Is Grammar Racist? A Response
After all the negative press in the far right-media and blog sphere recently over my writing center's antiracism and social justice statement at the University of Washington, Tacoma, a center I direct, I thought I'd offer a personal response to some of the most frequent misunderstandings and questions about the statement and my own teaching and work. These are my views and not necessarily those of the university or the writing center. The Crapstorm The hoopla began when my university did a story on me and the center's antiracism statement on Feb 17. It took about three days for the crapstorm to hit the far-right media. Many of the articles open with some kind of statement that suggests the center and I, or the university more generally, promote the idea that English grammar is racist. Here's a few: "College Writing Center Declares American Grammar A ‘Racist,’ ‘Unjust Language Structure’" Rob Shimshock (Feb 20, 2017, The Daily Caller ), reprinted on...