studies. Traveling at the speed of thought, Pickens explores a praxis of storytelling governed by the places where truths and fables kiss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

In her debut poetry collection, What Had Happened Was, Therí Alyce Pickens investigates the complex structures of Black storytelling. Addressing topics ranging from Black life, popular culture, and history to individual encounters with emotion, love, and chronic disability, Pickens crafts and questions the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and who we want to be. Throughout, Pickens mines the formal structures and the play of Black English within the lives and afterlives of Harriet Tubman, Mary J. Blige, Lil' Kim, Breonna Taylor, and figments of our collective imagination. Her singular poetic voice effortlessly flows between what she knows and what she's heard and between everyday Black conversation and her work in cultural criticism and disability studies. Traveling at the speed of thought, Pickens explores a praxis of storytelling governed by the places where truths and fables kiss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature

In her debut poetry collection, What Had Happened Was, Therí Alyce Pickens investigates the complex structures of Black storytelling. Addressing topics ranging from Black life, popular culture, and history to individual encounters with emotion, love, and chronic disability, Pickens crafts and questions the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and who we want to be. Throughout, Pickens mines the formal structures and the play of Black English within the lives and afterlives of Harriet Tubman, Mary J. Blige, Lil' Kim, Breonna Taylor, and figments of our collective imagination. Her singular poetic voice effortlessly flows between what she knows and what she's heard and between everyday Black conversation and her work in cultural criticism and disability studies. Traveling at the speed of thought, Pickens explores a praxis of storytelling governed by the places where truths and fables kiss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/poetry

In this episode of BTL, we will talk about Black Music, Black English, and grammar. Did you know that Standard American English is different from AAVE? Well, Singers like Tupac and Erykah Badu put that into practice. Let's check some of them and understand the nuances of my favorite variety of English.Pronunciation Mastershttps://go.hotmart.com/E74795312J English in Brazil Plushttps://go.hotmart.com/T70926592F SOS Viagemhttps://go.hotmart.com/I86476193C?ap=69e6

The Tampa City Council announced Tuesday morning that Henderson died at her home of natural causes overnight. Henderson was an educator and bookstore owner. And in this episode, we're revisiting Florida Matters host Matthew Peddie's conversation with Henderson last year at Black English, the store in Tampa Heights that she ran with her daughter, Ariel. When they sat down to chat, the bookstore had been open for just a few months. And Henderson was not even a year into her role as a councilwoman. They talked about her entry to politics after a long career as an educator, and pushing back with her bookstore as the state of Florida changed its Black History curriculum and pulled books from library shelves and school classrooms. 

The Tampa City Council announced Tuesday morning that Henderson died at her home of natural causes overnight. Henderson was an educator and bookstore owner. And in this episode, we're revisiting Florida Matters host Matthew Peddie's conversation with Henderson last year at Black English, the store in Tampa Heights that she ran with her daughter, Ariel. When they sat down to chat, the bookstore had been open for just a few months. And Henderson was not even a year into her role as a councilwoman. They talked about her entry to politics after a long career as an educator, and pushing back with her bookstore as the state of Florida changed its Black History curriculum and pulled books from library shelves and school classrooms. 

This edWeb podcast is co-hosted by CORE Learning and The Reading LeagueYou can access the webinar recording here.Black English is a linguistically rich and rule-governed language, yet traditional reading instruction often overlooks or even works against it. How can educators teach reading in a way that builds strong literacy skills without disregarding the language students bring to the classroom?This fourth edWeb podcast of the Structured Literacy for Every Learner Summit explores how Structured Literacy provides explicit instruction while affirming Black English as a legitimate and valuable language. Experts share evidence-based approaches to teaching foundational skills without treating Black English as a deficit. Listeners learn:How Black English and literacy development intersectWhat evidence says about teaching reading in ways that respect linguistic identityHow to create affirming classrooms where Black English speakers feel valued and supportedK-12 educators and administrators will walk away with a deeper understanding of how to honor students' language while helping them grow as confident readers.This edWeb podcast is part of the Structured Literacy for Every Learner Summit.CORE LearningTransform teaching and learning so that every student thrives.Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Learn more about viewing live edWeb presentations and on-demand recordings, earning CE certificates, and using accessibility features.

This edWeb podcast is sponsored by CORE Learning.The webinar recording can be accessed here.Too often, Black Language is treated as something to “correct” rather than recognized as a legitimate language system with its own rules, grammar, and structure. This mindset reflects deeply ingrained beliefs and attitudes that not only undermine students' linguistic heritage but also limit the effectiveness of structured literacy by overlooking the linguistic strengths Black Language-speaking students bring to their learning.In this third session of CORE Learning's Structured Literacy and Language Diversity Week: Fall ‘24 Series, Dr. Jasmine Rogers—a leading expert on Black Language and the Science of Reading—explains how even a few hours of instruction on Black English can help teachers recognize unconscious bias and enhance structured literacy instruction. Drawing from her classroom experience and research, she challenges the outdated belief that Black English hinders academic success and demonstrates how affirming it as an asset enables students to build on their knowledge, boosting literacy skills and confidence.By listening to this edWeb podcast, you gain evidence-based instructional practices that empower you to:Reflect on and adjust your beliefs and attitudes toward Black LanguageSupport Black Language-speaking students by leveraging their linguistic strengthsAddress unconscious bias to foster a more inclusive classroom environmentMake your literacy instruction more reflective of students' lived experiencesLearn how even small shifts in your beliefs, attitudes, and literacy approach can lead to meaningful improvements. This edWeb podcast is of interest to K-12 teachers, librarians, school leaders, district leaders, and education technology leaders.CORE LearningTransform teaching and learning so that every student thrives.Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.Learn more about viewing live edWeb presentations and on-demand recordings, earning CE certificates, and using accessibility features.

