Whitney Brown Brown 1

Hell to Home

I sat on the top pillar of the play-scape solemn and confused. One of the only friends that

I had made at my new, white, public elementary school was no longer allowed to play with me

due to her mother’s complaints to the after-school care program coordinator that my first-grade

dialect was too “hood” and it was rubbing off on her daughter. Ashley picked up some of the

synonyms and abbreviation embedded in my dialect and had begun to use them as her own. Her

white mother did not like the influence I had on her daughter. I wouldn’t say that was my first

glimpse of what a different world I was now in, but it was the first time the world had made me

feel inferior.

The complexities of white vs. black, rich vs. poor, and proper English vs. “hood” or

“ghetto” accents were all being thrown at me. From the age of 1 to 6, I was reared in a Baptist

Church formal schooling system. I have always worn uniforms. I went to bible study Wednesday

nights, I attended a church service during the school day Thursdays, and early Sunday morning I

made my way to the choir pews with little to no rebuttal because as a village, my mother, nor

grandmother, nor aunties, nor teacher expected anything less. Sometimes I would have to be

reminded of the repercussions, but not many. Lockhart, Texas held a population of about 10,000

people. My Na-na was known for taking in children that didn’t have a place to rest their head at

night. We are a communal family. We went out to the country for church, funerals, and to ride
 Brown 2

horses. I didn’t know that this was not everyone’s truth until I was made an outcast by my peers.

An hour drive from home to hell was a difference in school districts and opportunity. It resonated

with me when Gloria Anzaldua wrote, “because we speak with tongues of fire we are culturally,

crucified. Racially, culturally, and linguistically, somos huérfanos – we speak an orphan tongue.”

In her short story, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, she reflects on the cultural imperialism,

racism, and identity reformation she endured in south Texas. It called me to see my prior

linguistic practices as the means of this “crucified” Anzaldua speaks of. My environment, my

family, and the origin of my religion had all played vital roles in how others hear me. The

perception of who I am is heard through how I speak and it did not fall directly in the realms of

the metropolitan, white-washed, public elementary school that is now tasked with educating me.

The ideal that a “wild tongue can’t be tamed, they can only be cut out” isn’t unfamiliar to

most public school teachers where I am from. There was no attempt to incorporate my original

dialect into my new knowledge of the English language. The heritage and experience that my

accent showed was lost when I was forced to separate all of my words and loose the twangy slur

my grandma taught me. This “God-teacher” that Caffilene Allen introduces to us in her short

story, “First They Changed My Name…”, further sheds light on the stigma that a lot of parents,

which in-turn influences their children, believe that teachers are all knowing. Teachers have

taken on the role of recreating students, especially if they catch them in their adolescence.

Educators who do not share the same dialect with students must question their intent. There must

be a clear goal of what will be accomplished in the best interest of the child. Who is to say that

my dialect as a child did not help the depth of my thoughts? What I chose to write and how I

chose to express myself was hindered by the pressure to conform to the unfamiliar “standard
 Brown 3

English” that was naturally used by my white classmates. This “right way” theory Allen builds

upon effected the way that I viewed my speech in such that I began to alter the way I sounded to

mirror how the teachers and students spoke. This change was evident in my writing, speech, and

the teacher’s evaluation of my work. It grew to become “better”, though it was all fake. My

thoughts were genuine, but I was not perceived as myself. A divide between home and school

was due to distance and the difference in identity. I was not myself in my learning environment.

The people teaching me no longer looked like me, the people I was learning with no longer

looked like me, and I wasn’t learning about people who looked like me.

A confusing turn in identity was happening and it became difficult to distinguish the two.

My cousins from back home started calling me things like “oreo” and “Miss Thang”. The

English I spoke was not the English they were used to hearing from me. We grew together from

birth, they know where I come from and who raised me, but the way I sounded was the means to

the end of our familial alliance. Just as Heinz Paige wrote in his book, The Dreams of Reason:

The Computer and the Rise of the Science of Complexity, we as a black community are called to

“come to grasp the management of complexity, the rich structures of symbols, and perhaps

consciousness itself, it is clear that traditional barriers –barriers erected on both sides –between

the natural sciences the humanities cannot forever be maintained.” In other words we need to

find a common awareness of the symbols and works around us so that they do not divide us.

Actions that could be viewed as conformity when it comes to learning “standard English” are for

most students mere effects of their new found knowledge. I have not magically acquired white

ancestry. I am no less black. The correlation between the English that is taught in school and the

dialect that I am used to at home is strong. “Proper English” is seen as white. Any other southern
 Brown 4

slang or black dialect is seen as inferior and unintelligent. This makes it a hardship within the

education system to speak in any other dialect but the one that is deemed proper. Instead of

adding value and depth into the way I think as a student, the focus is turned to how I use

language and correcting the patterns in which I do so. There is definitely a piece of me that was

compromised. When you begin to measure the amount of time that I spent in the formal

education setting, without any resemblance of the black culture that I come from. The pressure to

conform outweighs the influence of my family and community had on me. Though this did open

the door for me to intentionally pursue the creation of my identity. I had to choose a voice that

both my family and future employers could understand.

For the most part, a public school education that never provided me the opportunity to be

taught by a black teacher ultimately led me to pursue higher education at a historically black

university. I do feel robbed of my culture looking back on my public school years. Howard

Alumnus, Kenneth B. Clark, said it best in his book, Dark Ghetto, “dark ghetto’s invisible walls

have been erected by the white society, by those who have power, both to confine those have no

power and to perpetuate their powerlessness. The dark ghettos are social, political, educational,

and –above all– economic colonies” (13). I am a product of an oppressed people that is why I

search for so much individuality in my English because I flee from any conforming practices.

There is life within the struggle my people have been through and I owe it to them to profess

pieces of my culture that are shown in me. There is so much that can be learned from black

culture and the black community. It is a misfortune, but also a blessing that the entirety of my

rearing was not immersed in it all. My personal experience has taught me that everyone who

lives in America should not be forced to learn “standard English”. As a black student I took away
 Brown 5

from culture and individuality. The imposition of white ideals and ways of though isn’t

something that is bigger than how we teach our children. It is a pattern that can be seen

throughout our nation’s political system, mass media sources, and the influence of many aspects

we all fall victim to everyday.

 Works Cited

Allen, Caffilene. First They Changed My Name…. Prisms, 1994

Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands: the New Mestiza = La Frontera. Aunt Lute Books, 2012.

Clark, Kenneth Bancroft. Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power. Wesleyan University Press,

1989

“Forum N.H.I.: Knowledge for the 21st Century Archives.” Education, Liberation & Black

Radical Traditions, 1994, carmenkynard.org/tag/forum-n-h-i-knowledge-for-the-21st-

century/.