You're in 'Merica...Make Your Voice Heard!

Does the Beaver Nation have an English-only,White Supremacy problem?

According to our preliminary analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data, yes. We are a team of researchers at Oregon State University (OSU) working on a project that examines, among issues of race and racial bias, attitudes toward language use on campus. One question that we’ve asked is, “Have you ever experienced discrimination on campus?” The results may be surprising for some of the readers who think OSU and Corvallis are hotbeds for so-called “liberal” views.

Well, only if those liberal views equate to English-only values, and the person in question speaks English with an educated, White, northern American accent. The experiences of Huang, Ellen, and Midori (pseudonyms used to protect their identities) are just three case studies in point.

Huang's Story

Huang is a second-year student from Southeast Asia who used to work at West dining hall. Having Chinese-speaking co-workers, she would often chat with them in their common first language (L1), Chinese, until one day their supervisor prohibited them from speaking it. The supervisor justified the prohibition claiming that she needed to be able to understand them in case they needed help, and later confessed that she also wasn’t sure if they were talking bad about her.

Plus, I don't know if you're talking bad about me...

Ellen's Story

One of the researchers, Jason, first met Ellen in a focus group meeting where Jason was trying to understand student attitudes toward differently accented English on OSU's campus.

Ellen's story isn't that much different from Huang's story, since they both took place in on-campus dining halls where much of managerial staff rotate from hall to hall.

Ellen self identifies as a proud Chinese speaker who loves life in the US, while at the same time misses her family back in Fujian. She used to work at Arnold Dining Hall until she was wrongly fired, being accused of stealing a cookie, which the management couldn't prove.

Jason asked her if she'd ever experienced discrimination at work, and she told him about the time where she was threatened to do a menial task for not speaking English. At the time of the incident, she was preparing vegetables for the salad bar with a Chinese-speaking coworker.

In Chinese, Ellen asked her coworker if there were any more cucumbers (...actually, she couldn't remember what exactly she asked). The manager, a White woman from Louisiana, must has overheard her speaking Chinese because later she approached Ellen and told her that she should be speaking English unless she wants to be put on dish duty, a job that apparently wasn't not highly sought after.

Monolingual English speakers may have a hard time understanding why asking someone to speak English at the workplace would be problematic. After all, we are in the US. But then, the US doesn’t have an official language and neither does Oregon or OSU for that matter.

We argue that the discriminatory acts committed by the supervisors from both stories are connected to racialized bigotry, based on the notion that while in the US one should use English at the workplace. Yet, friends of ours who are racialized as White, and speak French or German, never get told off for not speaking English at work.

Midori has a similar story about language, but this time she was told off for not speaking English "well enough," or, rather, speaking English while being a Person of Color.

Midori's Story

Jason met Midori through community Japanese classes on campus. He could tell by the way she spoke English that she had been speaking it her whole life. And sure enough, during an interview, Midori shared her experience of growing up with a father who traveled around the world for his job. So, Midori and her brother jumped from international school to international school; Her schooling was always English-medium. In fact, she recounted a time when she and her brother got in trouble for speaking Japanese, instead of English, to each other in the hall, Japanese, after all, was her home language, in spite of living in Brazil at the time where Portuguese is the "official language."

Midori shared her experience of discrimination in the classroom. She had a professor who ridiculed her during class, in front of all her classmates, telling her that she needed to improve her English. Her accent was too difficult to understand was the claim.

Why did the teacher feel that is was alright to criticize her English ability, especially in front of Midori's peers? Was Midori's English not good enough or rather was it not White enough?

Why does this happen at OSU and other places in the US?

White Public Space

is a fancy academic concept that Jane Hill described as “…[being] constructed through (1) intense monitoring of the speech of racialized populations such as [Chicanxs, Latinxs, Blacks, Natives, Asians, and internationalized students] for signs of linguistic disorder and (2) the invisibility of almost identical signs in the speech of Whites, where language mixing, required for the expression of a highly valued type of colloquial persona, takes several forms.”

Fundamentally, People of Color who use languages other than English, or speak English with an L2 accent or a stigmatized L1 accent (like Black English) are subject to heavy monitoring of their speech. People who think they are White listen to these people with an ever critical ear, and some, according to our research, claim to "shut off," or stop listening, when they hear a "foreign" accent.

Raciolinguistic Ideologies

is another academic concept that Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa argue “…produce[s] racialized speaking subjects who are constructed as linguistically deviant even when engaging in linguistic practices positioned as normative or innovative when produced by privileged white subjects.”

In other words, in White public space, when People of Color don't use the language that is expected of them, i.e. English at OSU, their behavior is considered deviant, or different from what is considered to be normal or morally correct.

I asked the manager to provide evidence that I had stolen the cookie, and was told that they didn't have video footage nor did they need it. The manager's claim was enough to fire me. -- Ellen

Myth of Non-Accent

In her book, "English with an Accent," Rosina Lippi-Green explains that “[i]n general, linguists think of standard language and its corollary, non-accent, as abstractions.