A good honest conversation never hurt anyone!! Fols Forever, Mr Vans & Chrissy are back for another week of podding! On the agenda……

Neste episódio do Speaking in Brazil, falamos sobre os segredos por trás da habilidade fenomenal do tecahre Rodrigo Honorato em imitar uma ampla gama de sotaques em inglês e português. Com foco na importância da pronúncia compreensível, Rodrigo compartilha sua jornada e os desafios enfrentados ao longo do caminho. Além disso, dá uma verdadeira aula sobre o mundo do "Black English", comparando-o com o inglês padrão. Falamos sobre questões sensíveis, como o uso da "n word" e expressões populares como "ain't" e "imma". Com recomendações de filmes e músicas para impulsionar seu aprendizado, esta entrevista é um tesouro de conhecimento para aspirantes a poliglotas. Check it out! Saiba mais sobre o English in Brazil: https://eibrazil.com/linkdabio

There are countless English varieties in the U.S. There's Boston English and California English and Texas English. There's Black English and Chicano English. There's standard academic, or white, English. They're all the same language, but linguistically, they're different."Standard academic English is most represented by affluent white males from the Midwest, specifically Ohio in the mid-20th century," says UC Berkeley sociolinguist Justin Davidson. "If you grow up in this country and your English is further away from that variety, then you may encounter instances where the way you speak is judged as less OK, less intelligent, less academically sound."And this language bias and divide can have devastating consequences, as it did in the trial of George Zimmerman, who killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012. This is the second episode of a three-part series with Davidson about language in the U.S. Listen to the first episode: "A linguist's quest to legitimize U.S. Spanish."Listen to the episode and read the transcript on Berkeley News (news.berkeley.edu/podcasts).Music by Blue Dot Sessions.AP photo by Jacob Langston. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

As Florida changed its Black history curriculum and removed books from public schools… first-time Tampa city councilwoman Gwen Henderson pushed back and opened a bookstore. Florida Matters visited Henderson at the bookstore she runs in Tampa Heights with her daughter Ariel. It's called “Black English.” Henderson, who wears a ball cap covered in buttons- Delta Sigma Theta sorority, Florida A&M University and others, says her mission is to elevate books by Black authors, especially graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs. We sat down to talk about being an educator, books, politics and her priorities for the district she represents.

As Florida changed its Black history curriculum and removed books from public schools… first-time Tampa city councilwoman Gwen Henderson pushed back and opened a bookstore. Florida Matters visited Henderson at the bookstore she runs in Tampa Heights with her daughter Ariel. It's called “Black English.” Henderson, who wears a ball cap covered in buttons- Delta Sigma Theta sorority, Florida A&M University and others, says her mission is to elevate books by Black authors, especially graduates of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, or HBCUs. We sat down to talk about being an educator, books, politics and her priorities for the district she represents.

This week, we talk with two Black women who are leaders in the community and who have each taken a different approach to politics. Former State Senator Arthenia Joyner was the first Black woman to serve as Senate Minority leader in the Florida legislature. We'll hear from her later in the program. And long time educator Gwen Henderson is a first time Tampa City Council member and owner of Black English bookstore in Tampa Heights, which she opened last December. We visited Black English bookstore to talk with Henderson about being an educator, books, politics and her priorities for the district she represents. Later in the program, we sit down with Joyner for a conversation about politics, civil rights, and her trailblazing career as a lawyer and state lawmaker.

This week, we talk with two Black women who are leaders in the community and who have each taken a different approach to politics. Former State Senator Arthenia Joyner was the first Black woman to serve as Senate Minority leader in the Florida legislature. We'll hear from her later in the program. And long time educator Gwen Henderson is a first time Tampa City Council member and owner of Black English bookstore in Tampa Heights, which she opened last December. We visited Black English bookstore to talk with Henderson about being an educator, books, politics and her priorities for the district she represents. Later in the program, we sit down with Joyner for a conversation about politics, civil rights, and her trailblazing career as a lawyer and state lawmaker.

In this thought-provoking conversation, we are joined by the remarkable Shawna Coppola, the author of "Literacy for All: A Framework for Anti-Oppressive Teaching". Shawna is a seasoned expert in the field of child and adolescent literacy, ready to challenge our conventional understanding of literacy practices. Shawna will take us on a journey beyond the confining norms of the current literacy discourse, which is too often limited to white mainstream perspectives, to uncover the vast dimensions of literacy that include non-written texts and are deeply influenced by social and cultural contexts. As our discussion unfolds, Shawna will shed light on the perils of overlooking the diversity of language and literacy practices—emphasizing how standardized tests like Dibbles can inequitably impact students who speak in dialects such as Black English. We'll delve into the necessity of implementing anti-oppressive literacy frameworks that truly reflect the varying student populations within our schools. Join us as we explore with Shawna the powerful intersection of literacy and identity, sharing personal anecdotes and illuminating the real-life repercussions of data that doesn't capture the intricacies of our students' skills and experiences. Plus, we'll hear Shawna's own educational journey and the ongoing learning that shapes her work, along with an invitation to connect and learn more about her new book, "Literacy for All." You're in for a session full of insight, so prepare to be inspired and challenged as we discuss how to move towards a more inclusive, supportive, and comprehensive literacy education. Grab your notebooks, listeners, it's time to turn the page to a new chapter in egalitarian education. Welcome to Our Classroom! Shawna Coppola, M. Ed. Reading, is an expert in child and adolescent literacy, including practices that support a diverse range of writing and writers. An educator for over twenty years, Shawna has worked as a middle school language arts teacher, a children's librarian, and a K-6 literacy specialist/coach. In addition to working with students, Shawna has led courses and workshops for K-12 educators through the University of New Hampshire's NH Literacy Institutes as well as their Professional Development and Training program and has spoken at a variety of local, regional, and national conferences.

