ARCHIVES
EDUCATION | COVID-19 | TECH | SOCIAL | WORK | ENVIRONMENT | POLITICS | CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Don’t forget to subscribe ›
Analyze representation in media.
Get daily actions in your inbox. Subscribe Now ›
It's Friday!
And Ebony is discussing Hamilton today, which many of you have asked about after our newsletters on Independence Day and cancel culture. Ideally, this sparks a regular practice of analyzing representation in all media, and advocating for more inclusive, diverse storytelling.
Each Saturday I dedicate the newsletter to answering questions and sharing insights from our community. It's a good time to reflect and deepen your understanding of topics this week. If you haven't already, email us your thoughts. I don't offer 1:1 consulting and can't get back to everyone, but I do my best!
If these emails support your anti-racism practice, consider giving $5/month on Patreon, or making a one-time contribution on our website (new!), PayPal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza). You can also now share this with your whole workplace with a custom enrollment link and reporting.
Nicole
TAKE ACTION
1. The next time you watch a movie with a historical context (fictional or otherwise), consider...
Who's voice may be missing in this narrative?
Who shaped this story? What are the backgrounds of the writer, director, etc?
What part(s) of history may I be missing?
2. Explore other conversations about #RepresentationMatters on Twitter.
GET EDUCATED
"Why are people mad about Hamilton?"
Hamilton has become a cultural phenomenon. Written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and inspired by a recently published biography, this musical tells the story of Alexander Hamilton through hip-hop, R&B, soul, and show tunes. Since its debut in 2015, it “has grossed $500 million, won 11 Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize, and was staged for three US tours, a production in London’s West End, and one in Chicago” (IndieWire). With this level of success, it’s no surprise Disney spent approximately $75 million for a recording of the musical featuring the original Broadway cast.
Disney released Hamilton on Disney+, their streaming service, on 4th of July weekend as a celebratory statement during fraught times. This reignited, and accelerated, conversations around representation. On one hand, people praise the casting team for hiring a diverse crew, and praise the musical for celebrating Black culture through its music. And on the other, critics question the lack of representation within the story. Both sides have valid points of view that need to be addressed.
With a lack of diversity still being present in both the film and theater industry, Hamilton made a name for itself by centering its production around non-white actors and performers who regularly face disadvantages in their field. This level of representation inspired other theater companies to make a bigger effort to ensure all cultures and ethnicities are portrayed accurately so there can be proper representation throughout their production (DC Metro, Theater Arts).
“Hamilton is the first of its kind to present a bounty of multicultural artistry – white actors included – because it doesn’t present actors of color just to put them on a stage," writes Don Michael Mendoza (DC Metro, Theater Arts). “It places them in a meaningful story about the founding of our country that is also a comment on the diversity of what America is comprised of, which is many cultures as one".
Hamilton challenged the status quo and made people rethink the roles people of color should play. Having diverse actors portray white historical figures in a compelling way is a refreshing change to the whitewashing we normally see in the entertainment industry (The Guardian). The same year Hamilton was released, only 13.9% of all available roles on Broadway were cast without regard to race or ability, and shows that hired predominantly people of color were rare (Playbill).
Yet Hamilton doesn’t accurately represent the narrative of marginalized communities within the storyline. Consider the characters: there is no representation of Black or Indigenous people in the story despite their active contributions to the development of our nation. The identities of enslaved people were completely erased, evident in the line “no one else was in the room where it happened” from the song “The Room Where it Happens” (Youtube). Hamilton also neglects to mention the African Americans soldiers who fought in the Revolutionary War for both British and American armies (American Battlefield Trust).
Along with the erasure of Black and Indigenous people, this musical marginalized its female characters. There were only three female leads, each defined by their romantic connection to Alexander Hamilton. They are Eliza who was Hamilton’s wife, Angelica who was Eliza’s sister and Hamilton’s close friend and true love, and Maria Reynolds, Hamilton’s mistress. These women were drastically featured less compared to their male counterparts, and there’s a “clear difference in freedom of expression and representation for the women in Hamilton, who sing in only 14 of the 46 songs” (The Conversation).
