Cultural Sensitivity Language Based Amoja Three Rivers\'

¶ … Cultural Sensitivity Language Based Amoja Three Rivers' "Cultural Etiquette," Lynette Clemetson's "The Racial Politics Speaking Well," observations experience, write a draft essay dealing issues cultural sensitivity language.

Prejudices and the politics of 'speaking well'

"Ethnocentrism," as defined in Amoja Three Rivers' essay "Cultural Etiquette" is "a tendency to view alien groups or cultures in terms of one's own" and "the belief in the inherent superiority of one's own group and culture, accompanied by a feeling of contempt for other groups and cultures." Because how we speak feels so natural to us, there is a tendency to assume that people who cannot speak our language must be less intelligent -- or people who look differently from us cannot be masters of English. This is a common form of linguistic ethnocentrism. We assume that a recent immigrant is not intelligent because he or she is just learning the language -- even though we cannot speak a second language ourselves. We assume that someone who is a third-generation Korean-American must not be able to speak English as well as ourselves because of his race, even though English is his first (or only) language.

This concept is illustrated in Lynette Clemetson's essay "The Racial Politics of Speaking Well," a scathing analysis of a compliment frequently shown to African-American speakers: 'He speaks so well.' Hidden in the subtext of this supposed compliment is surprise that a highly accomplished African-American can articulate him or herself in an educated fashion without 'sounding black.' This is despite the fact that some of America's greatest orators have been African-American, and an African-American woman has won a Nobel Prize for literature. Assumptions about speech still are rooted in subconscious prejudice. Regarding the fact that President Barack Obama is often described as 'speaking well,' Clemetson dryly notes: "It would be more incredible…if Mr. Obama were inarticulate." Implied in this amazement is that people such as Barack Obama and Condoleezza Rice are exceptions, and that as a rule African-Americans are less able to master the intricacies of the language than whites. The fact that such 'eloquence' is framed as a compliment shows the hidden nature of such racist assumptions.

Stereotypes are so embedded in the cultural firmament that people do not even understand the offensive nature of phrases such as calling something black when it is "bad, depressing, or negative" or telling someone who is gay "you don't seem gay" as a great compliment. What is 'good' is measured along a sliding scale of positivity, with white, male, heterosexuality being the norm and the gold standard of quality against which all other peoples are judged. Members of historically discriminated-against groups are judged upon their ability to effectively parrot the attitudes and manners of their former oppressors. Three Rivers decries the way that multiculturalism often becomes a form of tokenism or dilettantism: "white people should not make a playground out of other people's cultures. We are not quaint. We are not exotic." There is no single culture that is central.