THE TEN MINUTE FORTNIGHT: Andy becomes a Middlesex member, and Toby finds himself hopelessly out of his depth "We have a running joke that our shirts are our best player. This has come back to bite us in the arse: bonus points for wearing the same shirt got us promoted up a division." FROM THE ARCHIVES (11'10): The One Ball Walkout: Transvaal vs the Rest of South Africa, 3 April 1971 "We create so many assorted reasons for play to stop, that you do become slightly immune as a spectator..." THE REVIEW (20'35): You Guys are History: The Story of England's Black Cricketers (2021) "Phil DeFreitas talks about getting ready to bowl and thinking about the sniper threatened by The National Front." Recorded 10 December 2023

In Episode 51, we discuss Black American English, also known as AAVE, as a way to consider some of the differences between identitarian and identity politics approaches. Black American English is minority dialect in the United States of America. The identitarian approach to protecting Black American English typically involves appropriation discourse and the restriction of who can use Black American English on the basis of racial idenity. We offer another approach, one based in identity politics, which treats Black American English as a minority language deserving of legal protection and recognition. This approach does not restrict who can learn or speak Black American English, but does insist there are correct and incorrect ways to speak it, and, more importantly, focuses on the rights of native Black American English speakers, regardless of racial identity.    SHOW NOTES: Could Black English Mean a Prison Sentence? by John McWhorter: "An upcoming study in the linguistics journal Language found that 27 Philadelphia [court] stenographers, presented with recordings of Black English grammatical patterns, made transcription errors on average in two out of every five sentences, and could accurately paraphrase only one in three sentences." Lexicon Valley with John McWhorter: Black Like Us Lexicon Valley with John McWhorter: What Had Happened Was Storytelling Lexicon Valley with John McWhorter: White Author, Black English. Problem? Quebec's Charter of the French Language Aboriginal Language Knowledge and Youth Suicide: "Youth suicide rates effectively dropped to zero in those few communities in which at least half the band members reported a conversational knowledge of their own Native language." Indigenous Language Organizations and Initiatives   Follow Fucking Cancelled on Patreon & Instagram. Find merch on our BigCartel. Also check out Clementine's website and Jay's website. Theme song by ST x LIAM. Mixing and editing by Charlotte Dora. Free transcripts are added on Patreon as they become available.

In this episode, we will talk about movies that have taught me a plethora of things that have really made a difference in my career and also in my learning process. I will never say I learned English because I am not done yet. So, I'd rather say: I have been learning English because this is work in progress. So, are you ready to find out what movies y'all should watch to learn more about Black English?

Show notes:  Dionne Draper and Lisa Marie-Simmons bring you DAWTA The Podcast, Episode 3 with a special focus on the Black, Male TRA (Transracial Adoptee) experience and a wider focus on Black, Male Mental Health.  Robert Lewtas is a transracial adoptee living in London and works as an accountant for a large theatre producer. He is a proud father who identifies as Black English..though others might disagree! Michael Earle is an award winning wellbeing consultant, international speaker, mental health practitioner and certified Nordic Walking instructor. He lives in Bristol with his wife Joanne. Michael is a great advocate of self-care, and his mission is to inspire people to make their well-being a non-negotiable priority. SPECIAL OFFER!! Michael is offering the first three people that email him after  listening  to the episode a free thirty minute wellbeing check-up call. Research - Journal of social distress and the homeless, Vol. 0 No. 0, Month, 2015, 1–16 The emotional labor of playing cool: How Black male transracial adoptees find ways to cope within predominantly White settings. Darron T. Smith:The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, USA  Ghost Kingdom - Coined by Betty Jean Lipton, an influential psychologist who specializes in adoption therapy and fought for adoption reform, the Ghost Kingdom refers to the hypothetical world adoptees enter when imagining their birth relatives. Different Strokes: Info found at https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077003/ Please remember to SHARE, comment, like and give 5 stars. 5 star ratings are essential to raise the profile of the podcast, get it heard and recognised.

While working with students, one educator came to a realization that put her on a path to fascinating research in the Science of Reading. In this episode, Jasmine Rogers—manager and coach with the In Schools program at the DC Reading Clinic and an early literacy intervention lead at American University—shares her story and delves into her research on dialects and best practices for structured literacy instruction. She discusses Black language and how it connects with the language comprehension strand of Scarborough's Reading Rope. Jasmine also offers recommendations for classroom teachers who have bidialectal students.Show notes:DC Reading ClinicS1-22: Success using the Science of Reading: Mary ClaymanJasmine Rogers - Linkedin S4-07: Linguistic Variety and Dialects: Difference, not error: Julie Washington“Teaching Reading to African American Children,” by Julie A. Washington and Mark S. Seidenberg“Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy,” by April Baker-Bell“An Informed Lens on African American English,” by Megan-Brette Hamilton“Multilingualism and Codeswitching in Education,” by Nkonko M. KamwangamaluQuotes:“As a teacher, a Black woman, who speaks Black English, who knows the language, who is very well versed in structured literacy, if I overlooked this, if that caught me off guard a little bit, then that means that could potentially catch someone else off guard.” —Jasmine Rogers“With language comprehension, and considering in your native language, there may be a word that doesn't necessarily match up with a language that you are learning in the classroom. So you have to then use your incredible cognitive skills that speak two completely different codes, comprehend what is happening, and then tie that back into, of course, the Rope to become a fluent reader.” —Jasmine Rogers“I consider Black English to be a very complex and complicated language…but I think typically in society it has been viewed very negatively. You can see in the media and in research where people have talked about it and used negative connotations. And I think those beliefs from society have seeped into the classroom.” —Jasmine Rogers“A strength of children that are bidialectal is the similar strength to students that are bilingual—they have an ability to take language that is different from theirs and translate it. That right there is an asset.” —Jasmine Rogers“The languages that we speak and bring from home also are not wrong. They're simply different. And we're gonna work together so that we take what we know differently and come together with a common language so that we're communicating with one another.” —Jasmine Rogers“We have got to give our students access to this code so that they can become literate and run our society one day.” —Jasmine Rogers

If you want to know where African American English is headed, listen to Shondel Nero. Shondel was born in the Caribbean nation of Guyana where she code-switched between Guyana Creolese and colonial British English. As a young adult she moved to North America, eventually settling in New York City where she became a professor of language education at NYU. Shondel tells guest host Ciku Theuri that the various versions of English spoken by Black immigrants are rubbing off on Black American speech. Aided by the likes of TikTok, African American English is now going through a period of rapid change. Music in this episode by HATAMITSUNAMI, Matt Large, Rocket Jr., and Osoku. More about Shondel Nero here. The photo of Shondel was taken at Kaieteur Falls, the world's largest single drop waterfall located deep in the rainforest of her native Guyana. Read a transcript of the episode here. And sign up for Subtitle's newsletter here.

