Respect the Dialect: Advocating for African American English in Education

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Transcript of “Respect the Dialect: Advocating for African American English in Education” – Bright Conversations Podcast

Hi and welcome to another episode of Bright Conversations. I am your host for today, Shantae Glover-Jones, and it is my pleasure to have Dr. Deanna Latimer Hearn as our guest today talking all things AAE.

Dr. Hearn is an award-winning scholar, consultant and founder of React Initiative, Inc. Her work centers AAE in educational equity. She has over 20 years of global experience in educational equity. And her work empowers educators to unlearn deficit thinking and uplift children and students who are from culturally and linguistically diverse populations. So Deanna, thank you for joining me today. It's a pleasure to have you here. I'm excited to talk to you about AAE and your work. But before we get started, can you tell everyone a little bit more about you and the things that you're involved in?

Well, there are a lot of things. I'm gonna say that I'm involved in. And thank you for the introduction and the welcome to collaborate with you on your show. I do appreciate the opportunity to be here to share. In terms of my experience, I would say it's pretty diverse and it has been a very fun ride, I can say thus far. I've worked in the US, I've worked in Japan, worked in France for a little while. And I have definitely cultivated a big interest in culture, language, anything to do with diversity. It's just kind of my wheelhouse that's exciting to me and always refreshing to learn about. And so that has been sort of my journey. It's gone from traditional school settings to international excursions and opportunities. And it has been an amazing ride. And I appreciate those opportunities because it enables me to then share information with others who might be interested in better supporting populations that come from different backgrounds.

Yeah, I think that it's fascinating to hear that you also worked in Japan and you said France, right? Yes, I did a stint in France. I worked for the French Embassy as an English teaching assistant between undergrad and grad because I didn't want to go back right away. So before grad school 1.0, I spent a year working in France about an hour south of Paris. Now, how did that shape your influence when you think about differences in culture and languages and the work that you began to do later on as an SLP?

I guess in different ways I can say it influenced it. It was probably one of the best jobs I've ever had because I had to work, and I'll say this sarcastically, a grueling 12 hours a week. And so it was working only 12 hours, which gave me the opportunity to travel a ton. So I saw 13 countries in Europe, which was very helpful and very informative in terms of just me learning about myself and then learning about the cultures of the world and the different perspectives that there are around language and just life in general. But the position was great in that it allowed me to look at language in a different way.

Obviously being a CSD or Communication Sciences and Disorders undergrad, the work I did was largely tied to speech language pathology. And so being in an instructional position, it allowed me to look at language in a different way, language learning in a different way, and also to develop my ability to speak French further. I had minored in French in undergrad. And so it further developed those skills as well. Do you speak any other languages besides English and French?

Yes, I also speak Spanish because there was really no money in French in the US for me. So when I lived in France, I partnered with someone who was doing the same job, but she was from Spain. And we did a language exchange. So I began learning Spanish. And I completed a few immersion programs after that as well to further that.

And then I do speak probably what I would refer to as caveman Japanese. I can survive, but I can't hold a conversation in Japanese. So more or less, how much does this cost? Or where does the train go or those sorts of things? But I can't do conversational in Japanese.

That's amazing, though. Thank you. And how long were you in Japan?

I was there for three years, but we were residing on a base. So everything was pretty much in English.

But then there were opportunities to engage with people who were out on the economy, so living in Japan. So it was a great opportunity there. Yeah. And that's interesting that you have the experience of the mouth on both ends so that you understand what it feels like to be someone who's learned another language outside of your native language and how it is to be in another country and your native language. So you come with a lot of experience when you're now seeing clients and students or consulting with people who have clients and students from somewhere outside of the US and English is not their native language.

Definitely understand to a degree the immigrant experience, just having been in a space where I don't quite quote unquote belong and having to navigate governmental systems and figure out how to become legit to the point that I can work and do all of those things. And also, I understand to a degree what it is to be functionally illiterate. Because when I lived in Japan, I could not read the content. Typically, that was presented-- even though I could understand the different syllabaries, I couldn't interpret what I was reading. So I could maybe sound it out or figure out what the word said, but then I had no understanding of the meaning of the word.

And so now, as I start to dig a little deeper into literacy, that's been very informative as well. What it's like to not really be able to understand or to read and function in society using that school. A lot of your work focuses specifically on African-American English. And so I'm curious, have you encountered folks who don't consider speaking African-American English and English as being bilingual?

Yes, definitely. I would say it's pretty pervasive, though, that type of a perspective on it. Honestly, I see the same attitudes among people who are speakers of AAE, or African-American English, as well as people who don't speak it. They kind of denigrate it or dismiss it as something that is not a legitimate linguistic code. And we're doing the same thing that I'm doing when I speak in Spanish or in French. It's the same thing.

