School is a time for learning and growth. However, racism can prevent some students from attaining this. I will discuss the role language plays in racism and schooling.

AAVE, or African American Vernacular English, is a dialect of English. It is widely used in Black communities and most children learn it in their home. However, when they enter school, many Black children learn the way they speak, their parents speak, and their community speaks is “incorrect.” It is not standard or school English. There have been attempts to integrate AAVE into the classroom where students learn to code switch between the two varieties. In 1996, there was an attempt by Oakland, CA school to integrate Ebonics, however it failed: “But the prospect of encouraging the dialect in the classroom elicited national, and near-universal, censure. As the White House and editorialists for the country’s top newspapers condemned the plan, several states banned the use of AAE in education, and Oakland’s superintendent was called before the U.S. Senate” (Brennan 2018). Many misconceptions occurred. Some believed they were teaching AAVE, that AAVE was a lesser dialect, or that it was a waste of time and money. From the documentary “Do you speak American?” we can see what the goal of using AAVE in the classroom is:

“Noma LeMoine: “Now it our task is to help move them towards mastery of the language of school in its oral and written form but to do that in a way where they are not devalued or where they feel denigrated in any way by virtue of their cultural and linguistic differences because when you begin to devalue youngsters and make them feel that who they are doesn’t count then we turn them off from education.”

Linguistic policing is not the only form of policing that negatively impacts Black children. Racism also appears in the form of discipline in schools. Black students are disportionately disciplined than white students. Oftentimes black children face a harsher punishment than white students. The way we talk about black students is different. Black students are not seen as just students. They go through a process of adultification. When you stop talking about black students as black child and instead talk about them as an adult the punishment changes.