If you want to know where African American English is headed, listen to Shondel Nero. Shondel was born in the Caribbean nation of Guyana where she code-switched between Guyana Creolese and colonial British English. As a young adult she moved to North America, eventually settling in New York City where she became a professor of language education at NYU. Shondel tells guest host Ciku Theuri that the various versions of English spoken by Black immigrants are rubbing off on Black American speech. Aided by the likes of TikTok, African American English is now going through a period of rapid change. Music in this episode by HATAMITSUNAMI, Matt Large, Rocket Jr., and Osoku. More about Shondel Nero here. The photo of Shondel was taken at Kaieteur Falls, the world's largest single drop waterfall located deep in the rainforest of her native Guyana. Read a transcript of the episode here. And sign up for Subtitle's newsletter here.

John Hamilton McWhorter V is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University with a specialty in creole languages, sociolects, and Black English. McWhorter is also a major pundit on social issues, and currently a columnist for the New York Times. Our conversation is as much about the use of the language we use to exchange ideas, as about the ideas themselves. McWhorter is the author of more than twenty books including Woke Racism, The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language, Losing the Race: Self Sabotage in Black America and Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold History of English. In 2016 he published Words on the Move: Why English Won't - and Can't - Sit Still (Like, Literally). He has written for many publications including The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic, The Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker and CNN. You can find John McWhorter on Twitter: @JohnHMcWhorter

Hoje vamos falar sobre um tema riquíssimo e pouco conhecido. O African American Vernacular English (AAVE), também conhecido como “Black English”. Instagram do Rodrigo: https://www.instagram.com/teacher.rodrigohonorato/

Language has power. This was a hard-earned lesson for Vivian Nixon and Elaine Richardson, two women who were told all their lives that their way of talking – talking Black – was something to be kept out of public and professional spaces. This episode follows their separate journeys to embrace the history, beauty, and breadth of Black English, and liberate long-buried parts of themselves in the process.

Language has power. This was a hard-earned lesson for Vivian Nixon and Elaine Richardson, two women who were told all their lives that their way of talking – talking Black – was something to be kept out of public and professional spaces. This episode follows their separate journeys to embrace the history, beauty, and breadth of Black English, and liberate long-buried parts of themselves in the process.

Language has power. This was a hard-earned lesson for Vivian Nixon and Elaine Richardson, two women who were told all their lives that their way of talking – talking Black – was something to be kept out of public and professional spaces. This episode follows their separate journeys to embrace the history, beauty, and breadth of Black English, and liberate long-buried parts of themselves in the process.

Language has power. This was a hard-earned lesson for Vivian Nixon and Elaine Richardson, two women who were told all their lives that their way of talking – talking Black – was something to be kept out of public and professional spaces. This episode follows their separate journeys to embrace the history, beauty, and breadth of Black English, and liberate long-buried parts of themselves in the process.

In this episode of The Life Teacher Podcast, Hector welcomes Dr. Garrard McClendon. In 2004, Dr. McClendon wrote a book titled, "Ax Or Ask? The African American Guide to Better English" The book explores how Blacks can improve their speaking and writing skills, avoiding educational and occupational exclusion and exploitation. According the book's synopsis, it "increases awareness, improves student achievement, and provides advocacy for those wanting to speak mainstream English. A job opportunity can be won or lost by the words one chooses." Hector Suco and Dr. McClendon have a unique conversation about what language is, what seems appropriate, why people judge each other, and most importantly, how we can be better.

Too fly. Fire. Dope. So much of American expression comes straight from Black English, a.k.a. African American Vernacular English. But you won't find this colorful and dynamic language taught in schools. Ohio State education researchers say Black students need their language heritage to finally be validated.    View transcript   X - 2018 Kendrick Lamar (featuring ScHoolboy Q, 2 Chainz & Saudi); TikTok audio - cstreetblvd; Wade in the Water - 2002, Blind Boys of Alabama; Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (ODEI) at Grand Rapids Community College; We Must Learn - 1989 KRS-One/Boogie Down Productions 'Ghetto Music: The Blueprint of Hip Hop'; Thieves in the Night - 1998, Mos Def & Talib Kweli, Black Star

