Color Coded Conversations

Over the short amount of years I have been in this world, I have learned a lifetimes worth of things just from language alone. I have learned ,thanks entirely to the judgment of others, that my way of speaking is 'white'. Which on paper sounds kind of ridiculous as you wouldn't think of language as actually having a color. But I assure you people in this day and age have color coded the english language. While slang and grammatically incorrect english is usually referred to as 'black' more articulated, polished english is thought of as 'white'. There exist a grey zone where broken english falls into but that's a story for another day. In the hierarchy of colored language someone speaking in a 'white' manner is always thought to be smarter than someone who speaks in a 'black' or even 'grey' dialect and that shouldn't be so. Take my first day of 6th grade for example.

“Welcome to Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love!” I still remembered the giant billboard ushering us into Philadelphia after what seemed like endless drive along a highway that seemed like it stretched on forever. Now I stood at a classroom door, scared nervous, out of my element. I put doubt behind me as I remembered I was in the city of brotherly love of course they would accept me they had too. Right? I slowly crept through the door accidently closing it a bit harder than I intended to. Instantly 30 pairs of eyes swallowed me whole from my hair to my skin color to the shoes I wore. Everything  was put on the forefront. I remember my teacher, Ms.Graves, booming voice. “Okay class this is Charles” Char-els she somehow managed to shove two syllables in my name “Char-els tell us about yourself!” It was more of a command then a suggestion. I looked out at my classmates they were hungry for information their eyes said so. “Well, my name is Charles,” I said emphasizing the way my name is supposed to be spoken the way my mom says it. In one breath, short sweet, but it carried power. I remember getting weird looks just from this statement, not form what I said, but form my annunciation and pronunciation, nervously I continued. “I’m from Atlanta, Georgia. I just moved here not to long ago and I—“ “Why is you talkin’ so white?” This outburst came from a girl right in front of me, it wasn’t a tease, it was not an insult. It was a sincere question. Why did I talk so white? The whole class went up in laughter; they had all been wondering the same thing apparently. I never did answer that girl, I didn’t know how too. 

That was the first time I had not only realized i talked differently from other black kids, but I was assumed to be smartly purely from just me muttering a few words. My time in 6th grade was spent trying to adjust to the Philadelphia dialect. At first I had mental cringes every time a kid would say "I be" or "They is" and I'll admit at time I thought of them as stupid or uneducated. But then came the days we had classroom discussions and it were those days that I realized my peers 'black' language did not reflect how bright there minds were. My fancy words didn't make my point anymore valid than the next man-- or kid in my classroom and I realized from that day on that people assuming intellectual levels based on speech is ignorance at it's finest. In their defense, it's only logical to think an idea is only as good as it is portrayed verbally. However what we overlook is what's being spoken and what's being spoken are two very different things. 

In closing, a persons mastery over their respective language, or even others, should not reflect how educated or smart you think they are. doing that is not only ignorant but it's one of the very prudent forms of modern racism. Thinking this way can only hurt you in expanding your mind to the different cultures of the world.