...

Racism is a horrible thing and hopefully everyone else in class would agree, but having a prescriptive view of language doesn't always go along with racism. Growing up, everyone is taught the correct grammatical rules of the American English language. We all studied it and were tested on how well we knew these rules. As students it's impossible to view the English language in a descriptive manner. If we do, we would fail or tests, score horribly on our papers and butt heads with our teachers. So being prescriptive doesn't nessasarily mean that you are racist. The racism comes into play when we fail to recognize that other cultures and sub-cultures have their own way of speaking that follows certain rules and is generally learned by association. It comes into play when we buy into the stereotypes that are generally paired with certain dialects. It comes into play when we don't respect somebody because of the way they talk or try to dissassociate ourselves from them because of the stigma that's been attached to them. When a prescriptivist calls a certain dialect wrong, I feel like that is racist, but I don't see a problem with presciptivists trying to teach the grammatical rules surrounding the English language to a people with a particular dialect. Without the teaching of the rules of English, it seems the language would fall apart. How would great books and stories be written without a proper understanding of how the English language works? It doesn't seem likely to happen.