What does it mean to be woke? Has the word problematic become problematic? Lexicon Valley’s John McWhorter talks to Amna Khalid about the fraught vocabulary of modern censorship. * FULL TRANSCRIPT *AMNA KHALID: From Booksmart Studios, this is Banished. And I’m Amna Khalid.NEWSCASTER: Republicans are always denouncing so-called “cancel culture.”BBC GUEST 1: I think that nobody should lose their job because of what they believe in. I think that’s the issue—BBC GUEST 2: —but that’s what “cancel culture” is!POLITICIAN: “Cancel culture” is eroding the very foundation of who we are as an American people.NEWSCASTER 1: He’s woke.NEWSCASTER 2: I’m woke.NEWSCASTER 3: Now you’re woke but you’re like me woke!NEWSCASTER 2: I’m woke to the woke.FOX NEWS GUEST: So we’re woke, and we have to say woke.NEWSCASTER: Wait, so we’re both woke? You and I are both woke?FOX NEWS GUEST: Yeah, I think we’re woke!NEWSCASTER: Who’s the woker of the two, would you say?AK: “Woke” and “cancel culture” are now two terms that are now so much a part of our consciousness, that it feels like they’ve been around forever. But the reality is that they exploded only a few years ago. Like many of our most fraught cultural terms, they evolved over time, jumping from one community to another, shifting slightly in meaning or nuance. Along the way, they get weaponized, fall in and out of favor and even get canceled themselves — in other words, they are linguistically fascinating.Who better to dig into the lexicon of Banished, than John McWhorter, the host of Lexicon Valley here on Booksmart Studios, and an esteemed professor of linguistics at Columbia University. If you’ve never heard his show, it’s an endlessly entertaining deep-dive into everything that makes language so enthralling. I started our conversation by asking him about the word woke, which I first heard in hip-hop lyrics. JOHN McWHORTER: Well, woke actually goes back further than many people would think. It's actually first documented in the early 60s and it was a Black slang. What it meant was politically aware of certain realities that operate largely below the surface, but have a determinative effect on, for example, the Black American condition. And so you might think, if you were you or me, that woke is about 10 years old. But actually people were saying it on the Black street long before that. It did not leave the Black street. Then, in roughly the 2000-teens, it jumped the rails and started being used by a certain kind of politically aware white person on the left. And what it meant at first in the general culture was somebody who understands certain basic leftist analysises of the world. What it really was, was a substitute for a term that had worn out. It replaced politically correct, which, if you're just old enough now, you can remember was used without irony back in the late 70s and early 80s. And what it meant was that you have a basic understanding of liberal/leftist realities. Then it became PC. PCstarted being used as a slur to ridicule the kind of person who used that kind of ideology as a bludgeon in a smug kind of way. And so you couldn't say politically correct without making somebody laugh by, say, 2010. Really, you couldn't do it by about 1990. And so woke replaced that. As recently as 2018, I was on a TV show—STEPHEN COLBERT (crowd cheering): My next guest tonight is a professor at Columbia University, who hosts one of my favorite podcasts.JM: —talking about how woke was taking on a certain pejorative flavor.JM ON COLBERT: When I learned it, it was still just the coolest thing: You are woke to the complexities of society and how injustice really happens. It was cool — it smelled like, roughly, marijuana and lavender. It was that kind of word. And about two seconds later, a certain kind of person started sneering: Oh, is that person woke?People from a certain side of the political spectrum are throwing at other people the idea being that you’re a smug person who thinks that your views are the ones that come from on high. That has happened during the time, roughly, that a certain person has become president, and about six months before that. I’ve found it fascinating. Woke will be all but unusable in ten years.JM: Now, I would say that it has it. It's 2021, woke is now a word that is very much in quotation marks. Nobody would use woke in common parlance to mean that you understand the politics of Ta-Nahisi Coates. Now woke is used to make fun of people of a certain kind of leftist political persuasion who are beyond reasonable address. And so what's happened is that it has become a pejorative word, which happens to words all over the language, all over languages all the time. And so random example, reduce. Reduce used to mean to lead back to, and it could lead back to something good, something bad, something large, something small. You could reduce something to its former glory 500 years ago. That meant just take it back. Now, you could also reduce something to its former misery. It's the misery meaning that ended up taking over, that pejorative meaning. That happens a lot in language, more than what's called amelioration for reasons that we need not get into. But words tend to putrefy, essentially, and that is what happened with woke very quickly in this decade and the last one, partly because the internet makes these things come around and go around faster.AK: If I'm hearing this right, you're saying woke was part of the Black vernacular and it had a particular political valence which has been taken over and turned around, and now it's become a derogatory term almost to call someone woke.JM: Exactly.AK: Nobody would say I am woke as a matter of pride. Do you see a movement to reclaim it as a positive?JM: I can imagine doing kind of linguistic science fiction and writing about the reclaiming of the word, because that does happen with slurs. There's an example that I could give that I don't even need to. We all know. So pretend I talked about that for five minutes — but the term woke, I don't see that happening. For example, you didn't see people saying, yes, I'm a PC and I'm proud of it. People ran away from it and created something new. In 2021, it's too early to say what the new term is going to be, but I can guarantee you that by 2030 there'll be something else which starts meaning something very specific. It may emerge from Black culture and it will be generalized to mean that you've got the proper The Nation politics. I don't think it's going to happen with woke, partly because it's so imprinted now as a way of making fun of somebody. It's just at the point where if somebody said Yes, I am woke, it sounds trivial, it sounds like you don't have your own ideas and you're just looking for something to put on a T-shirt. So I think what we need to do is start listening for what the new term is going to be. These things emerge spontaneously. Nobody's going to create it on Madison Avenue, but it will certainly happen.AK: Is there a particular moment you can point to when you think woke started taking on a pejorative valence? Was it a very purposeful appropriation by the right to discredit a particular kind of social justice awareness or social consciousness, or did it emerge out of an organic movement?JM: Of course, the right started making fun of wokeness, and to me that's 2017, 2018. Where woke became a joke, and that was an unintentional rhyme, was last summer when even people on the left started ridiculing a particular kind of person. Wokebecame a joke in roughly June 2020. It was in the wake of the protests about George Floyd, during the quarantine at its worst, when a lot of people had very little to do and were very angry about it. It tended to focus these sorts of things. So yeah, I think we've seen that transition just over about the past year and change that woke is now unusable outside of quotation marks, just like a word like perky. You can't really say perky, you can only say perky in quotes.AK: There are words that are used by the Black community, if I can use that for a moment and make it a monolith, to communicate in ways that remains separate from and distinct from the use of language by white people. Of course, there's a history to this. There's the history of enslaved people using particular language to communicate, words to communicate, so that their masters, quote unquote, could not understand what was being said. To what extent do you think the fact that woke will not be reclaimed is actually a continuation of that trend where words that come from the Black vernacular, become mainstream, like cool, then subsequently get dropped by the Black community that almost prides itself on coming up with a new term that is exclusive.JM: We're not always aware of how subconscious the use of language generally is, especially when you're talking about at the level of a community. It's one thing to say that Black English represents the creativity of Black people and that when a term gets worn out, Black people make up a new term. That doesn't actually refer to a process that's been observed among human beings. The truth is that these terms tend to emerge spontaneously based on probabilistic processes. It isn't that, say, the teens are making up new slang to confuse their parents. I'm going to give you a term: diglossia. Most people in the world have two levels that they speak on, the high and the low. In America, it can be hard to quite imagine that unless you think about Black people. We’re a very boring country linguistically in many ways. But Black people have the high, the standard, the low, quote unquote, although there's nothing low about it, which is Black English. If something jumps from the low to the high, it's not that Black people think, well, now we must create something new. It's that the word no longer feels L, low, and all language is eternally