But for some reason-- and again, say that sarcastically-- when it's dressed in black, it doesn't count the same. Yeah, yeah. I have to say, I definitely had an aha moment the first time that I heard it, because you do begin to internalize a lot of the messages that you hear about AAE and African-American language. So you don't-- I didn't. I'll say I won't internalize.

But I didn't recognize that it is a language system until I started doing this work and studying. And so just some I heard some one say that it's actually another language. And you are bilingual if you're speaking, able to speak both and switch back and forth. I was like, it definitely opened my eyes in my perspective. Yeah, I think it's unfortunate, too, that we don't learn that much sooner.

I figured that out when I was in grad school 1.0. I had a professor who did research around that topic. And it was such a blessing to have her there. But it taught me that what I was doing all my life was actually bilingualism. And we hadn't been taught that at all. We have been taught that this is slang or it's ignorant or it's not something you can use professionally or in other spaces. And it's so important to debunk a lot of those notions about how we communicate.

Yeah, I agree. I wish I would have learned it earlier on as well. Can you give us a clear and accessible definition of AAE or African American English and how it differs from disordered speech?

To a degree, I could say. So African American English is a rule governed linguistic system. It's spoken by many, but certainly not all African American descendants of enslaved Africans. It differs from mainstream American English. Let's go there first across the five domains of language.

So across phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. But it is one of the strongest ties that we have to our ancestral history in this country. And so for me, it's a big part of my heritage. It's a big part of my history of overcoming the oppressive systems here. And so for me, it's a source of pride.

But in terms of disordered speech, I would say we're differentiating between a structure and a code that's following rules, just like we do when we're looking at mainstream English and we assess someone and their ability to use it. We're looking at whether or not they're following specific rules that are governing the use of that language or that linguistic code and comparing that to somebody who maybe is just having difficulty communicating across the board and whichever aspect of their communication we might be assessing. So if we begin to learn and understand what the rules are around AAE or any other linguistic system, we can then compare that to what we might see as disordered, where we might see a breakdown in communication. But with African American English, we're not looking at a disorder because we're effectively communicating with one another at the very least. Sometimes cross-culturally, we're communicating as well, using it and that is not indicative of a disorder.

Formerly, presently, I guess, depending on who you're speaking to, it was referred to as Ybonyx. It's been referred to African American vernacular English. Yes. So it's had a lot of different names, but oftentimes, as you mentioned earlier on, it was not ever defined or referred to as an actual language system. And I think that there's been more conversation about that recently.

I wanna say last summer, Julia Jones from Howard University presented a course talking about how if you look at expressive language, figurative language of youth, specifically black youth, you can tell a lot more about their language abilities and how complex it often is, but it's sometimes just written off as slang or ignorance, but it does give information about their ability to understand and use complex language if they're able to use a lot of these terms. So I think sometimes people's views of AAE are limited to one domain. So I do like the fact that you pointed out that it's not limited to one it actually impacts several domains. - Yeah, yeah, it goes across all of them. And so the differences are, I mean, we have knowledge about this.

And like you said, it's gone through these different names. It's even been Negro non-standard at one point. So as the names used to refer to our group within society change the language around AAE has changed. And there has been research for well over 50 years around this topic, but somehow we're still not quite incorporating it into the work we're doing on a day to day basis. So yeah, I'm gonna say somehow, sorry.

I know, I'm trying to be kind, right? I already know why, but yeah. It's very fascinating that we haven't used and relied upon a lot of the research that's out there particularly via farming research. I think other types of research get uplifted often.

Yeah. And that's tied to the history of our nation and the history of how we've been positioned in this society and the way we even have been manipulated and used in this society. I think it's another component or another facet of that process. - Okay, so because I feel like you slightly open the door I'm gonna open it all the way up. - Kick it open, kick it open. (laughs) What are your thoughts, if any, about how oftentimes a lot of AAE is used by other groups, but it is defined as a different type of language and become popularized and glamorized.

But those of us who know know that the roots of that particular terminology and so forth. - I think a lot of times I know the roots too, they're just trying to pretend that they invented something. But yeah, that's very much a big issue right now. I think that the commodification of black people in general has been, again, at the root of a lot of what we see now with language. And so taking black bodies to build wealth that hasn't really stopped has just changed and it's been created in different forms.