And in fact, this is a logical connection, as is borne out by the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition: [an abstraction is] the idea of something which has no independent existence; a thing which exists only in idea; something visionary. [...] Standard language should not be understood as any specific language, but as an idea in the mind rather than a reality – a set of abstract norms to which actual usage may conform to a greater or lesser extent. [...I]t is useful to consider both standard language and non-accent as myths."

Her point is that everyone has an accent. Yet, so-called "native" speakers of a language often deny that they themselves have one. Rosina goes on to explain that “[In U.S. English] L1 accent is the [first language] variety of U.S. English spoken:

every [L1] speaker of U.S. English has an L1 accent, no matter how unmarked or marked the person’s language may seem to be. [...] L2 accent is very different. When a [L1] speaker of a language other than English learns English, accent is used to refer to the breakthrough of [L1] language phonology into the target language.

Thus we might say that an individual has a Welsh accent, or a Tagalog accent, because the phonologies of those languages influence the learner’s pronunciation of U.S. English, and any effort to block the L2 accent will be accomplished with differing degrees of success.”

In other words, expecting someone to reduce or get rid of their accent is like asking someone to change their height. It's possible, with lots of effort and money, but it's rather demeaning to ask someone to do this in the first place.

Every first language speakers of U.S. English has an L1 accent, no matter how unmarked or marked the person's language may seem to be. -- Rosina Lippi-Green

What can we as students, teachers, etc. do about it?

Know your rights!

Civil Rights Center (CRC)

What do I need to know about... English-Only Rules

The Department of Labor (DOL) benefits from the substantial contributions of employees who are fluent in languages other than English.

As an employer that promotes the benefits of a diverse workforce, DOL recognizes that employees who speak languages other than English may wish to communicate in another language outside of performing their job duties, such as in casual conversations with coworkers or while engaged in personal matters.

In most circumstances, employees' communications in languages other than English should not be limited to only those official functions for which they were hired. Employees' right to speak in languages other than English may only be curtailed in certain narrowly-defined situations.

EEOC Regulation 29 C.F.R. §1606.7 (a) provides that a rule requiring employees to speak only English at all times in the workplace is a burdensome term and condition of employment. Such a rule is presumed to violate Title VII.

Therefore, a speak-English-only rule that applies to casual conversations between employees on break or not performing a job duty would be unlawful.

A workplace English-only rule that is applied only at certain times may be adopted only under very limited circumstances that are justified by business necessity.

29 C.F.R. § 1606.7 (b) Such a rule must be narrowly tailored to address the business necessity. Situations in which business necessity would justify an English-only rule include:

· For communications with customers, coworkers, or supervisors who only speak English

· In emergencies or other situations in which employees must speak a common language to promote safety o For example, a rule requiring employees to speak only English in the event of an emergency and when performing their work in specific areas of the workplace that might contain flammable chemicals or other potentially dangerous equipment is narrowly tailored to safety requirements and does not violate Title VII.

For cooperative work assignments in which the English-only rule is needed to promote efficiency

·To enable a supervisor who only speaks English to monitor the performance of an employee whose job duties require communication in English with coworkers or customers.

For example, a rule requiring employees to speak only English with English-speaking co-workers and customers when a supervisor is present to monitor their work performance would be narrowly tailored to promote efficiency of business operations. As long as the rule does not apply to casual conversations between employees when they are not performing job duties, it would not violate Title VII.

Where to find resources at OSU

ASOSU is every student at Oregon State University

ASOSU is every student at Oregon State University. We exist as an organization to promote academic excellence, encourage the intellectual, social, cultural, and physical development of the student body, and enable the student body to assert its varied interests as citizens and members of the academic community through democratic representation.

ASOSU Student Legal Services

ASOSU Student Legal Services provides legal advice and representation to OSU students when the other party to the dispute is not also an OSU student or a part of the university or one of its administrative units. Advising which may consist of consultation and, in limited circumstance, representation is provided in the following areas.

·Immigration

·Landlord/tenant disputes

·Personal Injury

·Credit issues including debtor/creditor matters and collections, and bankruptcy

·Consumer problems

·Traffic infractions

·Criminal charges

·Wills & Power of Attorney

·Uncontested child and uncontested dissolution of marriage cases, including child support

·And various miscellaneous matters including employment, and probate, name changes, disability benefits and social security, veterans benefits, and unemployment benefits

Bias Incident Response Team

The Bias Response Team is responsible for applying the Reported Bias Incident Response Protocol. Bias Response Team members include key campus stakeholders.

Current members of the Bias Response Team include:

Teresita Alvarez-Cortez, University Housing and Dining Services

Brandi Douglas, Office of Institutional Diversity

Nicole Hindes, Human Services Resource Center

Reagan Le, Diversity & Cultural Engagement

Chris Lenn, Office of Equal Opportunity and Access

Carol Millie, Student Conduct and Community Standards

Aubrie Piper, Office of Student Life

Erich Pitcher, College of Education

Erin Rook, OSU-Cascades

Scott Vignos, Office of Institutional Diversity

Ismail Warsame, Office of International Services

The Bias Response Team communicates and meets regularly to respond to bias incidents as they are reported.

In addition to the core Bias Response Team members, content area experts and campus partners are consulted on a regular basis to provide input and collaboratively develop and implement bias incident responses.