Dowdy's interview with college professor Christina McVay on black people, literature, and their intersection was very intriguing and inspirational to me. McVay filled Dowdy in on how she, a white instructor, "fell" into the field of what she refers to as "Black English," in the Pan-African Studies Department at Kent State University in Ohio. McVay goes on to speak about the courses she teach, including The Legacy of Slavery in Literature, Pan-African Women's Literature, and African-American Masterpieces to name a few.
McVay tells of her students and one specific assignment that she asks them to do, which allows them to deconstruct their man-made hatred for language. McVay ask her students to write a slang dictionary, with a word or term they would use in their everyday speech and define it in so-called "proper" English. This allows her students to reevaluate their opinions about language, and also allows them to become comfortable, making them "forget that [she is] an English teacher, because that makes them self-conscious." She tells and encourages her students that Black English is not bad, a "fact" that not only their preceding teachers, but even their parents and family might have told them. McVay in complete opposition as those who may have agreed to this, declares Black English as a legitimate language.
I love how McVay as an instructor does not contain herself to just that; meaning she also learns from her students, she calls them "co-teacher[s]." Yet the fact that McVay is not of African descent and openly exalts black oral and written literature is still what baffles me and even some of her students. Yet at the same time, it makes me realize that not all members of other races, white people to be more specific, look down and talk bad about African Americans, their culture, struggles, and ultimately what makes them stand apart. ~Althreasa Foster
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