So it's transformed in some ways in more contemporary times but the same thing is going on. And so we don't like AAE when like Jamal is sitting in class and he asked the question, but we're cool with AAE when it's in our movie and it makes it look more authentic or sound more authentic for the purposes of a story that's being told, right? It's always about who's controlling it and who's earning and who's gaining from his use. And the same thing is happening with white youth and other non-black youth on TikTok or whatever social media platform you wanna call it with this quote unquote Gen Z slang that they're using. Now they're getting clout for the fact that they can use our language.

And so it's really, I think in anyone else's mouth, apparently it's valuable, but somehow when we do it and we are the originators of it, somehow that's a problem. But once you divorce it from our identity then it seems to be perfectly okay. And that's why McDonald's can be loving it and that's how this works. It capitalized off of it. - Exactly. You said that so eloquently. - Thank you. -Chef’s kiss. - But trust me, that's not how I feel about it. But yeah, I mean, it's not how I wanna say it, but that's how I'm gonna hear.

Yes, yes. That's a conversation for another. - Right. - You know what it is. - But on that note, you know, often times a Jamal or a Tamika in school who does speak AAE, they may show up on a caseload because they're misidentified and misdiagnosed.

And some of that has to do with the assessments that we use as well. Can you talk a little bit about how Bayou shows up in our assessments? I'm like, let me count the ways. So essentially our assessments, again, I think they really could be positioned in many ways as another capitalistic aspect of what I just discussed, you know, what I just explained. They are structured and based on white mainstream cultural linguistic experiences, right?

And so the degree of access that you have to that experience is really what's being measured by those tests when you're not a person who is falls in that normative group, right? But it's a money maker. So we purchase these assessments for $9 million 'cause they cost a lot. Obviously was in the wrong profession, should take an a left during my studies, but obviously the money is there, right?

You get these standardized tools that are structured on white cultural linguistic expectations and experiences. And then you test everybody and you say, "Oh, these are the outliers," right? And so what it's really doing is separating those who have that access from those who do not instead of actually assessing the language that they may have and may be able to use.

And so rather than qualifying and quantifying the type of language that a student uses based on who they are in their cultural linguistic background, what we're doing is we're holding that up against this standard, this quote unquote standard that has nothing to do with their lived experience and then saying somehow they feel short. If we were to flip that system around and do it the other way, we'd be doing the exact same thing to a group that didn't match maybe our identity for our cultural linguistic experience. And obviously we would notice then, but we don't notice somehow when there's a somehow again, when we're in the space of doing this to black and brown youth.

And so that's essentially how this happens. So if you look at those five domains I mentioned before, you're essentially differentiating between those who can practice the white cultural linguistic experience across those domains, you're separating them from the ones you cannot. - Right. And you just touched on it as well that even though we are focusing on AAE and how this impacts black children, it also impacts other non-black children as well. And some groups of white children too don't fit that mainstream, they don't fit that socioeconomic level as well.

They still also-- - Yes, we're marginalized on them. - Yes, yes, yes, yes. So I'm thinking about a student who is being assessed in a school setting by someone who is a standard American English speaker. And they're using a, they're go-to assessments to assess this child. Do you have any recommendations for someone to try to make sure you're getting a fuller picture of this child's abilities without relying solely on the standardized assessments and those scores that come up?

Yeah, I would say first off, just stop. What you know about that? That's the first thing, no. I know that many schools actually require that standardized assessment to be used. So it's not something you can necessarily move away from depending on the state you live in and the rules around your particular special education process.

But it's so important to take a look at the context from which the student comes. So like look at their experience, look at their, the way in which they might communicate with their own community. And also investigate how their communication appears to be functioning in their family, among their peers. Sometimes I might even go into a community and speak with maybe students in the school who are not identified as being disordered or having some sort of concern with their language and see how they're communicating and then compare what my student is doing if I'm assessing and I'm unsure, 'cause this sound right. You might observe them in an interaction with their peers.

How is that interaction going? Do they understand each other? Are they able to communicate clearly? Where is the breakdown occurring? But you really have to take it away from this notion that they need to meet some standard quote unquote standard mark and really look at what it is that they're doing in comparison to who they are and where they come from and not in comparison to some other arbitrary standard that just doesn't make sense for them.

So incorporating that dynamic assessment is very important too. If you want to see if they can do a specific thing, teach them the skill and then assess how they're doing and how they apply it across the board to see if they actually can do that rather than just pathologizing it and saying, "Well, he didn't use past tense ed, so therefore." - Right. - Yeah, he needs services. And then I get on the screen, but yeah. (laughs) - And also when it comes to speech sounds, their differences, they are too that sometimes students are flagged by their general education teacher because they don't produce a particular phoneme.

