Language, Race, and White Public Space Author(s): Jane H. Hill Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 100, No. 3 (Sep., 1998), pp. 680-689 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/682046 Accessed: 10/04/2009 00:43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black. 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HILL Departmentof Anthropology University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 Language, Race, and White Public Space Whitepublic space is constructedthrough (1 ) intensemonitoring of the speech of racializedpopulations such as Chicanos andLatinos and AfricanAmericans for signs of linguisticdisorder and (2) the invisibilityof almostidentical signs in the speechof Whites,where language mixing, requiredfor ffieexpression of a highly valuedtype of colloquialpersona, takes severalforms. One such form, Mock Spanish,exhibits a complex semiotics. By directindexicality, Mock Spanishpre- sents speakersas possessing desirablepersonal qualities. By indirectindexicality, it reproduceshighly negativeracializ- ing stereotypesof Chicanosand Latinos.In addition,it indirectlyindexes "whiteness"as an unmarkednormative order. Mock Spanishis comparedto White"crossover" uses of AfricanAmerican English. Finally, the questionof the potential for such usages to be reshapedto subvertthe orderof racialpractices in discourseis briefly explored.[discourse, racism, whiteness,indexicality, Spanish] The Study of Racism in Anthropology advancedanthropological thinking, because racial forrna- tion processes (Omi and Winant 1994) are contestedand Anthropologistsshare a contradictoryheritage: Our in- contradictory,yet global in theirscope. At the local level tellectualancestors include both foundersof scientific ra- racial practices(Winant 1994) can be very complex. Yet cism and importantpioneers of the antiracistmovement. emerging global "racialscapes"(Harrison 1995:49, bor- After manyyears in which anthropologistshave given far rowing from Appadurai1990) encompasseven the most less attentionto racism as an object of culturalanalysis remote populations,as when the Taiap of the backwaters than have many of our sister disciplines, we are now re- of the Lower Sepik River feel themselvesto be "Black"as turningto work that honors and advances our antiracist against"White"(Kulick1993). heritage. Racism should be as centrala question for researchin From "All Languages Are Equal" to the Study culturalanthropology as "race"has been in biological an- thropology.We have always been interestedin forms of of Racializing Discourses widely sharedapparent irrationality, from divination to Like other anthropologists(and other linguists), lin- the formationof unilineal kin groups to the hypercon- guistic anthropologistshave made "education,"with its sumptionof (or abstentionfrom) the flesh of cattle,and ra- implicit assumptionof a confrontationwith "ignorance," cism is preciselythis kind of phenomenon.Why, if nearly theircentral antiracist strategy. Attempts to inoculatestu- all scientistsconcur that human "races" are imaginary,do dents againstbeliefs in "primitivelanguages,""linguistic so manyhighly educated, cosmopolitan, economically se- deprivation,"or the idea thatbilingualism (in certainlan- cure people continueto thinkand act as racists?We know guages) is inevitablyseditious can be foundin every intro- that"apparent irrationalities" seldom turnout to be the re- ductorytextbook in linguistics, and majorscholars in the sult of ignoranceor confusion. Instead, they appearlo- field have tried to spreadthe message not only as class- cally as quite rational,being rooted in history and tradi- room educators,but as public intellectualsin a wide range tion, functioning as importantorganizing principles in of functions.And whathave we to show for these efforts? relativelyenduring political ecologies, andlending coher- "OfficialEnglish" legislation on the books in many states, ence and meaningto complex and ambiguoushuman ex- and,in the winterof 199S97, a nationwide"moral panic" periences.Racism is no different:As Smedley (1993:25) (Hall et al. 1978)' aboutwhether "Ebonics" might be dis- has argued,"race . [is] a worldview, . a cosmological cussed in the classrooms of Oakland,California. In the orderingsystem structuredout of the political, economic, case of the Ebonics panic, the nearly universalreaction and social realitiesof peoples who hademerged as expan- among linguists2and linguistic anthropologistswas "We sionist, conquering,dominating nations on a worldwide mustredouble our efforts at education!How can we make quest for wealth andpower." Racism challenges the most classroomand textbook units on e equalityof all languages, AmericanAnthropologist 100(3):680-689. Copyright(C) 1999, AmericanAnthropological Association HILL / LANGUAGE,RACE, AND WHITE PUBLIC SPACE 681 let alone all varietiesof English,more effective? How can in New York City to a national communityof Whites.5I we place opinionpieces to fight this nonsense?"The prob- have been looking at uses of Spanish by Whites, both lem here, of course, is thatsuch interventionsnot only ne- through on-the-spot observation of informal talk and glect the underlyingcultural logic of the stigmatizationof throughfollowing as wide a range as possible of media African American English, but also neglect the much and sites of mass reproductionsuch as advertisingfliers, deeperproblem pointed out by James Baldwin: "It is not gift coffee cups, souvenirplacemats, and greetingcards, the Black child's languagewhich is despised:It is his ex- for severalyears. First,I review Urciuoli's analysisof the perience"(Baldwin 1979,citedinLippi-Green 1997)and racializationof Puerto Ricans throughattention to their Baldwinmight have added,had he not been writingin the linguistic"disorder." NewYork Times, "and his body." Antiracist education in linguistics and linguistic an- Puerto Rican Linguistic Marginalization: thropologyhas centeredon demonstrationsof the equality Disorderly Order and adequacy of racialized forms of language, ranging from Boas's ([1889]1982) demolition of the concept of Urciuoli argues that her consultants experience lan- "alternatingsounds" and "primitive languages" to Labov's guage as differentiated into two spheres. In an "inner (1972) canonical essay on "The logic of non-standard sphere"of talk among intimates in the household and English."3But until very recently,there has been little re- neighborhood, the boundaries between "Spanish"and search on the "culture of language" of the dominant, "English"are blurredand ambiguous both forrnallyand "race-making"(Williams 1989)populations. New studies functionally.Here, speakers exploit linguistic resources are beginning to appear,such as Fabian (1986), Silver- with diversehistories with greatskill andfluency, achiev- stein (1987), Woolard (1989), and Lippi-Green (1997). ing extremelysubtle interactional effects. But in an "outer Urciuoli' s ( 1996) ethnographyof speakingof Spanishand sphere"of talk (andengagement with text) with strangers Englishamong Puerto Ricans in New YorkCity is perhaps and, especially, with gatekeeperslike court officers, so- the first monographon the talk of a racializedpopulation cial workers,and schoolteachers,the differencebetween thatforegrounds, and contributesto, contemporarytheo- Spanish and English is "sharply objectified" (Urciuoli ries of racial formationprocesses throughher analysis of 1996:2). Boundariesand order are everything.The pres- culturalphenomena such as "accent"and "good English." surefrom interlocutorsto keep the two languages"in or- A central theoreticalcommitment for many linguistic der"is so severe thatpeople who functionas fluentbilin- anthropologists, that"culture is localized in concrete, guals in the inner sphere become so anxious abouttheir publicly accessible signs, the most importantof which are competence that sometimes they cannot speak at all. actually occurring instances of discourse" (Urban Among the most poignant of the intricateambiguities of 1991:1), preparesus to contributein new ways to the un- this dualityare that worries about being "disorderly"are tangling of the complexity of racism. Furthermore,such never completely absent from the intimacies of the inner study is an obvious extensionof an active line of research