#dialect discrimination

Dialect discrimination doesn’t just have an impact on people in the housing market. It also affects how likely you are to be believed when it’s most important: in the justice system. A 2016 paper by John R. Rickford and Sharese King argues that George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the Trayvon Martin murder case was based in part on linguistic discrimination. Jurors described the prosecution’s star witness, Rachel Jeantel, as “hard to understand” and “not credible” because she spoke AAVE. Her testimony was not mentioned once in the more than 16 hours of jury deliberations, which no doubt contributed to Zimmerman’s acquittal.

“The function, the very serious function of racism, is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language, so you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly, so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Someone says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of that is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”