Exercise – Week 5
Language and Race/Ethnicity
Due: Friday, February 16th (in Recitation)
Respond to the following prompt.
Your response should be one page, typed, double-spaced.
The grading rubric for weekly exercises is available on D2L.
Compare Price’s (2009) sports column (quoted below) to the experts from Greene’s sports column discussed in chapter 10 of the Lippi-Green textbook. In both cases, professional sports broadcasters are expressing negative, even racist opinions about professional athletes who are also native BVE/AAVE speakers. The journalists who are quoted in Price’s column are African American; Greene is not:
Let’s be honest. Many of these guys are just flat-out uneducated, which just speaks to the hypocrisy of the “student-athlete” system. If they tried to go up there and speak properly—without major training—some would be too uncomfortable, nervous, and self-conscious to say anything worthwhile…this problem has to be fixed before they get to college—or they’ve got to undergo some training once they get there. I suspect, though, that some whites are sometimes too scared to correct them for fear of being called racists for “criticizing the way Blacks talk”.
- How is it that these African American journalists feel entitled or obligated to criticize athletes’ language?
- Do you think it’s correct to say that Anglos don’t voice similar criticisms because they are afraid of being called racist?
- If Greene’s column is racist, as suggested in Lippi-Green’s chapter 10, are the African American journalists also being racist? Why or why not? Explain your thoughts.
