But Bill’s class showed me that racism is judgment, that the classroom is a site that reproduces racism and White language supremacy, that how judgments in such spaces are made have just as much to do with larger, structural forces as they do with an individual’s idiosyncratic reading of a text
Reminds me of Curzan's "Says Who? Questioning the Rules of the English Grammar" (2009), in which she writes,
Through language, we assert our identities. And we judge others on language (873).
White language supremacy
And of Curzan's "Teaching the Politics of Standard English" (2002), in which she writes
A student once asked me, after one of our discussions about American dialects and language attitudes, 'How do you sleep at night?' What, she wanted to know, did I think my role, as well as that of other linguists, should be in informing the public about such misconceptions about dialects and about the harmful repercussions of these misconceptions? How, she asked, could people be so misinformed about dialects? And didn’t we have a responsibility to educate the public? (340).
Anne Curzan