Hamilton himself is introduced as a “scrappy and hungry” immigrant, passionate about freedom for all. But that wasn’t exactly true. Historian Annette Gordon-Reed notes that Hamilton qualified as a U.S. citizen and bought and sold slaves for his family. He never promoted an anti-slavery agenda in his leadership (Harvard). (Hamilton himself may have owned slaves, too – details in the NYTimes).
The play also glorifies the other Founding Fathers and glosses over their involvement in slavery. For example, James Madison, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson were all known slave owners, and all supported the genocide of Native Americans (Counterpunch). Although Jefferson declared “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, the Founding Fathers didn’t extend that idea to every person on the nation’s lands (History).
Screenshot via Oprah Magazine
Our perception of representation is evolving.
It’s important we rethink what representation should look like on stages, television, and movies. First, we still need to make progress with on-screen representation. Even though 40% of the population is non-white, only 19.8% of lead actors in films were non-white in 2017 (PBS).
But, we also need to share the stories and histories of all ethnicities, sexual identities, genders, disabilities, and religions of those people (Los Angeles Times). And that will take more representation off-screeen; we need more people from marginalized groups to create, write, direct, and produce content that accurately reflects their lives.
This can be seen in the FX show “Pose” which is about the Black and Latino LGBTQ+ ballroom culture scene in NYC during the 1980s (FX). This show has “the largest transgender cast of any commercial, scripted TV show” and features both cast and members who directly identify with the characters and stories of the show (The Guardian). This show is changing the rules on how the entertainment industry should tell the stories of non-white people.
If Hamilton took this same approach, its audience could have seen how Black and Indigenous people played a vital role in the country’s creation. The addition of a character or two could have enhanced the storyline without completely erasing elements of our history. For example, there could have been a mention of one Washington’s most trusted servants, William Lee, who acted as Washington’s valet and assistant when he was in the Continental Army (American Battlefield Trust).
In order to honor our history, we need to acknowledge all aspects of it, including the painful parts. Without those aspects, we'll never truly understand the confusion or pain some people of color might feel when they watch musicals such as Hamilton and don’t see any mention of their ancestors. Hopefully, the popularity of this revolutionary musical and its astronomical success will encourage all of us to be more inquisitive of our nation’s history, and commit to representing all of its diverse and essential stories.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Hamilton is a trailblazer for diversifying a story of white historical figures.
The erasure of Black and Indigenous people with Hamilton neglects to shine a light on a part of American history people often try to forget which is slavery.
Representation should extend further than just diversity on-screen but behind the scenes, too.
We must be committed to telling all parts of our history whenever we can.
Related Issues
July 2, 2020 | Remove police from our public schools.
July 8, 2020 | Investigate school district funding disparities.
PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT
Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.
Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza
Respect AAVE.
Get daily actions in your inbox. Subscribe Now ›
Hi all!
Most newsletters are inspired by the current news. This newsletter was inspired by a typo. My typo, actually, from a newsletter a couple days ago. I type these intros last, and sometimes too quickly, eager to get to bed. So I typed "ass" instead of "as," failed to notice, and sent it out. (Thanks for the cheeky 🍑emojis in your responses).
It made me think of how many times people have corrected my pronunciation of the word "ask" as "ax". And made me think of AAVE. So today's email outlines how racial bias against how Black people speak often prevents us from being heard, and the importance of honoring and respecting this language.
If these emails support your anti-racism practice, consider giving $5/month on Patreon, or making a one-time contribution on our website (new!), PayPal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza). You can also now share this with your whole workplace with a custom enrollment link and reporting.
Nicole
TAKE ACTION
1. Pay attention to microaggressions that use derogatory statements around speech and grammar. Use tips in the newsletter – and do additional research – to respond.
2. Do research to learn about the origins of AAVE.
GET EDUCATED
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a dialect of English that is spoken by Black people in America. It sounds different from Standard American English (SAE), the English spoken by white people and taught in our schools. Despite the fact that AAVE has its own comprehensive words, and syntaxes, it’s widely ridiculed in society, and dominant culture often infers that people that speak using AAVE are less intelligent and capable than those who do not. Most people, regardless of race, do not speak Standard American English, yet AAVE is the most stigmatized and debated (AfroPunk).
