Always looking for things to gripe about, many college English profs have jumped on the “standard English is oppressive” bandwagon. Supposedly, doing so helps perpetuate “white privilege.”
In today’s Martin Center article, Nan Miller looks at this lunacy, which recently surfaced in Colorado.
She writes:
If you thought that academe’s social-justice warriors would retreat in 2025, you will be disheartened to hear what just happened at the Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU).
In compliance with the CCCC’s 2020 resolution, in December MSU’s Writing Center redefined Standard American English as “a social construct that privileges white communities and maintains social and racial hierarchies.” The writing center’s new policy urges students to “us[e] their English (whatever that may be) in communicating their thoughts and ideas.”
The obvious problem with this leftist virtue signaling is that all it does is to handicap students who never learn to use English well. But the cost of that doesn’t fall on the “woke” academics who push this idea.
In truth, the attack on English standards goes back to the 1970s, when it was assailed by the great Richard Mitchell in a series of books.
Miller continues, “English professor Richard Mitchell was the first to challenge the NCTE’s ‘new priests,’ who view grammar instruction as an instrument of imperialist oppression.’ He had charmed wordsmiths nationwide in the 1970s and 80s by writing The Underground Grammarian, a newsletter that exposed any knave who abused the Mother Tongue because, as he wrote, ‘Bad English kills trees, consumes energy, and befouls the earth. Good English renews it.’”
Read the whole thing.