April Baker-Bell’s Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy (2020) urges literacy teachers and researchers to recognize and understand how Anti-Black Linguistic Racism oppresses Black Language-speakers in the classroom. Anti-Blackness is a deeply-rooted problem in education that is exacerbated by educators upholding white linguistic hegemony.  Despite the effort by scholars and educators to dismantle whiteness in the classroom, Linguistic Justice makes it clear that not much has changed and that we, as educators, must hold ourselves accountable for the harm we are responsible for doing to our Black students. As educators, we have the responsibility to check our own privilege, bias, and anti-Blackness if we are to improve how we teach and respond to Black students. In addition to providing activities for educators to use in the classroom, she urges teachers and scholars to move away from literacy pedagogies that uphold linguistic hegemony.  The pedagogies as they exist right now do not value Black language in the way they value White Mainstream English (WME), nor do they provide Black students with the opportunity to learn about Black language or use it to combat Anti-Black Language Racism. This type of linguistic oppression adds to Black students’ emotional trauma by devaluing their racial and linguistic identities.  Her book provides teachers and researchers with an understanding of why prioritizing literacy pedagogies that directly address the relationship between race and language are necessary to achieve linguistic and racial justice. 

In the first chapter, Baker-Bell examines the relationship between race and language. She argues there is a connection between racial and linguistic hierarchies. She states how “failing to theorize about language through the lens race contributes to us missing opportunities to critique, expand and improve our theories of language and language pedagogies” (16). Baker-Bell writes that failing to critique language and language pedagogies leads to upholding linguistic racism and white linguistic supremacy. For this reason, she notes that we do not need a general theory of linguistic racism. Rather, what literacy teachers and researchers need are “frameworks that interrogate and examine the specific linguistic oppressions experienced by linguistically marginalized communities of color” (18). Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy is the framework that Baker-Bell argues can move the field forward and address Anti-Black Linguistic Racism. Anti-Black Linguistic Racism not only upholds linguistic hegemony, but as Baker-Bell demonstrates, when Black students experience it, they experience an “attempt to eradicate their identity, community, intelligence, theories of reality, and centuries of Black survival philosophies” (25). Baker-Bell’s Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy provides students, teachers, and researchers with a framework to “examine how language, race, white supremacy, and anti-blackness intersect and how they can work against Anti-Black Linguistic Racism” (19). This framework comprises “seven critical inquiry-based learning experiences” that provide Black students an opportunity to not only learn Black Language but to learn through and about Black Language (8).

The first is significant because it proves why the centering of the history of Black Language and experiences of Black Language speakers is needed to work against Anti-Black Linguistic Racism. To do this Baker-Bell urges that we no longer encourage code-switching or respectability pedagogies that “view racially and marginalized students’ language practices as valid and equal, yet instruct these students to use White Mainstream English to avoid negative stereotypes that are associated with their linguistic and racial backgrounds” (29). These specific pedagogies result in a continuation to place White Mainstream English over other linguistic practices. By understanding how race, language, and power intersect in education, Baker-Bell introduces the readers with the Antiracist Black Language framework she illustrates throughout the book. The chapter sets the premise before she discusses the ten framing ideas that are at the center of the Antiracist Black Language framework. 

In Chapter 2, Baker-Bell illustrates ten framing ideas for an Antiracist Black Language Education and Pedagogy. The ten framing ideas rely on a “critical inquiry-based learning experience” and must be “embodied in any transformative approach that seeks to dismantle Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and student’s internalization of it” (34). Each framing idea centers Black students’ lived experiences with an analysis of white linguistic hegemony, Anti-Black Linguistic Racism, Black history, and Black Linguistic Consciousness-raising to dismantle the internalized trauma they have experienced as a student. This student-centered approach “intentionally and unapologetically places the linguistic, cultural, racial, intellectual, and self-confidence needs of Black students at the center of their language education” (34). Again Baker-Bell, through her research, demonstrates to readers how the neglect of Black students continues to emotionally harm and devalue Black students. She ends the chapter with seven artifacts educators can use to begin implementing the framing ideas in their classroom to curb the violence against Black students. In the next chapter, Baker-Bell demonstrates the outcomes of implementing her framework.

In Chapter 3, Baker-Bell presents the counter-stories of Black students she worked with at the Language Academy in Detroit and places their voices and experiences at the forefront. Through her research and use of counter-stories, readers immediately see how students are discouraged from using Black language. Their experiences in school serve as an example of the ways they are taught to reject a language they know and use well because they are told it is not proper and therefore taught that it has little value. This leads to students experiencing White linguistic hegemony inside and outside of their education. In the counter-stories, students’ experiences support Baker-Bell’s claim that Anti-Black Linguistic Racism negatively impacts their sense of self and identity. In the students’ responses. Baker-Bell notes that they “unconsciously supported white linguistic hegemony and perpetuated anti-blackness and Anti-Black Linguistic Racism” (49). Their experiences continue to prove how eradication of language occurs as a result of Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and its emotional harm.

In Chapter 4, Baker-Bell gives the praxis of her Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy. This chapter details how literacy teachers can implement this pedagogy in the classroom while providing researchers with examples of how “theory, research, and practice can operate in tandem in pursuit of linguistic and racial justice” (64). By providing ethnographic snapshots, Baker-Bell shows educators can encourage students to develop a linguistic consciousness. Throughout the chapter, she provides an assortment of activities and student artifacts for teachers to see how students progress and engage with topics about language, power, and race. Literacy teachers looking for more examples to begin working to implement this pedagogy in their classroom can review more artifacts and activities to use in the classroom are available in Chapter 6. 

In Chapter 5, Baker-Bell shares how students are affected by Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy. Similar to other chapters, the counter-stories in this chapter continue to demonstrate why an Antiracist Black Language pedagogy is needed and how this pedagogy provides Black Students with alternative ways of viewing Black language. One that is “designed to give Black students the tools to liberate themselves from oppression” (100). The counter-stories provide a powerful view of how Black students grew and developed their own Black Linguistic Consciousness. Even though Baker-Bell used student artifacts throughout the book, the stories in this chapter showcases the need for all educators to challenge how white supremacy manifests itself in the classroom through linguistic racism and language subordination. She critiques educators who claim to be unbiased and champion diversity and states we must interrogate our own practices of upholding white linguistic hegemony. April Baker-Bell emphasizes this point and speaks directly to the reader by saying, “You have to be about this life for real for real! You have to be ready and willing to challenge everything you once understood about language and what students need in a language education” (100). This commitment to challenging what we know and understand about language is the only way to begin to work against the white supremacy that can exist in how we teach but also what we teach. 

Baker-Bell’s teacher-scholar-activist project, as she describes it, is a captivating and powerful text for all educators, not just literacy teachers, to read, reflect, and use in their own classroom. She makes it clear from the start that the oppression Black students experience in the classroom and in their daily lives continues to be a pressing matter that needs more support from educators. This book pushes the field to move forward and embrace Antiracist Black Language Pedagogy in the curriculum because teachers have failed Black students. This is why Baker-Bell challenges us to interrogate our own pedagogies and practices in the classroom and in our research by making us question our own biases and ways we promote and support white linguistic hegemony.  Even though the text is for and about Black students, her framework is for all types of educators and students grappling with their own “critical linguistic awareness of the Black Language, and window into broader conversations about anti-Blackness, language and identity, language and power, language and history, linguistic racism, and white linguistic and cultural hegemony” (100). Linguistic Justice should be mandatory reading for prospective and current educators from all backgrounds. 

Works Cited

Baker-Bell, April. Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy. Routledge, 2020.