29 pages • 58 minutes read
James BaldwinIf Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1979A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Black English as a Form of Resistance
Throughout this essay, James Baldwin frequently expands his argument not just to make the case that Black English is a language but to analyze its function as a form of resistance to racist, anti-Black structures. He starts immediately by saying that “the other is refusing to be defined by a language that has never been able to recognize him” (Paragraph 1). This establishes the idea that, when speaking in Black English, Black people are not the “other” and their cultures and dispositions are “recognize[d],” allowing them to resist standard English cultural hegemony and racism.
Baldwin uses the history of Black English to argue that it was born out of resistance to slavery. He adds the facets of speech in the context of the Black American church and the context of the enslavement of Black people in the United States, calling the latter a “bitter hour of the world’s history” (Paragraph 7). He addresses the facet of Black English’s formation, saying that the language came “into existence by means of brutal necessity” because the very survival of enslaved Black Africans depended on them quickly learning to communicate with each other across their different native languages (Paragraph 7). Baldwin later argues that most white Americans have been and perhaps still are unable to comprehend Black English because doing so “would reveal to [them] too much about [themselves]” (Paragraph 8). This suggests that within Black English is an explicit form of resistance to an oppressor that, at the same time, conceals itself from the oppressor.
Near the end of the article, Baldwin asserts that Black people “have not endured and transcended by means of what is patronizingly called a ‘dialect’” (Paragraph 10). This statement brings his thematic arguments even further by suggesting that Black English is not simply a way to resist but actually the essence of resistance itself. The statement in this paragraph answers the title’s subjunctive provocation, “[i]f Black English isn’t a language,” to suggest that Black people would never have been able to resist oppression in this hypothetical scenario without a language to do it. This theme therefore supports the essay’s overarching argument that Black English is a language and not a “dialect.”
The Weaponization of the Power of Language
Baldwin’s essay provides examples of how language has the power to connect people but also how this has been weaponized by white speakers (of English and French). The essay exposes and resists this weaponization. One of the most vivid examples of how language is weaponized comes at the outset, with Baldwin’s assertion that language can be and is “dubiously” used to define the “other” (Paragraph 1). When one culture seeks to define another culture from the outside, it’s typically an attempt to restrict, control, or even destroy the culture being defined. Such an act of aggression, Baldwin suggests, divides the two cultures.
The French example in the essay highlights a case of language connecting people while this connection is weaponized to oppress certain groups: specifically, Afro-Caribbean French speakers in places such as Guadeloupe, Martinique, and Senegal. These various groups of French speakers that Baldwin discusses are connected by the fact that they all speak French. However, Baldwin’s point is how different each version of French is from the others and that a significant reason for those differences is that the various groups of speakers “have very different realities” (Paragraph 2). The nature of these different realities divides the groups of French speakers from each other and prevents colonized people from being able to “articulate” a reality that is separate from the colonizer. Oppressors, he argues, are aware that to be able to “articulate” one’s own reality holds a dangerous power: “there have been, and are, times, and places, when to speak a certain language could be dangerous, even fatal” (Paragraph 4). Baldwin takes pains to assert that language can divide even to the point of causing death—the most final division.
Baldwin asserts that one significant power of language is social identification. When speaking, “one’s antecedents are revealed” (Paragraph 4), meaning that one can identify points of similarity or difference through the use of language alone without accounting for its content. His example of how English accents can divide (or connect) includes several arenas: parentage, schooling, income, and future prospects. Nevertheless, this power is weaponized. The essay suggests that the ability to identify similarities and differences through language results in more exclusion than inclusion and marginalizes oppressed communities.
Education as a Tool of Self-Empowerment
Education as a tool of self-empowerment is a capstone of Baldwin’s argument that Black English is a stand-alone, fully formed language. He makes his case when the essay is nearly finished and he launches with a “brutal truth”: “The bulk of white people in America never had any interest in educating black people, except as this could serve white purposes” (Paragraph 11). What Baldwin describes in this statement isn’t actually education but instead indoctrination. Baldwin suggests that only teaching and guidance that lead to self-empowerment can rightly be called education.
Baldwin continues to explore education through the focal point of language, asserting that questioning, disrespecting, or dismissing a child’s language is actually dismissing or, in Baldwin’s word, despising the child’s experience. Here Baldwin is saying that a child’s language is a result of and inseparable from the child’s experience, making the child’s language a crucial tool for self-discovery, self-awareness, and self-empowerment. Baldwin’s statement that “a child cannot afford to be fooled” refers to how critical trust is to genuine communication, which is a pillar of true education (Paragraph 11). Baldwin suggests that a child cannot afford to be fooled because being fooled means losing the opportunities for self-definition and self-empowerment that open up through education—and once closed, some doors can be nearly impossible to re-open.
Baldwin then describes how a child might be required by an educator or an educational system to forsake their experience and all that nurtures them, ending up in “a limbo in which he will no longer be black” (Paragraph 11). Such a limbo that strips a child of their identity, by consequence also strips them of any chance at self-determination. A child in this circumstance is truly “lost,” not only to themselves but also to their families and their culture. This is the tragic experience that Baldwin describes with the final sentence of paragraph 11, ending the essay with an image of lost youthful hope to convince the reader of the dangers of trivializing Black English.
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