creative in its own right. You need terms for things. And so next thing you know, a new term will be spontaneously invented because the old one wore out or it stopped being part of the L. It stopped feeling like us. And it's usually below the radar. Nobody could know that these things were going to happen. And then you wake up and you have some white guy playing hacky sack and using the term woke, who knew? But that means that it's no longer the guy in Chicago living in a Black neighborhood who uses that. He's going to have some other word he's using after a while.AK: So talk to me about cancel. Where does the term cancel come from and how has the meaning of that changed over time?JM: Well, cancel culture is a really messy term because it starts with the idea that a celebrity who produces some sort of product, writings or performance, recorded performance, is in bad odor and therefore they're going to be canceled like a TV show. And so that person's work is no longer going to be seen. They're no longer going to get hired. I think that the paradigm example would be Bill Cosby. He was cancellable. You can't hire him. You're no longer going to show the sitcom. It's no longer going to stream. I was at a store around when he was cancelled where they were literally giving away DVDs of the TV show for free. And I thought, wow, yeah, he's been canceled. And so that takes care of that. But terms are always generalizing in some way. They're ameliorating. They are pejorating. Something's going to happen to almost any term that's worth its salt. So now cancel culture is not so much about eliminating somebody from the public presence as just deciding that they are no longer fit for polite society, that we don't like them anymore. And so it's not that these people are going to go away. Our technology makes it so that it's pretty hard to cancel anybody completely anyway, but it just means that that person is a persona non grata, they are ostracized. So I think these days we're at this intermediate stage where somebody is determined as non grata, and spontaneously people say we're not trying to cancel you. And the question is, if they're not trying to cancel you, what are they doing? Because the cancelling no longer means that you don't exist. I'm not going to get specific, but about a year ago, it happened to me. I was canceled by a certain august body for, you know, reasons that people can guess. And I was told by the very nice person, we're not cancelling you. Well, of course not. You know, I've got all these writings out there, and it's not like I'm not going to be able to go to conferences and things like that. What I was subjected to was being told that I am unsavory in a very public way. That's the cancellation. So it no longer means what it means. But that's true of so much of language. Nobody’s being cancelled, but it just means that you are having a scarlet letter put upon you.AK: How is it different from censorship or censoring someone?JM: It's not. It's the same thing. Cancel culture is just a more vivid term. Censorship, you think more of the printed page. It doesn't sound as societal. So we say cancel culture because that sounds one, newer; two, meaner; three, less specific than censorship. I would call them different terms for the exact same thing.AK: So I’d push back over here a little bit and to my ear and from the way it's being used, I think about censorship as something that is associated — and I'm getting into the politics of these words now — it's associated with something that the right does.JM: Mm-hmm.AK: Whereas cancel culture is seen as something that is a product of this wokeperformative way of saying I adhere to certain social justice values. Am I correct in kind of thinking about it in this way? People ask me what Banished is about. They immediately assume it's about cancel culture and it is. But to my mind, I always jump in, then say and censorship, because it's not just about the kinds of eliminations that are coming from this left side of the spectrum. I'm interested in things that are being cut out left, right and center.JM: You're quite right. I hadn't thought about that. The person on the left who's accused of censorship is insulted. They feel like they're being accused of something that they're used to hurling at the other side. They often don't realize they're doing the same thing or they think that it's OK if the left does it because the left is right, correct basically. Yes, cancel culture is censorship from the left. Talk about subconscious. I never thought about this, and yet I've been using it in that way for a year.AK: Another term that I grew up in graduate school using quite regularly and without thinking of it as a “problem” is the term problematic. In fact, one of the ways in which you recognized someone was a graduate student over lunch was when they said I'd like to problematize that. So this is another term that has kind of migrated from a different area or different field into mainstream conversation and has come to mean something again politically. When did you first encounter the word, let's start there? And then when did you start noticing that it's beginning to take on a different meaning?JM: Problematic to me is exactly what you said. It's a graduate student in 1993 drinking their latte and talking about something that probably wouldn't interest most people who are not academics. It's the aughts where problematic becomes something someone's doing that the educated person is supposed to morally disapprove of. It seems to me that there's a certain euphemism in the word problematic, because what it usually is is a prelude to something being racist or sexist or fat shaming or something like that. But you start out calling it problematic with the implication that it's difficult, it's tricky, that you have to break something down — avoiding coming right out and being what used to be called a knee jerk liberal. Instead of just yelling it's racist, it’s sexist, I don't like it, you say, well, actually, it's kind of problematic because. I don't know who that person is, but I do, actually. And then, you know, the racism and the sexism is coming. Problematic now means blasphemous. Problematic means that you have sinned, that you're a heretic, that you should not have any Chardonnay and brie. But nobody wants to come right out and say that. We're too sophisticated to call people heretics. And so now often the way you call somebody a heretic is to say isn't he problematic? — that means that he's a witch.AK: OK, so now we're getting into really interesting territory where I'm beginning to think of the word blasphemy. I come from a country where blasphemy means what it literally means and has always meant and has consequences. Over here, blasphemy has taken on a different meaning. It's a way of ostracizing someone from any community and what the rules are specific to that community. What does that word mean today?JM: Well, to the extent that you have a certain kind of hyper woke person who has a religion, it's no longer an Abrahamic religion. It's not Christianity, it's not Judaism, it's not Islam. It's Electism. They have a sense that certain people are not to be tolerated for the same reason that a Christian or someone else would ban the heretic. That is what they call problematic, but really it's blasphemy. Today's blasphemy is not about God. Nobody thinks of it is taking the Lord's name in vain to say, oh, my God, anymore. That was old school blasphemy. But now I find the Middle Ages much easier to understand than I used to just, you know, going online and watching what happens to nice people all the time. That is today's blasphemy. I would almost teach a child blasphemy based on the sort of things that happened to Donald McNeil, Alison Roman, etc., as opposed to Galileo.AK: You've coined the term “the Elect” and we just referred to it. Who are you referring to as the Elect and how exactly are you, are you using that phrase?JM: The Elect is a term that I used to refer to a certain kind of person who has hard leftist views about the way things are supposed to go and feels that being mean to people is justifiable in the name of making the world safe for those views. And so it's not the woke, it's not the hyper woke, it's woke people who are mean, who are The Elect. It's the evangelical, prosecutorial woke. And so by The Elect, I mean the kinds of people who seek to get people fired, who support policies for Black people that hurt Black people but qualify as goodly because they are quote unquote anti-racist. For example, it is Elect to say if Black kids aren't good at standardized tests, then let's eliminate the test because it's racist rather than helping Black kids get better at tests, and that particular kind of thinking. The term is not original to me, but I find it very useful and I hope it settles in. The Elect.AK: I come from a society where freedom of expression is, doesn't exist. There are very strict parameters to what you can and cannot say.JM: You mean academia?AK (laughs): That is the society I inhabit now. That was good. I mean Pakistan. In fact, that's part of my disillusionment with academia. I didn't expect it, especially not in the West and not in the US where freedom of expression is supposedly enshrined in the Constitution. Censorship from the right is something that I'm familiar with. I can even understand those tendencies within the U.S. coming from a more authoritarian mindset, from the political right. To some degree I can get that. What I find troubling, deeply troubling, is that I'm finding that kind of censorship coming from the left. So, talk about cancel culture. And I've been playing around a lot with the notion of why this is the case. And I'm going to present to you a hypothesis and ask you to tell me what you think. After much contemplation, I