Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law.
Interpretation
This quote highlights how language shapes our reality and identity, often imposing societal norms that can feel alien to individuals.
June Jordan's quote conveys the idea that language is not just a tool for communication, but a political force that can dictate the way we think and express ourselves. It criticizes the educational system for enforcing a standardized way of speaking and writing that may be disconnected from the true identities and experiences of marginalized individuals. By describing this imposed language as 'weird, lying, barbarous, unreal,' Jordan emphasizes the conflict between authentic self-expression and the societal pressures to conform to dominant linguistic norms.
In practice
In a discussion on the impact of education on cultural identity.
I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.
Anytime you see white men suppose to fight each other an you not white, well you know you got trouble, because they blah-blah loud about Democrat or Republican an they huffing an puff about democracy someplace else but relentless, see, the deal come down evil on somebody don have no shirt an tie, somebody don live in no whiteman house no whiteman country.
In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage; none of these is normal.
Good poetry and successful revolution change our lives. And you cannot compose a good poem or wage a revolution without changing consciousness unless you attack the language that you share with your enemies and invent a language that you share with your allies.
As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. I love the infinite evidence and change and requirements and possibilities of language; every human use of words that is joyful, or honest or new, because experience is new... But as a Black poet and writer, I hate words that cancel my name and my history and the freedom of my future: I hate the words that condemn and refuse the language of my people in America.
I am the history of the rejection of who I am
USAGE, n. The First Person of the literary Trinity, the Second and Third being Custom and Conventionality. Imbued with a decent reverence for this Holy Triad an industrious writer may hope to produce books that will live as long as the fashion.
People have suffered and become insane for centuries by the thought of eternal punishment after death. Wouldn't it be better to depend on blind matter... than a god who puts out traps for people, invites them to sin, and allows them to sin and commit crimes he could prevent. Only to finally get the barbarian pleasure to punish them in an excessive way, of no use for himself, without them changing their ways and without their example preventing others from committing crimes.
In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.
People need to see that, far from being an obstacle, the world's diversity of languages, religions and traditions is a great treasure, affording us precious opportunities to recognize ourselves in others.
Fate is the raw materials of experience. They come uninvited and often unanticipated. Destiny is what a man does with these raw materials.
Londoners say, 'We're so proud of our diversity and tolerance,' but what if that diversity ends up making us intolerant?
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