Rutgers University Did Not Declare Grammar "Racist"
The Claim
Rutgers University English department chair Rebecca Walkowitz wrote in June 2020 that “grammar is racist” or words to that effect.
News posted on
Emerging story
On July 24 2020, the Washington Free Beacon posted an article with the headline “Rutgers Declares Grammar Racist.” The story has since been picked up on by many social media users and other publications. The story quotes from an announcement made recently by the Rutgers English department that they will “stand with and respond” to the Black Lives Matter Movement, and will even more greatly emphasize “social justice” and “critical grammar” in the classroom.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar’s investigation into this claim reveals it to be false. Quoting from Walkowitz’s June 19 open letter published on the Rutgers’ English department website, “Incorporating critical grammar into our pedagogy”:
“challeng[ing] the familiar dogma that writing instruction should limit emphasis on grammar/sentence-level issues so as to not put students from multilingual, non-standard ‘academic’ English backgrounds at a disadvantage. Instead, it encourages students to develop a critical awareness of the variety of choices available to them [with] regard to micro-level issues in order to empower them and equip them to push against biases based on ‘written’ accents.”
In other words, it would appear that Walkowitz is directing the Rutgers English department to harness academic Critical Theory with regard to grammar—the idea that there is no objectively right answer when it comes to grammar and that truth is a matter of perspective based on one’s locations within race/gender/class/etc. systems and hierarchies. As a result, it would seem likely that Rutgers would call what are conventionally referred to as grammar mistakes “written accents” and will encourage students to “push against biases” against such “accents.”
However, despite the fact that accents are conventionally attributed to people of different linguistic and thus cultural/geographic/ethnic backgrounds, nowhere in her open letter does Walkowitz actually use the word "racist," or literally say that people who speak or write in different dialects might find it more difficult to understand each other than otherwise.
