An Educational Model for Black Linguistic and Cultural Reparations

This current time of pandemics and protests is a visceral and constant reminder that the racial and economic legacies of slavery were not only unresolved but continue to determine the course of our daily lives. Few universities have attempted to address these past and present injustices through direct and explicit reparations. Charity Hudley expands on Labov (1972) and Rickford (1987). She reformulates the principle of debt incurred and the unequal partnership between linguistics and the African American speech community into a model for linguistic reparations.

As part of the model for linguistic reparations, Charity Hudley presents work from the Talking College project, a Black student and Black studies-centered way to learn more about the particular linguistic choices of Black students while empowering them to be proud of their cultural and linguistic heritage. Students took introductory educational linguistics courses that examined the role of language in the Black college experience and collected information from college students through both interviews and ethnography. The Talking College project has supported faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Students have conducted over 100 interviews with Black students at several Minority-Serving Institutions, Historically Black College, and Predominantly White Universities. Talking College participants also conducted multi-student ethnographies on over ten college campuses, and Charity Hudley herself lived as a faculty in residence at the University of California Santa Barbara for two years of the project began.

One key question of the Talking College project is: how does the acquisition of different varieties of Black language and culture overlap with identity development, particularly intersectional racial identity development? These findings are helping us create an equity-based model for what linguistic information Black students need to be successful in higher education as it is now and gives us information so that we can work in pursuit of a future version of higher education that is more inclusive of the Black experience. As such, Talking College collects explicit feedback on how faculty can help establish opportunities for students to access content about language, culture, and education within the undergraduate and graduate curriculum. Charity Hudley addresses the work we need to do as educators and linguists to provide more Black college students with information that empowers them and respects their developing identity choices.