Blogbook -- The Habits of White Language (HOWL)
Entry 28 To really understand what White language supremacy is exactly, and how we might decenter and counter it in our classrooms, we have to understand what the habits of White language, or HOWL, are. Their use and circulation is an important aspect of White language supremacy. HOWL can be used as a heuristic to help students identify these habits and critique them as they decide what they wish to take on as their own habits of language. All people have habits of language, ways of seeing, saying, and judging things, ideas, and other people. These habits afford our ways with words. They also, when understood from a thirty thousand foot view, constitute the dominant rhetorical moves that are considered appropriate or preferred in any given context. That is, when we pan back and look at the long view of history and the wide view of who controls language practices in schools, universities, professions, and disciplines, this long and wide view of language habits reveals that elite, White