But if you understand the pattern of their speech and most times you understand them, they're intelligible. - You understand what they say. - Yeah, you understand. - They're intelligible. You understood, but because it doesn't match the standard, they refer to the SLP. So what should the SLP do in a situation like that?

I always encourage them to start with one educating themselves around the topic, right, around this language and linguistic code, but then also educate some of the teachers around that if it's possible. So a lot of educators don't receive in their education training programs. They don't receive linguistic coursework or content to the extent, obviously, that a speech language pathologist does. So you bring your expertise and your knowledge around the specific linguistic code and you introduce that to the teacher and help them identify patterns among their students even or among specific students and say this is what we're actually watching play out.

And this is how we can adapt the curriculum or adjust and score differently for a specific student in order to support them in their linguistic background within that space. So it doesn't become an opportunity to then pathologize this kid, get them out of the classroom to do therapy for something that's not wrong. It's not actually an incorrect way of performing language. They're just simply doing something that differs from the mainstream. And so we don't wanna pathologize that and take them out of their educational place in order to quote unquote fix something that's not broken.

So we wanna work around that. And one way we can do that is by educating those who are making those referrals. But definitely if they show up in front of you and you have to do an assessment, you really need to do task and item analyses of the assessment tools. So I might go through and look at what am I supposed to be measuring, which one of these might miss the mark for the linguistic code I'm sitting here serving? And so how do I then adapt this to make sure that I'm not penalizing the student for having a difference?

But I am identifying the errors that are present if there are some. 'Cause it can still be a disorder within a dialect. But, and I don't like to say it, 'cause where else does a disorder occur? But there could be a disorder if a person speaks AA, just like there could be a disorder within mainstream English. Correct, yeah, yeah, that's a great point that you mentioned and a good reminder too to review the assessment before having that student in front of you so that you take a look at the items beforehand.

And this sounds like some really good information to share with the entire staff at the beginning of the school year. So that teachers have this mindset already when they're starting to look at their new case on before they start to make their referrals and this information to be more proactive as opposed to later on being upset because you have so many referrals and recognizing like a lot of these children shouldn't have been referred in the first place. But it might be that lack of communication, that lack of education in their training programs as you mentioned. So I'm gonna ask, we talked a little bit about misidentification and misdiagnosis. In your experience, have you interacted with students who were misdiagnosed or misidentified? .

And how did that impact their identity? How did that impact their self-esteem? To be basically told that who you are is less significant than the general mainstream. - I think it has a big impact on our students. We're not always able to observe it or recognize it, especially if we're not aware of sort of the trajectory of their quote unquote, special education and related service process and where they, where, you know, a lot of times we inherit these kids and you're like, well, you've had six years of therapy for a pattern that is different from, you know, and so it's very hard to inherit cases like that and to realize there's work that has to be done to undo the harm that they have been learning for this period of time.

One particular student, and this happens a ton. I've encountered a ton working in outside of the Chicago area. I've worked in Baltimore city, I've worked in Dallas. So I meet a lot of AAE speaking students and I definitely can say this is a common occurrence. But one student in particular stands out, he was a teenager by the time I got him, he must have been about maybe a sophomore in school at the time and we, I asked him first, you know, what are your goals and objectives that you're even supposed to be working on here?

You know, I often start with that, even with my younger students, I ask them, because if you don't know why you're here, what are we doing, really? 'Cause I mean, if you aren't sure, I'm not sure either. So he couldn't tell me what his goals and objectives were. So we sat down and we went over his IEP, we looked at the goals specifically for speech and language and talked about what those were and they were targeting AAE. I mean, every one of them was targeting an aspect of AAE.

And so then we had a discussion about the difference, the differences between AAE and managed from American English and Aline, Sammy Aline does some great work around ethnographic discussions with, particularly with teenage students. And so we had some discussions about where do you hear this particular code happening? Where do you hear that one? Why is that the case? You know, rather than sharing my perspective on why this is happening, I want him to explore what does this mean and where have you heard this and why is this occurring?

But once he was able to differentiate between the two codes, I'm like, okay, so here's what's happening. Here in the classroom, they're expecting this, you're doing that, which is equally valid. And this is why you've come here and you're on my case load. And so how do we now navigate that? And what does that mean to you and what do you, what do you wanna do with that?

Because I'm not here to tell you, oh, you better code switch in the classroom or else, that's not my role. And so it was really, for me, I could see the light bulb. I could see him just having an aha moment, like that's what's been going on all this time. And so then we started to unpack that. And so it was like, we're gonna go back to the table to discuss this because this isn't appropriate and we don't need these services this way.

