2 6 2 James Baldwin 10. John R, chavez, The Lost Land: The ChiC!LlW Images at the Southwest (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mr:xioo Press, 1984), 88-9Q. U. "Hispanic" is derived Crom Hi.spa.f1is (Espana., Ii name given to the Iber ian Peninsula in ancient times when it was a part of tile Roman F.m.plre) and is a tenn designated by the U.S. gowrnment to ma.ke it easier to handle us 011 paper. . 12, The 'D:eaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo created tbe Mexican-American in 1848. l3 . Anglos, in order to alleviate their guilt for dispossessing the Chicano, stressed the Spanish part of us and perpetrated die myth of the Spanish Southwest. We have accepted t h ~ fiction that we arc Hispanic, that is Spanish, in order to acrommodate o1lrselves to the dominant cultnrE and its abhorrance of Indians. ChBve.1., 88-91. If Black English Isn't a Language 7 Then Tell Me 7 What Is? During the early 19805, James IJaI.dw£n ( 1 9 2 4 ~ 1 9 8 7 J was on the fdallty of the FCve Colleges in. ~ t e m Mnssachwetts (Amherst. Hampshire. Mount 'HolyokJ?, Smuh, and University of MassachusettS). He is the Quthor of lUl.menJUS book$, including Notes of a Native Son, Another Country, anJi If Beale Street Could Thlk. S t. Paul de Vence. France-The argument concerning the use, or the statue, or the reality, 01 black English is moted In American history dnd has absolutely nothing to do with the question th e argu ment supposes itself to be posing, The argument has nothing (0 do with language itself bu t with th e role of language. Language, incon testably, reveals the speaker. Language. also. far more dubjously, is meant to define th e other-and, in this case, the other is refusing to be defined by a language that has never been able to recognize him. .?eople evolve a langu age in order to describe an d LililS control their circumstances, or in order no t to qe submerged h y a .reality that they cannot articulate. (And, if they cannot articulate it, they are submeIged.) A Frenchman living in Paris speaks a subtly an d crucially different language from tnat of the man living in Mat seilles; neither sounds very much like a man living in Quebec: and they would all have great difficulty in apprehending what the man IfBladc: Bngngh Isn't 8. Language, Then Tell Me, What Lli? 2 6 3 from G u a d ~ l o u l ' e , or Martinique t is saying, to say nothing of the man from S e n ~ g a l - a I t h o l l g h the "common" language of aU these areas is French. But each ha s paid, and is paying, a different price for this "'common" language, in which, as it turns oul, they are nOl saying, and cannot be saying. the same things: They each have very or 3 What joins all languages, an d all men, :Is the necessity to con fronl1iie. in order, not inconceivably, to outwit death: The price fo r this is the acceptance, an d achievement, of one's temporal identity. So that, for example. though it is not taught in the schools (and this has the potential of becoming a political issue) the south of France still clings to it s ancient an d musical P r o v e n ~ I , which resists being described as a "dialect." And much. of the tension in the Basque cGuntries, an d m Wales, is due Co the Basque and -welsh determjna tiDn no t to allow their languagEs to be destroyed. This determina tion also feeds the flames in Ireland for many indignities th e Irish have been forced to undergo at English hands is the Englisb wn tempt for their language. 4 It goes without saying, then, that language is also a political instrument, means, an d proof of power. It 1s the most vivid and cru cial key to identity: It reveals the privale identity. and Cflnnects one with, or d i v o r c ~ s one from. th e larger., public, or communal identity. There have been, an d are. times, an d places s when to speak a cer tain language could be dangerous, even fatal. Or. one may speak the same language, bu t in such a way that one's antecedents are revealed, or (one hopes) hidden. This is true in France. and is absolutely true in England: The range (and reign) of accents on that damp little island make England coherent for the English an d totally incomprehensible for eVeryone else. 'Ib open your mouth in England is (if I may use black English) to ""put your business in th e street":, You have confessed your patents, your youth, your schQol, your salary, your self-esteem, and, alas, your future, s Now, I do not know what white Americans. would sound like if there ha d never been an y black people in th e United States, bu t they would no t sound th e way they sound. Jazz, for example. is a very specific sexual term, as in jazz Irte. baby, bu t white people purified it into the Jfi?,Z Age. Sock it to me, which means, roughly, the s ~ m e thing. ha s been adopted by Nathaniel Hawllorne's descendants with no quahns or besitations at all, along with let it all hang Ollt and right on! Beat to his socks which was once th e black's m ost total and despairing image of poverty, ~ a ! i transformed into a thing called the Beat Generation, which phenomenon was, largely, composed of uptight. middle-class white people, imitating poverty, trying to ge.t down, to get with it, doing their th:ing, doing l