These perceptions are reinforced by our education system that consistently shames students for using AAVE (The Atlantic). It’s also enforced by editorial standards. The AP stylebook avoids AAVE in its definition of prescriptive grammar, or, how grammar should be used (Daily Utah Chronicle). And this can have serious consequences. A study found that speaking AAVE makes it more likely that jurors will view Black people as guilty of a crime (Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice).
The latter point was put on full display in the George Zimmerman trial when Rachel Jeantel, a 19-year-old Black woman who was on the phone with Trayvon Martin in the minutes before he was murdered, took the stand. Zimmerman claimed he acted in self-defense, while Jeantel insisted he was the instigator. Her knowledge made her a star witness to the trial, but her testimony was dismissed by jurors because of their prejudice against AAVE (Stanford offers a legal take, and CNN has a video of an anonymous juror expressing her biases).
Speech recognition technology also fails to recognize AAVE. A Stanford study analyzed five major speech recognition technologies. On average, the systems misunderstood 35% of the words spoken by Black people, but only 19% of those spoken by white people. Each had error rates that were nearly twice as high for Black people than for white people – “even when the speakers were matched by gender and age and when they spoke the same words” (Stanford). The problem stems from a lack of representation: the machine learning systems used to train speech recognition systems likely rely heavily on databases of English as spoken by white Americans. If you read our report on the racial bias in facial recognition software, this likely sounds familiar (Anti-Racism Daily).
It might be easy to make light of this. Many of us think of speech recognition software when asking Alexa to change a song, or telling Siri to set an alarm for 7 am tomorrow morning. But what will happen when everyone is using it to drive hands-free cars, support with surgeries in hospitals, and identify ourselves at airports (Future of Everything)? And how well is this necessary tech supporting people with disabilities, who rely on voice recognition and speech-to-text tools for essential functions (Scientific American)? And consider how some automated software already associates negative sentiment with posts using AAVE language, even if they’re positive (People of Color in Tech). How can that be manipulated to infer criminal intent or aggression in forms of tech policing?
Photo by Ilias Chebbi on Unsplash
As a result of all this, many people that speak using AAVE are fluent in code-switching, or, adopting different patterns of speech and behaviors in different social contexts. There’s a wide range of examples on code-switching (NPR, who started a podcast on this topic, has a list of user-submitted examples), but for today, we’re focusing on how many Black people code-switch to navigate the stereotypes related to AAVE. Because of the issues mentioned above, it should come at no surprise that studies show Black students selectively code-switch between standard English in the classroom and African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) with their peers, and Black people are taught to code-switch to survive police interactions (Harvard Business Review). We’ll look at code-switching in full in another newsletter, but it needs to be referenced here, at minimum.
But here’s the thing. The racial bias against AAVE is a social construct built to protect whiteness. There is no historical or grammatical grounds for entirely discrediting any type of English, let alone AAVE. In fact, correct language is relative to its time and setting, and native speakers are the ones who decide what is acceptable (JSTOR). Take the idea of double negatives, something that AAVE is often criticized for with terms like “ain’t nobody.” Those fell out of favor in the eighteenth century, but were loved by Chaucer and Shakespeare, and are critical in expressing negativity in both French and Ancient Greek (JSTOR).
A similar social construct of whiteness influences how Americans perceive British accents. Consider how many popular films have a villain with a British accent (JSTOR). Studies show that English speakers that don’t speak with this accent consider those that do as being more intelligent and from a higher socioeconomic status, but also less trustworthy, kind, and friendly – characteristics together that apparently create an attractive villain (JSTOR). These situations are clearly quite different, with drastically different implications, but they do show how easily false stereotypes can be painted when vernacular is judged in relation to the default of whiteness.
"
"The modern truths about language: language changes constantly; change is normal; spoken language is the language; correctness rests upon usage; all usage is relative.”
John Ottenhoff, The Perils of Prescriptivism: Usage Notes and The American Heritage Dictionary
Despite all of the harm Black people have to suffer because of the racial biases around language, AAVE is trending in popular culture. In fact, most of the slang the “cool kids” are using these days is terminology made common in the Black community, and has been throughout time (JSTOR). This is another example of cultural appropriation: how dominant culture can wield the culture of marginalized people without honoring it, or experiencing the same discrimination and harm.