But now he has the language to advocate for what he actually needs and to understand what's going on. And then make a decision as to how he wants to proceed. Who do you wanna be and how does your linguistic identity fit into who you are in that space? And understand that there's nothing wrong with who you are. But undoing that became the focus of the next sessions, until we could get to that meeting. We have to meet still. So here's what your therapy is gonna look like. We're gonna undo all this. Because how do we start to address and drive home the way that this pathologization of who you are was driven home. How do we undo that and drive home the point that there's nothing wrong with you and the way you communicate. . And that it is whole and that it is valid and that we see it in all these different spaces. - Yeah, that's really powerful. And the use of that tool with the reflex of questioning to make him actually reflect and recognize what was happening as opposed to you just telling him. I think that's really powerful too. Because his identity is wrapped up in that, right?

And so I can't tell him you need to believe the way that I believe about my identity and my understanding of my heritage, but you gotta figure out where does it fit and how do you do this? How do you navigate it in your classroom? And that's so important that we don't, I hear a lot of SLPs who do, oh, code switching matters and it's so important. And so then this is what I'm gonna make you do. Well, I can't make someone speak a certain way in a certain space.

That's their decision. And I can't take that from them. - Agreed, yeah, yeah. And giving him more ownership, something that sounded like he never had. He never really had that autonomy when it came to how he chose to communicate or understanding the dynamics of the community and he was kind of forced into a place.

So that sounds like a really, really powerful relationship that you develop with that particular student. - We hope so, but it's like a small window and then what did he receive over all those years is the hard part. What happened to his self-esteem, what happened to his identity, his understanding of his community, what did we strip him off as a system? But yeah, but I appreciate that. - There was a lot of building him back up and dismantling and unlearning a lot that he had internalized such a long time.

And I think that that kind of leads to my question about how does pathologizing of AAE intersect the broader narratives about black identity education? - We don't get back to the coins, man. So we're going back to the coins. So I kind of have mentioned how that testing industry is, you know, makes a good dollar. And so creating these tests that pathologize specific groups also furthers that dollar.

So if we have groups of people that we marginalized, we now earn money off of the marginalization of those individuals because you see funding for special education, related services, we get money for that stuff. So it's incentivized to do this, but then it also leads to, you know, educational initiatives that are like, hey, we need to help the blacks, you know, we need to help these little kids who are just so, you know, struggling so much. And so then they can also advocate for more funding because they're saying, oh, this is an initiative that's gonna fix this issue. And then when in the quote unquote initiative, which is targeting the wrong concepts or the wrong ideas, don't work, then it's further evidence of they just, they can't learn or they can't do, you know, so it's really about the system that this country has built. I mean, at the end of the day, we're reinforcing it. .

And then we call it the Black White Achievement Gap, or we call it whatever. - Right. - We like to call it, we don't really talk about the white Asian Achievement Gap, we won't get that. But yeah, so we center whiteness as the default without recognizing they're not the top performers in many cases in our schools. And then we pathologize specific groups and say, oh, they can't learn or they're less capable or anything that comes with that culture is negative.

Yeah, yeah. - Of course, until they strip it from us. - Now, what are your thoughts about staying still with like black students and black families? When you get thoughts about children whose parents say, well, I don't want them to speak that way. And they need to learn how to speak the King's English.

What do you do with it? What do you do if that's the true way? - I typically will just provide some education around it because I've had relatives who speak AAE and correct me when I speak AAE or, you know, even hold it in that light that it's bad, even though you're doing the same thing. Okay. And that's because we've internalized a lot of the racist messaging around our language. So it's not, I'm not gonna say it's wrong if this is what they've decided. This is how they have decided to address the barriers and the systemic oppressive processes that they're engaging with, right? That's one way of doing that. I don't necessarily feel that that fixes it because you still show up black, but they still show up and you're not exactly what they ordered. I have a very clear experience with that that happened when I was working as a consultant in France some years ago, it was a hot mess, but yeah, you still show up black.

So I think it's again, one survival technique that maybe someone has come up with in this society. So I try to educate around it and just say, hey, you know, just so that you're aware this is what they're doing, this is valid, this is real, but it doesn't mean that it's going to change the perspective or the understanding or the values of the individual who's pushing for their kid to only speak the King's English. (both laughing) - I just thought about how we currently live in a small area that is predominantly black, but prior to being here, we lived in a diverse community, but it was not diverse in race. So it's very diverse in ethnicities and our younger daughter, she went to preschool and she was probably maybe like one of two black children at that particular preschool, but as soon as we moved to the community that we live in now, she started coming home and little by little, I heard her language changing. And I remember looking like, because there were terms that we don't even use at home picking them up in school, and she seemed to be happy to be using this new form.