thought, well, maybe it's a society that has had a lot of freedom, precisely because freedom of expression is enshrined as a constitutional right. When there is so much freedom, it must necessarily produce its own unfreedom to rail against. A concept cannot exist, similarly a practice cannot exist, if it doesn't have its antithesis or antichrist. I'm beginning to wrap my head around what I'm seeing happening, particularly in academia, as this is just freedom coming full circle.JM: Hm. I like that. I am inclined to think that there's something else involved and it's social media. I think if — it's impossible to imagine a world without it now — but if we really did go back to that time when there was just email and the whole world could not talk to itself, I think we wouldn't have this happening on the left because what it is, is a reign of terror. A lot of what goes on on the left in terms of these cancellations is based not on consensus, but on fear. People are really afraid of being called a dirty name. And so you don't speak against the minority of people who are coming over the hill with pitchforks. I think that has a lot to do with it. And what people are so afraid of really is being called a dirty thing on Twitter. It is mostly Twitter. It is mostly being called a racist. Nobody wants to be called a racist on Twitter, or Facebook or Instagram, but mostly Twitter. Fifteen years ago, if somebody didn't like something that I wrote or something that I said, they would write a letter and they would send it to my mailbox, or they would write an email to me. That's what people did, and you got used to it. Now that almost never happens. Almost nobody emails me and it's very easy to find my Columbia email. It barely ever happens because those same people, they feel the same way, they put it on Twitter where everybody can see it. That change happened in about 2012 and there's no going back from that. You can see that the impulse of a certain kind of person used to be: I wish I could tell the world that I hate this person, but instead I'm just going to send it to their email because that's the best I can do. That person now can write it in the sky and we're never going to be rid of that kind of person. So, yeah, you have a new era that started in the early 2000-teens.AK: OK, I'm going to turn the camera upon us as academics for a moment and say one of the problems that I have right now is the erosion of academic freedom on college campuses. And I think the people who are responsible for it at the end of the day are us. It's tenured professors. And I know you don't have tenure, but you're a person with enough authority.JM: Close enough.AK: Close enough, so forgive me for lumping you with us, but it's tenured professors who are not speaking up, both in terms of the excesses of the administration, which is increasingly bureaucratized and corporatized, and also in terms of the kind of wider trends of the adjunctification of the faculty itself, which is a deep threat to academic freedom. So I hold tenured academics responsible for that. And it's easy to bash social media for giving fillip to nasty trends. There are nasty people out there. There is a nastiness in all of us and perhaps we feel more comfortable airing it when we're not talking to someone face to face and we can put it out.JM: Exactly.AK: But there is also a niceness to all of us, or at least I desperately want to believe that, right? I really do, because if we don't, I feel like I begin to lose the will to live. What's the point, right? So why do we not use social media in a way that fights against the kind of natural tendencies that it brings out? To what degree can we repurpose that and fight cancel culture and fight this tendency to shut people up by actually reclaiming that space? Maybe we can't, but I'm interested in hearing what your thoughts are.JM: We have a moral duty as thinking people in this culture now. Fifty years ago, that duty was to understand that racism is not just calling dirty names, that sexism is not just calling dirty names, that you have to look inside of yourself. And I think practically everybody in this country learned how to do that through the 1970s to a degree that was stunning. And many people today would say that it wasn't important, but I think they either lack historical imagination or they're just not old enough to remember what things were like before. If you walked around in 1950 and talked to educated Americans about how they felt about women and how they felt about Black people, I think many people would be utterly stunned at the difference. Something happened between 1970 and 1980. Now, we have a similar thing that we need to do, which is to learn to not be so damned afraid of being called names on social media. A lot of people are clearly frightened to their socks of somebody saying something nasty to them and then being retweeted. And the truth is, it happens, it flares for a while and it goes away. And Twitter is not the world. Now, of course, some people feel that they don't want to risk their jobs, but I think for most people, it's just that they don't want to be called a dirty name and a dirty name today is you racist. And so they just hold back. And that means that the nasty guys in the schoolyard end up taking over. Even if you try to be nice on Twitter, there are some people — and they're not crazy, they're not trolls, they're not under a bridge; unfortunately, they're ordinary people who are probably very nice in real life — but people will be mean to you for being nice. You know, how dare you praise this? How dare you excuse that? That kind of person cannot be allowed to determine what Twitter is like, though. You just have to let them, you have to let them yell. And I really hope that part of the pendulum shift is that a critical mass of people will learn that you can be called a dirty name on social media, and you know the planet will keep spinning, your friends will keep liking you. It's hard to be yelled at. You get used to it. But I think we need to start learning how to get used to it more.AK: Where do you think the fear comes from? I understand the fear when it's coming from a threat to your livelihood.JM: Mm-hmm.AK: What is it? I'm trying to dig to the deep roots of what are we so bloody afraid of? I've been called many things in my life, sometimes been proud of the fact that I’ve been called many things in my life, which are not necessarily nice things. Being a — aterm that I absolutely detest, but I'll use at the moment — you know, a person of color, I say things that people don't expect a person of color to say. And so then I get labeled as someone who has false onsciousness or someone who's drunk the Kool-Aid and all kinds of things. What is it what is it that we're so scared of?JM: In a different world, you didn't want it to be said that you were godless. In this world, you don't want it to be said that you are a racist or that you are a sexist because that questions your very legitimacy as a human being. And I think you or me as people of color, we can say things about race and get called certain things. But there isn't as much of a sting, especially because, frankly, the charges are often so absurd. You know, like somebody telling me that I don't like myself. Frankly, yes, I do and everybody knows. You can tell. And I'm sure that you feel the same way. Whatever you're being called, it has nothing to do with you. But I will openly admit, I could not bear — and watch it happen now that I say this — I could not bear it getting around that I was a sexist. That's too much. If it got around that I had some sort of woman problem, that I didn't think women were men's equals, it would make me want to curl up in a corner and die. That would be more than I could risk, and I'm quite sure that I don't have that issue. But if somebody decided to start a campaign on Twitter and call me all sorts of things and distort things that I wrote, I would not be up for that. And so I can put myself in other people's place. They feel that way about race. They feel I just couldn't tolerate that. But, you know, if there were an epidemic of people being called sexist for no good reason, I would have to buck up, you know, if I had some skin in that game. And I think that's what has to happen with the racist charge within reason. You don't want to take advantage, but you can't let the people who spend their lives saying mean things on Twitter determine that entire forum because it could be used for such good. You're right. But everybody needs to get some, you see I want to say balls, but that's no good.THEME MUSIC UPAK: Well, I think this entire segment has to be edited out because otherwise you're going to be branded as sexist and we are going to have a campaign. And then you use the term balls, so you just gave …JM: Yeah, I’m, I’m gone.AK: You’re gone. (laughing)JM: Yeah.AK: Thank you John McWhorter for being with us today. This was a delightful conversation. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.JM: Thank you for having me Amna.AK: If you liked what you heard today, and want more exclusive content, please consider becoming a paying subscriber to Booksmart Studios. Subscribers get access to transcripts, extended interviews, and bonus segments.Before I sign off, I must remind you — I must implore you — to comment, rate, share what you've heard here today. And not just Banished, but the other Booksmart Studios shows like John McWhorter's Lexicon Valley and Bob Garfield’s Bully Pulpit. Both programs are stimulating and incisive in their analysis.So please share! The success of Booksmart, the impact of our work, depends as much on you as on us. Banished is produced by Matthew Schwartz and Mike Vuolo. I am Amna Khalid. So long. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit banished.substack.com/subscribe