No one embodies this better (in my personal opinion) than Thug Kitchen, an anonymous blog that went viral in 2013 that used AAVE and referenced Black music and culture alongside vegan recipes and tips. It wasn’t until their first book release that it was revealed that the creators are white. Bryan Terry, a Black author and food advocate, wrote a comprehensive op-ed on the issue for CNN. And it wasn’t until June 2020 that the founders decided that now is the time to change the brand name (VegNews). There are countless other examples of this – consider that the word “twerk” (and the dance that goes with it) had been around for decades, but became a cultural phenomenon by Miley Cyrus’ performance at the VMAs in 2013 (USA Today). Zeba Blay at Huffington Post has a whole other list for you and your “basic” “squad” and your “bae” to “turn up” to on “fleek” (HuffPost).
As we mentioned before, language is fluid. So there’s not necessarily anything wrong about white people using words popularized by Black culture and now part of the accepted lexicon. Some even argue that it shouldn’t be considered cultural appropriation at all (National Review). But remember that the popularization of Black slang doesn’t seem to be popularizing Black people being safe to celebrate their own culture. Remember that Thug Kitchen was being praised by Gwyneth Paltrow (Epicurious) in the same news cycle that called Rachel Jeantel "dumb and stupid" while she testified against the man that murdered her best friend. And for me, that says more than enough.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
AAVE is as valid of a language as SAE
There is no logical grammatical argument against AAVE
Despite AAVE being popularized in pop culture, it's still ridiculed in workplaces, classrooms, and other parts of society
Black people experience discrimination and harm when using AAVE
Related Issues
July 13, 2020 | Respect the roots of Black hair.
July 9, 2020 | Acknowledge the harm of microaggressions.
June 26, 2020 | Face the bias in facial recognition software.
PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT
Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.
Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza
End racial bias in school discipline.
Get daily actions in your inbox. Subscribe Now ›
Hi everyone!
Today's newsletter offers another lens on the school-to-prison pipeline and the racial disparities in education. Because our community is growing fast, and we're building quite a library of content, I've added a "related issues" section of our newsletters that highlights related content from our archives.
I hope this helps illuminate some of the other stances and perspectives we have had in the past, and enable our newer readers to dive deeper as we carry this conversation from one day to the next. It's so tough to boil down major concepts and complex systems of oppression into 800-1000 words, so we'll need to zoom in each day to eventually see the whole picture.
If these emails support your learning, consider giving $5/month on Patreon, or making a one-time contribution on our website (new!), on PayPal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza).
Nicole
TAKE ACTION
1. Sign the petition to free Grace, the subject of today’s newsletter, from juvenile detention.
GET EDUCATED
A disturbing story published yesterday by ProPublica brought the conversation of the school-to-prison pipeline to the top of my inbox: A Teenager Didn’t Do Her Online Schoolwork. So a Judge Sent Her to Juvenile Detention (ProPublica).
Grace*, a 15-year-old with ADHD and a mood disorder, was on probation when she started to struggle to keep up with her school’s abrupt shift to digital learning. Although Grace’s special education teacher saw her performance “not out of alignment with most of my other students,” the judge found Grace “guilty on failure to submit to any schoolwork and getting up for school” and called Grace a “threat to (the) community,” citing the assault and theft charges that led to her probation. Grace was sent to juvenile detention. She’s been there for the past two months, and her case won’t be reviewed until Sept. 8, after the start of the new school year. I highly encourage you to read the full story for the full story. A brief recap doesn’t do it justice (ProPublica).
Unsurprisingly, Grace is Black, and many believe this case represents racial bias persistent in state – and federal – trends of harsh sentencing against youth. The racial disparities in policies like these fuel the school-to-prison pipeline, or, the systems that pull students out of the classroom and into the criminal justice system. We briefly reviewed this topic in a previous newsletter about police officers in schools (Anti-Racism Daily archives). You can dive into a comprehensive overview of the school-to-prison pipeline on tolerance.org.
In Michigan, Black youth are incarcerated over 4x more than their white peers (The Sentencing Project). And over the past four years, about 4,800 juvenile cases were referred to Oakland County Circuit Court, the same court that sentenced Grace. Of those, 42% involved Black youth even though only about 15% of the county’s youth are Black (ProPublica).
