by Ty Slobe

Racism comes in many forms. Sometimes racism manifests in the racial profiling of strangers, the way it did on the night that George Zimmerman stalked and killed Trayvon Martin. Sometimes racism is legally institutionalized, the way it is in laws like Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. Sometimes racism is more subtle, and we saw racism in both wildly explicit and quietly subtextual forms in the Zimmerman trial.

Specifically, there was the subtle racism of language, when witness Rachel Jeantel was discredited based on her idiolect. An idiolect is an individual person’s language (in comparison to a dialect, which is the language commonly belonging to a larger community or group). During pre-trial interviews from both the prosecution and defense and during the trial itself, Jeantel effectively communicated in English. Her background is Haitian, and she grew up speaking Creole and Spanish, but is perfectly fluent in English–though arguably, her idiolect was closer to the dialect of Black American English (BAE) than Standard American English (SAE), the technical names of the two major dialects. If Jeantel had not felt comfortable communicating in English the court would have appointed her a translator—as they in fact did with another witness. But she does speak English, so there was no need.

Standard American English is a misnomer in the first place, because there is absolutely no “right way” to speak or write in English, and if you think that there is a “right way” to write or speak you’d better check your socioeconomic and educational privilege at the door: you’re wrong. English is an extremely diverse language because it has diverse speakers, and the point of any language is to communicate with other speakers. Because of slavery, discrimination, and isolation BAE and SAE are very different from one another in many ways. Speakers of SAE have long used government policies and private violence to isolate speakers of BAE. The differences by no means make BAE any “less” of a dialect than SAE. When it comes to effective communication, BAE is a perfectly competent dialect within the larger dialect of American English.

As Trayvon Martin’s close friend and the last person to speak with him before he was killed by Zimmerman, Rachel Jeantel was a key witness in the trial. I would just like to take this chance to remind you that witnesses are subpoenaed, they have to testify. It is the law. Rachel Jeantel did not willingly show up at her friend’s murder trial in an attempt to get some celebrity attention or to bring attention to BAE vocabulary or her native creole. She had to be there, and because of her mere law-abiding-presence she was the victim of extreme racism from both Zimmerman’s  lawyer Don West and the much of the media coverage of the trial.

At one especially infuriating moment of Jeantel’s cross-examination, Don West asked her if she even understood English: “When someone speaks to you in English do you believe that you have any difficulty understanding it because it wasn’t your first language?”

Clearly West knew that Jeantel speaks English—remember, this was not their first conversation! So why did he ask her this in front of the jury? Because he knew it would draw attention to her speech and the negative societal connotations that come along with it.

Did Don West publicly prove himself to be a defender of racism during this trial? Probably. And he certainly upheld the idea that speakers of BAE are inherently uncredible, and expected the jury to uphold this racist belief as well. West knew that by exploiting her language he could bring attention to Rachel Jeantel as being “less credible” and “less capable” simply because of the way that she talks. She speaks English and he knew it, and by drawing attention to her idiolect, he refocused attention on the fact that she was black, she was “different,” and she was not to be trusted.  It certainly caught the attention of countless media outlets who are still interviewing Jeantel about her language. And most importantly, in her role as key witness for the prosecution, she was discredited in the eyes of the jury.

There are a lot of negative connotations that the mostly-white SAE-speaking community have toward BAE speakers. BAE is widely considered by non-BAE speakers to be a violent, less intelligent, and incomplete language, but none of this is true. West was able to play off of these negative stereotypes in an attempt to construct Jeantel in this light herself, and to construct Trayvon Martin’s friend group in this light as well—therefore suggesting that Martin was an ignorant and likely violent teenager because of the people who he surrounded himself with based on their language alone.

Rachel Jeantel has never deserved to be criticized based on her language, and the way that she speaks has never reflected anything about her character. She does not need to justify her speech to anybody. Instead, the people who judge Jeantel because of her speech need to reflect on their own perceptions and understanding of language. Black American English is in no way “less” than SAE, and BAE speakers do not need to justify themselves to anyone.

The media attention and courtroom biases that faced Rachel Jeantel were certainly not unique. African American woman have been wrongly criticized and discredited for their socially misconstrued “less than” identity in comparison with a defendant (see Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas), and African American woman are consistently misportrayed and stereotyped in the media as being “angry.”

We’ve learned that in the state of Florida a white man can get away with killing an African American teenager who he finds to be “threatening” based on looks alone—we’ve learned about the utterly unjust racist laws in existence that allow this to happen. As a society we need to reflect on our country’s institutionalized racism, and the notions of racial “differences” that support this. Language and the understanding of linguistic diversity is just part of the struggle that we face as a society in the fight against racism.

In light of so much bad that has come out of Trayvon Martin’s murder and Zimmerman’s verdict, I can only hope that we start to see more good policies coming out of these conversations as soon as possible—and the way in which these conversations are spoken is not nearly as important as what is being said. Racist judgments of diverse dialects need to end because everyone’s voice is important and valid, no matter how they speak.