And then looking to see how we would react, but no one had a reaction, it was just like, oh, this is something. But it felt like she had found a new connection to her, and then that she may not have had previously when she was in the other community. And for us, it was, for me, I'll say, it was really nice to see and nice to watch, but I always do recognize that there are lots of families who would have maybe condemned that and said, that you need to speak the way that you would speak if you were going for a job, and how will you get a job if you don't speak the standard English? - I think that's a lot of what we uphold too. And Lippy Green talks about that, the process by which we uphold these notions that you have to conform, because we're part of the problem in doing that.

So we're reiterating the same messages that we've received, and those are messages are not necessarily founded in the truth. You can do all those things if you don't speak mainstream English, but we want to say, because we don't see examples of not conforming. So because we don't see those examples, we believe, and we uphold and repeat that you can't get a job, you can't do these things. You can, but where would we ever see that highlighted? I mean, it's not like the average person goes to get a job and we suddenly see, he did his interview, and how would we know? (laughs) - But if that's the only linguistic code that he uses, guess what he used in his interview? - Correct. - And he has a job, so. (laughs) - And then going back to what you said earlier, if you may see it in a commercial, you may see in some sort of communication, and then it's glamorizing, it's more favorable, but where do you think that that came from? - Yeah. When you picked up that terminology. - Exactly. (laughs) - Okay, so this question, I think we kind of touched on it, but what's at stake when schools attempt to correct AAE or suppress linguistic identity? - Yeah, everything. - Yeah, everything's at stake.

Your example with the teenager really did highly and what's at stake? - Well, I think we see with him, what's at stake for him, but we don't see what's at stake for the people who were in class with him and watched that happen. So the ones who are watching him be treated differently for this, then they learn that this linguistic discrimination or linguicism is appropriate in certain context, that the way he communicates is wrong. We're learning those messages when we're in the classroom because we hear what happens, or we see what happens when someone uses their own linguistic code in that space.

And it's something I picked up on as a kid, I thought, well, why are the codes which anyway? And I didn't have the words to say they weren't codes whiching, but I understood that they were talking in a way that wasn't quote unquote appropriate in my classroom. And I didn't understand at the time that not everyone in the classroom had the ability to do that. I grew up in a home where both codes were spoken, so I could move between them. In a home where both are not spoken, then you don't have that option. And that goes for the mainstream English speaker too. .

They don't have the option of code switching. Just like we wouldn't if we lived only in a community with that spoke AAE and no other dialects or linguistic codes in this space. - Yeah, yeah. And I want to edit myself because I think I refer to as standard American English, and it should be referred to as mainstream. - Well, I mean, I don't know that any of the labels we use to like fix it or make it right. .

I think the whole notion is problematic because there isn't a fixed mainstream or standard or general or, you know, it's not really a fixed idea. It's more of an ideal that we talk about and we use different words to refer to it. So I don't think that's, you know, problematic. And I understood which meant so we were. (both laughing) We were here. Okay, okay. - So we are in this field where the majority of our colleagues are not black or brown. - And the fourth wide is profession. Go ahead. - Of course.

Of course. (both laughing) - How do we get more of our colleagues to buy in, to taking professional development to understand these situations because although 92% of the field might be white, that's not your caseload. That's not your student body when you walk into these schools. So it is important for everyone to understand this. And then on the other end, as you just mentioned, even if you do have a homogenous caseload, it's important that you're teaching this because you don't know where your students will end up later on. .

So important. - How do we get them to buy in? - Not by rolling back DEI in our standards, Asha. But I guess, I really honestly think it begins with who they are and who they see themselves being in terms of this, the service and this profession that we're in. I think historically, and oftentimes around Halloween, you see it, we've been positioned as the quote unquote grammar police and to all the SLPs out there who keep putting that on and doing that every year.

Please know you're doing harm to specific communities. Stop it. But we have been positioned historically, we were positioned as those who were upholding the, kind of the purity of the language or the way that it quote unquote should be. And we have since evolved to some degree, but if we get to the place where we need, I think we have to do some soul searching for ourselves. We have to recognize that our role is not to uphold some arbitrary standard or arbitrary ideal way of communicating, but really to facilitate people's ability to communicate within their context, within their lived context.

And if we're supporting that in that way, then we can stop feeling that the way that we communicate is the best way. And I think the problem goes much further than that, because at the end of the day, when we're pathologizing individuals, then we're getting into ableism and all sorts of other issues that are just as problematic. And so I really think we have to move away from this notion that there's some sort of hierarchy as to how people are able to communicate. Everyone deserves access. Everyone deserves the opportunity to participate in whatever system they choose to participate in.

