Those that think that "teaching acceptance" is a solution to the problems presented in the article have an unrealistic view of the world. The fight against prejudice can never be won, and that fact is engraved in our biological psychology. If you examine sociological and psychological studies about groups that once were discriminated against but now not so much (for example, the Irish), it becomes clear that discrimination against these groups didn't stop because we recognized their differences and accepted them, but instead because we no longer recognize the differences! Let's take the Irish who immigrated to America as an example. In census' from a long time ago, "Irish" was considered a separate race. Now we just label most Europeans as Caucasian. We see them all as the same type of person as us and so there isn't discrimination.
That being said, the language of power is something that can be easily discriminated from other dialects. Unless we no longer recognize the two modes of speech as different, one needs to know the language of power. And, accepting a dialect is different from ceasing to notice that it is different from your own.
posted by albert smith @ 11:45 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
I think that your idea of eliminating discrimination by not recognizing the differences is very interesting. However, I wonder how people might achieve blindness to differences? If the topic was never brought up in class or in conversation, would people “forget” difference, or not dwell on it, as it wouldn’t seem important? Would people stop studying grammar to ignore differences between dialects? What would cause people to not discriminate in the workplace when interviewing candidates with two different dialects?
I agree, teaching acceptance is so much harder than just teaching proper language skills to everyone. People have way too much ingrained prejudice.
Were the Irish really considered another race?
This idea about ending discrimination by not recognizing differences rather than acceptance is very intriguing.
In response to the first comment, perhaps a way to "forget" the differences would be to focus attention on an "other" group and collect the current different groups together. In the example Albert gave, that "other" group would be non-Caucasians. As far as teaching grammar goes, we might have an "American grammar" versus the 'other' "Canadian grammar" (assuming that the differences were large enough in the first place.)
Maybe.
Your blog was extremely intereseting. I totally agree with your statement abotu not recognizing the differences as a way to eliminate discrimination. If we were never taught that we were different then African Americans, so generations before us were taugh the same then maybe to this day we wouldn't be here writing a blog. I liked what you said and it made me think a lot
I completely agree. Teaching acceptance sounds like one of those annoying politically correct phrases - everyone likes the idea of what's being said but has no real way of implementing it so we talk about it to feel like we're making progress on the issue even though nothing's actually happening. I never thought of the language of power in the light of discrimination. That was really interesting. And your observation on dialects was right on. Even when you live in a place for a while with an accent different to your native one, you'll still notice the differences even when you're fine with the fact that people speak differently than you do.
Yes, the Irish were considered another race. Because both them and the blacks were being total screwed over by the whites and were joining together to do something about it, the whites decided then to make the Irish "white" to divide them from the blacks. The Irish then got "white" privilege and then got raised up on social ladder and separated from the blacks (probably because their differences were socially recognized).
I also agree that it is in the nature of humans to be exclusive and discriminatory. While this is unfortunate, recognition of the state of things is a positive first step. It is also unfortunate that the only easy way to cultivate acceptance is to breed homogeneity. I do believe that it is possible to make it in the world while still maintaining individuality, but at times, tragic as it may be, it has to be suppressed.
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