Sledd, J. “Bi-Dialectalism: The Linguistics of White Supremacy.” The English Journal 58.9 (1969): 1307-29. Print.
“The basic assumption of bi-dialectalism is that the prejudices of mid- dle-class whites cannot be changed but must be accepted and indeed enforced on lesser breeds. Upward mobility, it is assumed, is the end of education, but white power will deny upward mobility to speakers of black English, who must therefore be made to talk white English in their contacts with the white world.” (1309)
“The bi-dialectalists, of course, would not be so popularwith government and the foundationsif they spoke openly of the supremacy of white prejudice; but they make it perfectly clear that what they are dealingwith deserves no better name. No dialect, they keep repeating, is better than any other–yet poor and ignorant children must change theirs unless they want to stay poor and ignorant.” (1310)
Sledd asserted that the level of success students subjected to compulsory bi-dialectalism would be minimally higher than if they were not. This raises questions regarding the sincerity of the efforts made toward helping “disadvantaged” students succeed. Sledd also demonstrated how these efforts were also undermined in the classroom. Despite teachers being directed to consider all dialects equal, the practice of privileging “standard” English over other variations sends a much different message. Sledd quoted the report Language Programs for the Disadvantaged (NCTE, 1965): “[Teachers] must still use all the adult authority of the school to “teach standard informal English as a second dialect” (p. 137), because the youngster who cannot speak standard informal English “will not be able to get certain kinds of jobs” (p. 228).
For Sledd, it is not the language of “minorities: that needs to be addressed, but the conditions that lead to the social and racial stratification in the first place. Social justice is the larger issue: “Nothing the schools can do about black English or white English either will do much for racial peace and social justice as long as the black and white worlds are separate and hostile.”
Placing an emphasis on the larger issue of social justice would change the focus on language education and perhaps do more good that bi-dialectalism:
“Bi-dialectalism would never have been invented if our society were not divided into the dominant white majority and the exploited minori- ties. Children should be taught that. They should be taught the relations be- tween group differences and speech dif- ferences, and the good and bad uses of speech differences by groups and by individuals. The teaching would require a more serious study of grammar, lexicography, dialectology, and linguistic history than our educational system now provides-require it at least of prospective English teachers.”
For his opponents that might claim the classroom shouldn’t be politicized, Sledd argued it already was; teaching bi-dialectalism maintains white supremacy.