And we can't be so authoritarian that we feel that, oh, it has to be the way I said it is. - Right. - But I don't know how that will change, because again, when we're in the midst of potentially rolling back DEI standards, then I don't know how that change is. And I've heard it argued that they're just removing the words and not the values, which is fascinating, 'cause I'm like, what were the words doing there? The first place if you didn't need them for the values to be present. And I might expect that from certain entities, but from a language-centered entity, I'm gonna go with no words, I mean things, and removing them matters, and it means things too. - Yeah, and removing them gives folks the permission to do - Yeah. - They want to do anyway. And I've been thinking a lot about how we put so much responsibility on this governing body when it really does come down to what are you going to do as an individual? And no matter what this body stands may be, you yourself as the individual aren't taking that look inward.

If you're not looking at the biases that you hold onto, but we're never really going to be able to fix SLP if we don't look at the individual. - You gotta figure out who you wanna be, and who is that that you wanna be? - Yeah, I agree. - Some people have kind of low bar on that in terms of the service they're providing to diverse communities. I feel like I should reproduce who I am. .

And be a correctness, as opposed to supporting. - Yeah, they're heavy on the pathology part of the name. (both laughing) - Heavy, heavy. (both laughing) - So yeah. - Let's talk a little bit about respect the dialect. .

Mm-hmm. - And what inspired you to start the respect the dialect platform? - All of the hot mess we just talked about. No. (both laughing) Honestly, during my dissertation, I looked at SLP's perspectives around AA, the training they received, and the attitudes they held towards it. And yeah, it was not good. Only 24% were receiving training about AA which is not cool. And typically the training was the only thing that made a difference in terms of their attitudes towards the dialect or the linguistic code. And so if you think about that, we expect that exposure to it improves your maybe perspective around it, right? We would expect that to happen.

But that means that the majority of the people in our programs are not receiving training and therefore not holding it in high regard. But then going out and probably serving plenty of people who speak it. And so I thought what we really need is, we don't need more research necessarily we do, but we always need research. But we've had so much research, but it feels like the research isn't reaching the population, that isn't reaching the people who need it. And so I started respect the dialect to just raise awareness around the nuances of the linguistic code, the ways in which it's used, the strategies you might incorporate into what you're doing in the classroom or in therapy or wherever in professional spaces, wherever you might be.

And to really work on driving home the validation and the validity of what we do and how we communicate. Like this is what we need to be doing and we need to promote that knowledge instead of leaving it in a silo of educational research where practitioners can't access it. Which is a whole nother money making scheme that I'm fascinated by, but the separation of knowledge from the people who need it is something. And so trying to kind of bridge that difference there, that lack of knowledge or lack of access to the knowledge and this need to improve outcomes for students was kind of the impetus behind it. And I'm excited about it.

I think it has grown in some ways and I have some new things that I'll be probably doing in the new year with it, but with that platform. But yeah, it's been a great experience and I think it informs some of the research that I do as a public scholar because I get the same question over and over again, okay, so how do we drive home this information and how do we really make it clear if this is the breakdown of the knowledge. - So what are some of the resources that are available currently to SLPs or administrators who are looking to try to make some changes? - On the respect to the dialect platform, it's a website and it also is an Instagram page that has not been the act of my bad guys. (laughs) It's a great thing to do.

Like I got family and other things going on, but and then also a Facebook page. I'll probably say that Facebook group is the most active. I typically post the most in there, but that is a space where we have a lot of dialogue and discussion around different issues pertaining to AAE and that's where people can go for free information. So if they just have questions and want something kind of quick and accessible, that's where they can go to find that. The website itself, respectthedialick.com has links to podcasts, video content, audio content, books, different resources like that that might support their learning further information around AAE. .

And then there's also access to courses through our React Initiative Inc platform. We're an Azure CE providing organization. So we offer courses for Azure CE use through there. Those are paid, but you can find out about opportunities for learning whether paid or unpaid on our, in our group or on our website typically. - We'll make sure that we highlight all of that information in our show notes, but I do highly recommend checking out the website, respect the dialect. .

