Proposition – 58 in California

• Save California Residents from a Language Drought: Vote ‘Yes’ This Fall. Avineri, N., Blum, S.D., García-Mateus, S., Zentella, A.C., (2016). The Huffington Post [Online News].
• Bilingual and Multilingual Education: Promoting Proposition-58 in the State of California and Parents Rights to a Bilingual Education for their Children. Radio Bilingüe (90.9), December 5^th, 2019

Changing Mascot Names

Working to end the use of American Indian names for sports mascots is an important LSJ initiative. The disrespectful practice of using indigenous names for sports team names is based on a violent history based on racism, colonialism, and systematic oppression. The LSJ initiated public outreach efforts to respond to these racist practices, and collaborated with the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, Committee for Human Rights Task Group, and Association of Indigenous Anthropologists. In March 2015 the AAA officially denounced these practices.

• “AAA Calls on Sports Organizations to Denounce Inappropriate American Indian Mascots,” press release, March 2015. (PDF)
• “My High School Mascot Is Offensive,” by Gillian McGoldrick in Education Week, February 2015. (Published in print edition as “When Morality and Law Trump School Tradition”.)
• “This Holiday Season Let’s Replace Disparaging Slurs,” by Netta Avineri and Bernard Perley in Huffington Post, December 2014.
  
• “Indian Mascots: Naturalized Racism and Anthropology,” by Bernard Perley in Anthropology News, November 2015.

Dialogue on the “Word/Language Gap”

The “language gap” is a term meant to encompass a gap between the number of words young children from underprivileged backgrounds hear and those that children from middle-class backgrounds hear. The argument following from research and media on the “language gap” is that if these children hear more words they will then produce more words, test better, do better in school, and have more opportunities in life. If only this were the case. The LSJ emphasizes that this “blame the victim” discourse steers our attention away from the central issues of economic and structural inequalities, through a deficit model. We work to change the public dialogue on this matter through sharing our perspectives in a range of news media outlets as well as by developing a database of teaching resources.

• “The Middle Class (Thinks It) Knows Best: Daring to Intervene in Disadvantaged Households,” by Susan D. Blum, Lizzie Fagen, Kathleen C. Riley in Huffington Post, February 2015.
• “Selling the Language Gap,” by Susan D Blum and Kathleen C Riley, originally published in Anthropology News, August 2014. [PDF]
  • RELATED: “The Talking Cure,” by Margaret Talbot in The New Yorker, January 2015.
• “‘The Language Gap’ — Liberal Guilt Creates Another Not-So-Magic Bullet,” by Susan D Blum in Huffington Post, April 2014.
• Storify of live tweets from the 2015 AAA panel, “STRANGELY FAMILIAR: THE “LANGUAGE GAP,” BLAMING THE VICTIM, AND CHILD-REARING IN POVERTY.” 21 November 2015. (share using: bit.ly/StoryifyLxGap)

Eliminate the I-Word

Ongoing debates about U.S. immigration reform have sparked calls for the media and the public to refrain from using terms like “illegals,” “illegal immigrants” and “illegal aliens,” to refer to unauthorized migrants. As scholars who study the ways that language constitutes culture and vice versa, it is intellectually and ethically imperative for linguistic anthropologists to contribute to this discussion. The LSJ Taskforce is committed to eliminating the I-word (‘illegal’) from mainstream public discourse. To this end, LSJ representatives (including in particular previous core member Jonathan Rosa) have worked to redirect the public dialogue through various media outlets.

• “Contesting Representations of Immigration” by Jonathan Rosa, originally published October 2013 in Anthropology News.  [PDF article]
• Click here for more information and media on Public Outreach to Eliminate the I-Word

U.S. Census Language Questions, Categories, and Labels

The American Community Survey (ACS) of the Census Bureau provides the only reliable data on language in the U.S., in order to comply with Congressional mandates, such as the implementation of the Voting Rights act, and to support interventions for those who speak a language other than English at home and do not speak English “Very Well”.  But those who reported they speak English WELL, NOT WELL, or NOT AT ALL are categorized together, and they were labeled Linguistically Isolated until the AAA (urged by our Task Group) and other national organizations lobbied against that term. As of 2011, the substitute label for this category is LEP, Limited English Proficient.  We are mounting a campaign against this inappropriate, incorrect, and limited label, as well as the grouping itself and the lack of questions concerning literacy skills, because misinformation about the language abilities of English learners encourages intolerance against speakers of other languages.

• Society for Linguistic Anthropology letter in support of the American Community Survey, November 2012 [PDF]
• “American Anthropological Association Spurs Elimination of “Linguistically Isolated” as Classification by the U.S. Census Bureau.” Press Release from the American Anthropological Association, May 2011. [PDF]