John Stossel's Facebook channel recently offered me a snippet that quoted Arizona State University professor Asao Inoue's speech at a 2019 conference, wherein he decried the "white supremacy" of standard English.
If you use a single standard to grade your students' languaging, you engage in racism.
Inoue dialed up the rhetorical bullshit with this bit of florid folderol, a bit that Google AI unfortunately labeled as "powerful:"
Melt the steel bars of racism and White language supremacy.
Those steel bars supposedly confine students whose vernacular doesn't conform to standard English.
Inoue has it exactly backward. Not teaching all students a common language is a surefire way to keep nonconforming students, no matter their skin color, from achieving greater life success.
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