There are a lot of really amazing resources there. And it's interesting to me when I talk to different people, especially people who are focusing specifically on speech sound disorders, they're kind of unaware to think. They're unaware of some of the things that they may have been teaching, some of the things that they may have been trying to remediate because they weren't familiar with the fact that that's a difference and not a disorder. So even if you feel that you're a seasoned clinician, it's worth taking a look just to make sure that you're doing your students, you're not doing your students a disservice in the way that you're approaching their intervention or even identifying them for intervention. - Yeah., you could, what's one myth about AAE that you'd like to go away for good? (laughing) - Yeah, there's so many. One I would say, probably the biggest one is just that it is ignorant. Like we ain't ignorant, we ain't, or as we would say, we ain't ignorant. We know we're saying, we're communicating effectively with everybody.

We're doing what you're doing. We're just doing it in a different linguistic code. And so tying that to some sort of notion of inferiority or lack of education or any of that, like by definition, we're not the ones who's ignorant, that's not us, because if you're unaware of what we're doing, that would probably be the definition of that word. So-- - And it's not new. - Yeah, it's not, and that's why I'm like, it's been out here, we've been talked about every which way, you out here doing it online, trying to make yourself look cool.

You know what it is, so stop pretending that, 'cause you're choosing to ignore the facts and that by definition would mean that it's not me who's ignorant. So really recognize that what it is is not inferior, is not less than, and that goes for people who are speakers of it too, like we have to stop holding ourselves in that light, because we've been taught to hold ourselves in that light, that's not who we are, as a people. - Yes. - The fact that it ties me back to our history of overcoming slavery in this country, chattel slavery in this country, means that it's powerful, means that it can be used to overcome the things that are going on, it can be used to communicate in a way in front of someone who's oppressing you, that they can't even understand what you're talking about, right, you got double meanings and all kinds of stuff that we're doing that symbols, you've got all these different rich pieces of who we are in our language and our communication that you really can't touch it, and to me, if that's my heritage, because it means that I, you know, we use this to overcome, that's a source of pride, that's not something that's less than. - Yeah. - Because you tried it and it didn't work out. - Yeah. (laughs) - And you still tried it. - You still rich, it's so beautiful to me. I do here's this video that I see circulating sometimes and I can't remember who it's between.

It's two actresses on a game show. She's supposed to be giving clues to the other black woman about the prompt, and they never speak. She's on the word, and then after that, she just keeps giving a look. And then the other one gets a little back, like, I think I know what she's saying. - Yeah. - What she's saying. But there's no words being spoken like they're looking back and forth. - It's called non-verbal. - And then she gets the answer correct, they win the game, hilarious. - 'Cause that's how it works. .

'Cause that's how it works, that's exactly how it works. - And that's what is frustrating, especially as I dive more into like the literacy space, is this notion that blackness is illiterate. And I'm like, how are we illiterate? We're not illiterate. We've been literate from the beginning, 'cause why did you have laws preventing literacy?

If it's not what we were doing. And then like, hey, Harlem Renaissance. But anyway, so if we're so illiterate, how is it that we're able to do this? How is it that we can take what you do and remix it and give it back to you in a way you can't even figure it out? - You can't understand.

Yeah. - That's not ignorant. That's my definition, brilliant. - That's brilliant. - Yeah. - Indeed. Before we end this conversation, we talked about a lot of things for someone who is now intrigued and wanting to take a little bit of a deeper dive or even starting their journey on trying to understand a little bit better. What's one small shift that an educator and SLP that an individual can make today or tomorrow towards being more culturally affirming and culturally sustaining practices? - I think just for us pause, stop and think about what you think about. Think about how you're considering language and think about your own biases.

Think about what you have accepted as truth without questioning it. Now that you've heard this, what are some things that you can reflect on that maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to judge or maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to just jump on this bandwagon and how do I also identify those pauses in the classroom? How do I take those pauses in the therapy session where I don't just immediately jump on this automatic response of death wrong, but I take a moment to really think about what's happening, what does it mean about the student and who they are and how do I navigate this in a way that is more affirming for them? I think it all starts with that reflection and that sort of moment of thinking about who I am and what do I think about this process, about this language, about what I've been told. Without that pause in yourself, you can't make any other changes that you're trying to make outside.

Yeah, that's a powerful message to end with and we're gonna stop right there. I do think you so much though, Dr. Deanna Lettimer-Hern for your time today. I know it's a busy time and we appreciate you sharing your time and your wisdom and all of your experience, your lived experiences as well as all of your professional experience with us. Do take a minute folks and check out Respect the Dialect website, check out all of the information that's in the Facebook group, join the Facebook group.

We encourage you and invite you to continue to learn beyond this conversation. And if you like what you heard here, continue to listen to bright conversations. You can head to bethebrightest.com to hear more conversations and you can also listen on Apple or Spotify, whatever your favorite platform is for your podcast. Thank you again for being here with us, Dr. - Thank you.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here and share.

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