29 pages • 58 minutes read
James BaldwinA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Throughout this essay, James Baldwin frequently expands his argument not just to make the case that Black English is a language but to analyze its function as a form of resistance to racist, anti-Black structures. He starts immediately by saying that “the other is refusing to be defined by a language that has never been able to recognize him” (Paragraph 1). This establishes the idea that, when speaking in Black English, Black people are not the “other” and their cultures and dispositions are “recognize[d],” allowing them to resist standard English cultural hegemony and racism.
Baldwin uses the history of Black English to argue that it was born out of resistance to slavery. He adds the facets of speech in the context of the Black American church and the context of the enslavement of Black people in the United States, calling the latter a “bitter hour of the world’s history” (Paragraph 7). He addresses the facet of Black English’s formation, saying that the language came “into existence by means of brutal necessity” because the very survival of enslaved Black Africans depended on them quickly learning to communicate with each other across their different native languages (Paragraph 7).
By James Baldwin
Another Country
James Baldwin
A Talk to Teachers
James Baldwin
Blues for Mister Charlie
James Baldwin
Giovanni's Room
James Baldwin
Going To Meet The Man
James Baldwin
Go Tell It on the Mountain
James Baldwin
I Am Not Your Negro
James Baldwin
If Beale Street Could Talk
James Baldwin
Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin
No Name in the Street
James Baldwin
Notes of a Native Son
James Baldwin
Sonny's Blues
James Baldwin
Stranger in the Village
James Baldwin
The Amen Corner
James Baldwin
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin
The Rockpile
James Baldwin