Language, Liberty, and Class: Baldwin, Anzaldúa, and Anyon

Introduction: Three Essays, One Argument

Upon initial examination, there are a variety of similarities to be found within the texts of James Baldwin's "If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me What Is?" and Gloria Anzaldúa's "How to Tame a Wild Tongue." Both essays largely demonstrate the necessity for the creation of a language that is not indigenous to a respective pair of ethnic groups — one African-American, the other Latinos and Latinas living within the United States. The social isolation of both groups inherently influences the language (or, in some cases, languages) they speak, and more importantly, how they speak it.

The relationship between these two essays and Jean Anyon's "Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work" is decidedly more complex, for the simple reason that Anyon is primarily addressing the disparities in the ways children of different socioeconomic backgrounds are taught at the fifth-grade level, as well as the ways in which these differentiated modes of instruction align with preparation for varying jobs across different labor classifications — from executives to blue-collar employees. Yet if one takes into account the ethnic makeup of the different socioeconomic classes Anyon studies, and considers the implications inherent in the ways various lessons are presented to students, a number of analogous situations can be found across all three texts.

Liberty and Its Unequal Distribution

Liberty is one concept central to all three authors' works, and is most clearly visible in Anyon's account of the teaching methods used in the executive elite school, attended by students whose parents routinely earn over $100,000 annually by heading major corporations. The following quotation indicates the degree of liberty afforded to these students in their education: "While strict attention to the lesson at hand is required, the teachers make relatively little attempt to regulate the movement of the children at other times." Such liberty of movement is nowhere to be found in Anyon's discussion of working-class school life, where nearly a third of students come from families hovering around the poverty line and where their every move in school is regulated into a series of precise steps.

What is crucial here is that in describing the executive elite school, Anyon notes there are "no minority children in the school." This observation sharpens the racial dimension of the class disparity she documents. A parallel dearth of freedom appears in Anzaldúa's essay, particularly in the opening passage in which the author recalls a childhood visit to the dentist, where her personal liberty was restricted by an authoritarian figure: "We're going to have to do something about your tongue," I hear the anger rising in his voice. My tongue keeps pushing out the wads of cotton, pushing back the drills, the long thin needles. "I've never seen anything as strong or as stubborn," he says" (Anzaldúa 2947).

Baldwin also references a lack of freedom in his essay, in the following allusion to racial violence in which language plays a decisive role: "There was a moment, in time, and in this place, when my brother, or my mother, or my father, or my sister, had to convey to me, for example, the danger in which I was standing from the white man standing just behind me…" The danger alluded to is, of course, an aspect of racial violence. Taken together, these three quotations demonstrate that liberty is a theme running through all three essays — a liberty enjoyed by Caucasians (or at least non-minorities) and substantially curtailed for minority groups, including African-Americans and Latinos.

The Political Power of Language

The significant consequences and potential force of language is another common theme recurring across these three essays. As Baldwin states in "If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me What Is?": "It goes without saying, then, that language is also a political instrument, means, and proof of power. It is the most vivid and crucial key to identity: it reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity." This concept is readily demonstrated in Anzaldúa's essay, in which the power of language is repressed by school teachers when the author was still a girl: "I remember being caught speaking Spanish at recess — that was good for three licks on the knuckles with a sharp ruler. I remember being sent to the corner of the classroom for 'talking back' to the Anglo teacher when all I was trying to do was tell her how to pronounce my name" (Anzaldúa 2947). The power of language is vividly expressed here — its mere evocation, particularly the speaking of Spanish in a non-Latino environment, left the speaker open to censure, an attempt to "divorce one" from her "communal identity."

The power of language to repress students is also asserted in Anyon's essay. Her observer records the following remarks frequently made by teachers in the working-class schools: "Only three times did the investigator hear a teacher in either working-class school preface a directive with an unsarcastic 'please,' or 'let's' or 'would you.' Instead, the teachers said 'Shut up,' 'Shut your mouth'…" In this instance, language is used to restrain as well as to reinforce an oppressive school environment — one in which students, some of them minorities, are made to simply follow orders and do nothing more.

Conclusion: Language as Socioeconomic Control

In conclusion, these three essays are largely demonstrative of the fact that language is used to enforce socioeconomic subjugation — which ultimately manifests itself in racial terms. Liberty, power, and the repression of native languages all reinforce the notion that certain ethnic groups must contend with circumscriptions in their daily lives, while others — typically those with considerable wealth — are raised to control those circumstances and, ultimately, to control everything else in their lives.