And across the country, broader studies that Black students, particularly Black girls, are more harshly disciplined. Data from the U.S. Department of Education found that from 2013–14, black girls were more than six times more likely than white girls to receive an out-of-school suspension. And although black girls made up only 16% of female students in U.S. public schools, they made up 43% of girls who were referred to law enforcement and 38% of those arrested (Teen Vogue). Read the full report here.
For students like Grace, this sentencing can have lasting repercussions. Many believe that juvenile records disappear by the age of 18, but that’s often not the case. A juvenile record can prevent a young person from receiving financial aid to assist with college tuition, harm their ability to get a job or join the military, limit access to public housing opportunities, and prevent them from the ability to receive a license in certain professions (MST Services).
And consider the deep emotional wounding of the trauma of being incarcerated as a teenager, of being handcuffed and shackled by the ankles, locked in a room for 12 hours a day, and denied access to basic comforts (ProPublica). It’s no surprise that data shows that youth with mental health issues – youth like Grace – are likely to emotionally deteriorate in custody, and their conditions often worsen (National Child Traumatic Stress Network).
“Who can even be a good student right now? Unless there is an urgent need, I don’t understand why you would be sending a kid to any facility right now and taking them away from their families with all that we are dealing with right now.”
― Ricky Watson Jr., executive director of the National Juvenile Justice Network, for ProPublica
What’s important to remember here is much of Grace’s story as a whole isn’t new. But the specifics situation of incarcerating a child because they didn't sufficiently complete their remote learning, in the midst of a global pandemic, definitely is. So what happens when schools start applying the same biased disciplining to these unprecedented learning environments? Right now, schools are grappling with the complex decision of how to return back to school this fall (NYTimes). And so far, a couple of major school districts have already opted for remote learning for the fall (NPR). It’s likely that decisions will vary widely between school districts, but we can expect remote learning to be a part of the equation for most, at minimum.
And we know that students are already struggling to complete their classwork while learning remotely. Various school districts reported discrepancies from earlier this year: 15,000 high school students in Los Angeles (LA Times), one-third of students in Minneapolis Public Schools (Twin Cities), and about 25% of Chicago Public Schools students (WTTW) failed to log in or complete their schoolwork (all stats via ProPublica).
Can we blame students for struggling to stay attentive during a global pandemic? Personally, I can barely keep up with my day to day responsibilities with the weight of COVID-19 and the protests hanging around me. And I, unlike many students in America, have the privilege to be working with unlimited access to my laptop and smartphone, and high-speed internet. But it’s estimated that 42 million Americans lack access to broadband internet, and 10.7% of U.S. households don’t have a laptop or computer at home. Low-income households were “least likely to be high-connectivity households, but had the highest proportion of smartphone-only households,” which is a tough platform for accessing school assignments (Gizmodo).
Consider how hunger and homelessness exacerbate the issue of staying on track while learning from home. How caring for younger siblings while parents are at work can prevent students from staying on track. And the stress and anxiety of everything can drain a student’s focus and attention. And most importantly, consider how Black students and other students of color are disproportionately likely to be burdened with all of the barriers to learning mentioned above. How can we incarcerate children for failing to live up to unrealistic standards as they navigate situations beyond their control?
Not every student is starting out the school year on probation. And perhaps not every student will be arrested for missing a couple of homework assignments. But we still need to view Grace’s story as a cautionary tale for what can happen – and challenge our dangerous relationship between discipline and incarceration. We are redefining what school looks like this fall, and hopefully, we use this opportunity to create a more equitable system for everyone to learn and grow.
*Named changed by ProPublica to protect identity.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The school-to-prison pipeline highlights the disciplinary policies that pull students out of classrooms and into the criminal justice system
Black students, particularly Black girls, are disproportionately more likely to be disciplined in schools
As schools adopt remote learning in the fall, there is a chance racial bias can continue to perpetuate in how students are disciplined regarding attendance and task completion
Students less prepared for remote learning are also more likely to be disciplined harshly for lack of participation
The impact of incarceration at youth has lasting emotional and legal implications
Related Issues
July 2, 2020 | Remove police from our public schools.
July 8, 2020 | Investigate school district funding disparities.
PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT
Thank you for all your financial contributions! If you haven't already, consider making a monthly donation to this work. These funds will help me operationalize this work for greatest impact.
Subscribe on Patreon | Give one-time on PayPal | Venmo @nicoleacardoza