Jerrel Herndon Linda Hofmann September 21, 2013 Inquiry into Language, Literacy, and Identity Speaking My Way

Out Until the beginning of this semester, I never thought much about how people judged me through my speech. I never thought much about my speech in general. After taking the time to actually evaluate my speech, not just the words that I use, but the tone in which I speak and the accent of my voice as well, I realize that my speech has been influenced in a number of ways. There have been a collection of experiences that have had an impact on my speech. A huge influence on my speech is the area in which I was born and grew up. I was born in Raleigh, but grew up in a small town called Holly Springs about fifteen minutes outside of Raleigh. When I was growing up, the small town was predominantly black, and the land that I live on was owned by my family, so I was surrounded by them all the time. It was a very big family and five of my great-uncles and two of my great-aunts owned the land. My whole family, at the time, was very smart. But not many got a great education. At the time, not many people, especially black people, graduated and went to college. And language was something that was not paid much attention. If you could get across what it was that you were trying to say, nobody stressed much about how it sounded. Ebonics is a term that many people identify with throughout the black community, and growing up around a majority of black people, I heard my fair share of it. It was just natural to me. But, when I got to the grade school age, I attended a school called Davis Drive Elementary. It was in a town called Cary, a town that was a bit bigger than the town that I grew up in and is

where the majority of the white people in the area lived. So needless to say, the school that I went to had a large majority of white students. I had to go to school here because that is where I was districted, and there was no school in the town that I was growing up in. All of my friends and family from Holly Springs went to this school as well. I was in this school from kindergarten through the second grade, and of course, this experience was very different because I was around people that I was not usually around. I started to become more and more influenced by what I heard from my teachers and classmates. But at the time, I was never conscious of the changes in my speech. Going into the third grade, there was a new elementary and junior high school that was built in the town that I grew up in. I still remember on the first day of school, I was talking to a boy in my class, and a girl that was in my class tapped me on my shoulder and asked me why I talked like a white boy. I wasnt exactly sure what she meant by it, and definitely didnt know how to answer her question, so I just shrugged and didnt think much else of it. After years of people at school and at home telling me I talk like a white boy, I realized that some people make judgments on the way that others speak. The first thing people judge is your appearance and the next thing is the way that you speak (word choice, accents, tones, etc.). So I also learned how to code switch, learned how to speak to certain people at certain times. I learned that I had to basically be two different people in different situations, and I didnt necessarily like that fact. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, author and editor. He was coined as saying that in some instances, black people have to wear a veil to hide who we are because being and acting like a black person is not accepted

in formal or professional settings. This is something that I have found to be very true, and something that I have found myself doing on a daily basis. Now, being a college student, in class I feel as though I am held to a certain standard, so I must speak in a certain way. I would also speak this way in a job interview or in my job. This, of course, is much different than the speech that I would use with my family and the people that I grew up with. In a way, it feels like I am hiding this side because I am ashamed. I dont want for this to be the case, but it feels that way sometimes. I would like to think that I speak in a different way in different settings because I know that a certain level of professionalism is required. But unfortunately, the thought of hiding who I am because I am ashamed of it, dominates my mind. One of the biggest things in the black community is having pride for who you are. As a young person, most black people are surrounded by family and the families tells each of us to never be ashamed of who you are. My family did it for me, my siblings and all of my cousins. Being a black man is something that I am very proud of, and something that I would never and have never wanted to change. So the whole idea of masking my identity, my culture, and everything that I learned as a child, really bothers me. I start to develop many different problems when I think about the need to mask or hide my black side in professional settings. I have never spoken to anyone else about the topic, so I do not know if I am the only one battling with this situation. But I would be confident in saying that I am not alone. Wondering do people think that a person that speaks in Ebonics or speaks like a black person would normally talk cant be professional. My mind goes back to that girl in my elementary class, asking why I talk like a white boy, and I wonder if everyone thinks this way. Do people think that the only way a person can be educated or professional is if they speak like a white person. Whatever that means.

Another problem that I find myself dealing with is with the black community. If a person is speaking proper English, he or she is speaking like a white person. Everyone is so quick to slap a label on others because they want to advance or do better for themselves. I dont think that we as a black community should hold one another back in this way. If we see one of our own, and I dont mean that in a way of trying to separate us from them, trying to move up in the world, we should get behind that person and encourage them to keep moving forward. And then ask ourselves, If it was possible for them, whats stopping me? Instead of trying to drag that person down and shower that person with criticisms because we dont feel like we can do it ourselves. The best way to explain this situation is the scenario of crabs in a bucket. If one crab reaches the top of the bucket and is about to escape, instead of the other crabs helping it escape and then following the lead of that crab, they will drag that crab back down to the bottom of the bucket. This is exactly what the black community is doing to one another everyday when we hear of others trying to reach the top of the bucket and escape to a better life for themselves. I have to deal with this very problem in certain instances. At times, I feel as if I am the crab at the rim of the bucket, about to escape. Then, just as I begin to cross over into a better life, I feel the pinch of the other crabs and feel as though I am being pulled down. Just before move-in day for school, I went to visit my aunt and cousins in Raleigh. They live in an area that is almost completely black. My cousin was introducing me to a group of people and telling them that I was about to go to college. And the moment I opened my mouth and spoke the first word, I saw judgment in everyones eyes. Before I knew it, I was being pounced on by the whole group. Everyone asking me why I talked like a white boy and if I thought I was better than them because I was going to college.

They were calling me an Uncle Tom, which is a black man that tries to act like a white man. They were all basically trying to make me feel bad because I am trying to improve myself. They were grabbing me with their pinchers and pulling me to the bottom of the bucket. But I did like many others before me have done and unfortunately have to do, I didnt allow them to defer my goals. I shrugged off the insults and continued to do as Ive always wanted to do. And that is to show the ones that think that they cant do it, that it is possible. Im not saying that the ones that do become more educated are better than the people that arent as educated. Because some people dont have the opportunity or ability to go out and get a better education. But at the end of the day, I do believe that black people as a whole have to do better. We need to do a better job of encouraging one another to advance and help one another as much as we can when we see another in need. We need to become better educated, and try to climb out of this bucket that we have been keeping ourselves in. Instead of pulling people down, we should build a human ladder and help one another climb out. I dont think that we should completely give up what we have learned from our ancestors, but I do think that we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard. The Ebonics language as a whole should be a part of the culture that everyone realizes was used at a time when black people were being oppressed. We should embrace this because it is our history and is something that proves that we can overcome all hardships. But we should also realize that language and literacy is necessary if we are going to continue to move forward. I wrote this to explore my language, but ended up reaching a certain realization. That realization is that the black community as a whole is doing a poor job of encouraging progress. We all talk about doing better for ourselves, but do very little to make it happen. There is a good percentage that has realized that we must make changes, but there is a greater percentage that are

the crabs at the bottom of the bucket. And improving language and literacy is only one of many steps that must be taken to get the black community to the place that we all want to be.