This week's episode is a continuation of our discussion on Centering Blackness in Education. We are joined again by Dr. Lamar L. Johnson of Michigan State University to discuss Black Language, also known as African American Vernacular English (AAVE) or Ebonics. In 1996, the Oakland, California School District allowed Black English to be used in classrooms as a bridge for students to leverage their AAVE to learn Standard English. Along with Dr. Johnson, we explore how Black English is an important element of Black education and how it can be used to expand Black students' educational experiences. Lamar L. Johnson is an Associate Professor of Language and Literacy for Linguistic and Racial Diversity in the Department of English at Michigan State University. He is interested in the complex intersections of race, language, literacy, and education and how English language arts (ELA) classrooms can become racial justice sites. Sources Baldwin, J. (1979), If Black Language Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is? New York Times, 29 July, 1979. Grieve, J., Nini, A. & Guo, D. (2018). Mapping Lexical Innovation on American Social Media. Journal of English Linguistics, 46(4), 293 - 319. Smitherman, G. (1998). Ebonics, King, and Oakland: Some folk don't believe fat meat is greasy. Journal of English Linguistics, 26(2), 97-107. Woodson, C. G. (1933). The Mis-Education of the Negro. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/racethrougheducation/support

Is it appropriation for a white novelist to render Black speech? X: @lexiconvalleyFacebook: facebook.com/LexiconValleyWebsite: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mark Twain famously depicted what he called the "Missouri Negro dialect" of Jim. Would that be acceptable today? Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley

A longstanding mystery of Black English may finally be solved. Twitter: @lexiconvalley Facebook: facebook.com/LexiconValley Website: booksmartstudios.com/LexiconValley