Wright & Weissler Response to Perspectives article: “Toward Racial Justice in Linguistics”
After the publication of the Linguistic Society of America’s Statement on Race, we wrote a response paper to the article, “Toward Racial Justice in Linguistics: Interdisciplinary Insights into Theorizing Race in the Discipline and Diversifying the Profession” by Dr. Anne H. Charity Hudley, Dr. Christine Mallinson, and Dr. Mary Bucholtz. The authors responded to all submitted responses in “From theory to action: Working collectively toward a more antiracist linguistics (Response to commentators),” citing points from our paper. Since then, we’ve received inquiries for access to our response paper, and permission requests to assign it as college course reading. Given the interest, we decided to make our response paper available on a platform that is open access.
In response to “Toward Racial Justice in Linguistics,” we want to emphasize three aspects of the article that we believe can move the field from acknowledgement of the racial disparities to taking active steps towards correcting them. These aspects are as follows : the onus of this work belongs to linguistics at large and not simply minoritized people of color; the enhancement of pedagogical tools used when teaching linguistics from the entry level to include BIPOC perspectives, research, and experiences; and the imminent need for bidirectional interdisciplinarity in academic inquiry as a cornerstone of racial justice. These aspects are crucial in that, as the second line of the abstract reads, “To be adequate,…” Linguistics needs to incorporate these suggestions and more. And, that’s the truth. If our science is going to be adequate, if our commitment to understanding Linguistic structure and function is to be fulfilled, we must consider and account for what is highlighted in this article. That being: the field is White, and has contributed and contributes directly to White Supremacy; our science is inherently flawed without the consideration of other ways of knowing; BIPOC people at all levels in our field are at risk existing in the status quo.
We find that the structure of Charity Hudley, Maillison, and Bucholtz’s article is brilliant in that its design creates a product within itself. The piece is constructed in such a way that it addresses some of the issues it reveals, becoming not only bibliography and syllabus, but also essential reading guide for the willfully ignorant or passively uninformed linguists among us. The article asks, “where do we go from here?,” after giving blatant acknowledgement of the problems that be, and answers its own question by putting itself forth as a solution toward solving the problems it addresses, and therefore, it should be upheld as a tool, respected, and applied.
1) The onus of this work belongs to linguistics at large and not simply minoritized people of color.
The article mentions five times that BIPOC are the ones doing the research on race, in this discipline and those adjacent. While White people researching BIPOC language without sociohistorical or cultural knowledge is part of the problem with foundational linguistic inquiry, that fact does not excuse or prevent White people from participating in the work of establishing equity in our field or parity in our science. In fact, White people must be the ones acknowledging and addressing the systemic flaws in our theory and practice that are underscored in this article, as they are the people who occupy positions of power across the discipline. There are myriad avenues for cooperative efforts in linguistics at large to begin addressing the exclusionary history of our discipline. Every time a seminal work is discussed in the classroom, the exclusion of POC, and female, and indigenous voices and perspectives must be mentioned. We can work towards combating the ubiquitous and dangerous default status of whiteness in Linguistic theory by recognizing that we are all racialized people and describing and categorizing participants accordingly. These two suggestions, adopted widely, would reshape our discourses around race and being to unmire the century of colonized ignorance and learned racism which stifles Linguistic theory at large.
It is also important to acknowledge that there is no definitive agreement on descriptors for which scholars of minoritized varieties can talk about their varieties as a cohesive part of the field; we are not seeking the creation of a so-called Black Linguistics. This is another barrier regarding uplifting this work, and a barrier other fields face and have faced. Because of this, editors need to read this entire bibliography if they believe themselves to be committed to inclusion and equity in the field and shine light on the time-graded shifts in (often top-down assigned) terminology when it comes to the description minoritized language varieties, and the ways in which those desciptions have been used to justify and mobilize discrimination in the wider world. We suggest starting with readings on Critical Race Theory, then Education and Applied Linguistics, then Black linguists writing in the core, then BIPOC writing in the adjacent disciplines of Anthropology, Sociology, and Psychology.
2) The enhancement of pedagogical tools used when teaching linguistics from the entry level to include BIPOC perspectives, research, and experiences.
