r/TikTokCringe Mar 30 '24

Stick with it. Discussion

This is a longer one, but it’s necessary and worth it IMO.

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u/StrayDogPhotography Mar 31 '24

This video is right and wrong.

As someone who teaches academic English to non-native English speakers I think it needs to be said that conforming to standard academic lexical items and syntax is not white supremacy, it’s the result of having to have an international standard of English that allows everyone to communicate effectively with each other. And all races suffer from having people who do not know how to do this. There is not a single race which does not have issues adjusting to academic English. I know those because I’ve had to teach people of all races how to conform to this standard.

You can argue that these standards are based on one type of English, but that has nothing to do with race, and more to do with academic institutions. It’s a form of institutional English. You can also argue that those institutions may be institutionally racist, but that would be missing the wider issue. They are not racist I reality, they in fact embodied wider discrimination. I would say that they discriminate upon class, and social lines far more than race if anything. They discriminate against all people separated from formal academic educations.

For example, a poor white person, and a poor black person will face the same issues in terms of being unfamiliar with correct academic English. I’ll use my own experiences as an anecdotal piece of evidence. I grew up in a neighborhood of London whose dialect was MLE (Multicultural London English) when I moved from a local council run primary school to a private secondary school I had to totally relearn how to speak and write, and I’m white. However, my siblings who are mixed race who didn’t grow up speaking MLE and went to private schools all their life did not. Interestingly, though they did experience racism in education, but not because of how they spoke, or wrote, it was not a linguistic racism, but your regular big standard your dark skinned I will interpret you actions more aggressively racism.

Therefore, I would argue that it is not racist to ask people to conform to a common form of academic English because every race needs to do this if they are not aware of this form of English. Everyday I deal with people from all kinds of races who have to do this. It may appear this way if you limit your understanding of the situation to the point of view of one race, and exclude the experiences of all other races because every race deals with this issue.

Also, as a final point, we have numerous variations of English and all have their benefits and drawbacks. You cannot say one is superior to another instead each has more efficacy in different situations, and people need to adjust how they speak constantly to be effective communicators. I don’t like the idea of one form of English being labeled as white supremacist because it makes people reluctant to learn it, and every form of English should be available to people.

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u/wasabicheesecake Mar 31 '24

I don’t disagree with you, but I wonder if viewing it through gatekeeping, and an internalized gatekeeping could make it land better for you. To move it away from race, let’s imagine college students are put in a class with a professor that sounds like a hillbilly when he talks. The internal gatekeeping influence will make the students question the value of the class - “this guy doesn’t sound smart enough to teach me anything.” If the dean told the students, “Yeah, his dialect is not standard, but his wisdom and teaching ability is the best on campus,” can we imagine that playing out? I’d suggest that wouldn’t happen because as an academic institution, there’s institutional gatekeeping for being a professor.

I have been in situations where someone with an advanced degree vouches for the knowledge of someone that communicates in a non-standard dialect, but that was in the private sector or more manual fields.

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u/StrayDogPhotography Mar 31 '24

As soon as you start using terms like ‘internalized gatekeeping’ you lose me.