If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?

Throughout this essay, James Baldwin frequently expands his argument not just to make the case that Black English is a language but to analyze its function as a form of resistance to racist, anti-Black structures. He starts immediately by saying that “the other is refusing to be defined by a language that has never been able to recognize him” (Paragraph 1). This establishes the idea that, when speaking in Black English, Black people are not the “other” and their cultures and dispositions are “recognize[d],” allowing them to resist standard English cultural hegemony and racism.

Baldwin uses the history of Black English to argue that it was born out of resistance to slavery. He adds the facets of speech in the context of the Black American church and the context of the enslavement of Black people in the United States, calling the latter a “bitter hour of the world’s history” (Paragraph 7). He addresses the facet of Black English’s formation, saying that the language came “into existence by means of brutal necessity” because the very survival of enslaved Black Africans depended on them quickly learning to communicate with each other across their different native languages (Paragraph 7).