Theorizing in linguistics requires constantly reinforcing the people, humans, in relation to the systems we study. Our field is smaller than others, and as such, sheer numbers could explain why we maybe are behind the curve of fields such as Anthropology, which have been making statements on race for decades. As mentioned in the article, such efforts toward educational shift with a focus on racial justice have been underway in adjacent fields for decades and pedagogical models for such practice is readily available. Where do we start? In pedagogy: Decolonize, Decolonize, Decolonize. We active educators and administrators have a responsibility to develop explicit lessons on the misinformation Linguistics as a field has been responsible for spreading. Such lessons can take many simple forms: one sentence or slide that highlights the divergent perspectives of researchers and communities under study, or including examples in introductory classes from minoritized varieties, putting them on equal footing with all other language varieties. Grounding a linguistic theory in race means dispelling language myths that students will be bringing to the classroom, which influence the foundation of their scholarship. And, luckily, again this article provides all one would need to incorporate some of this background into their existing lessons. The body of the article provides a roadmap of scholarship on race and the numerous ways in which it intersects with Linguistic theory on race. Good researchers should have no problem reviewing and applying this information to their existing teaching materials.
Worldwide, negative ideologies and myths about non-Standard and minoritized speakers have spread unchecked for long enough. Linguists are particularly poised to do the work of deconstructing these beliefs (see Craft et al. 2020), as our collective knowledge, obtained through scientific inquiry, of how language operates affords us an understanding the majority of language users do not possess. In this light, we argue that no tenured or tenure-track professor teaching at the college level or higher should be unfamiliar with the body of literature cited in this Perspectives article. To be so indicates that they do not possess the requisite expertise to advise or oversee the knowledge production of BIPOC students, or to direct research focused on BIPOC communities. Biologists, surgeons, lawyers, computer programmers (and on and on) are held to the same standard within their fields, so their parent organizations’ statements on race claim. Additionally, knowledge of this literature must be incorporated into methods of assessment across the career — without disciplinary exception. All those researching race in the field of linguistics are required to demonstrate knowledge of the core, although much of the core does not speak directly to race as a topic or its intersections with linguistic structure and function. To not require the same of linguists working in the core is blatant and untenable disparity. The value of such self-educating work towards combating stereotype threat and intellectual discrimination cannot be overstated, and extends beyond the given Linguistics major and begins to undo negative linguistic ideologies where they live — in the minds of the population at large. These beliefs are strong, but the truth is stronger. And we must make a concerted effort at producing and protecting it.
3) Interdisciplinarity regarding racial justice in academic inquiry as a bidirectional entity.
Finally, incorporating researchers across adjacent disciplines into our presentation, publication, and research networks only serves to strengthen the fortitude of academics (and therefore all free knowledge production and distribution) outsideof the university. We see in the article discussion about the interdisciplinarity between fields and theories. It is important to remember that other fields that might discuss language often propose theories that are not linguistically-grounded. It is important then to encourage bidirectional knowledge sharing across disciplines. Just as much as we can learn and incorporate from other fields, we have knowledges to offer those fields as well. And coming together has the potential to produce theories developed from interdisciplinary, new, and joint understandings. Further, the continued diffusion and solidarity of our networks will protect academic production in the coming era.
In conclusion, we want to emphasize what we mentioned at the beginning of this response about being inherently at risk as a BIPOC in our field. One of the authors of “Toward Racial Justice in Linguistics, along with Savithry Namboodiripad, Corrine Occhino, Lynn Hou, Anne Charity-Hudley, Hayley Heaton, Dominique Canning, and Marjorie Herbert, have been jointly working toward bringing to light issues of bias, harassment, and negative climate in linguistics through their international survey, “Survey for Linguists and Language Researchers.” We can see hope for the future of the field focused on highlighting the need for racial justice in linguistics through the approach of testimonials and shared stories. This survey also shows entrenched patterns of negative treatment of minoritized people in linguistics; with this knowledge in hand, we now have data to evidence the necessity for change within the field at all levels of academia. Through the extensive list of action items listed in the paper, which also shows myriad ways toward racial justice in linguistics, this Perspectives article highlights the human aspect of linguistics, which we must defend for the sake of all who do linguistic inquiry.
