It’s no secret that Grand Valley State University isn’t a glowing representation of diversity. Let’s look specifically at the African American demographic as compared to the ethnic majority.

Compared to the U.S. Census statistic of 14.6 percent of African Americans in Michigan, our student body consists of only 6.3 percent. As of fall 2015, the GVSU Office of Institutional Analysis listed a total of 25,325 graduate and undergraduate students. Of this number, 1,317 are black and 20,902 are white. Out of the 876 regular faculty, 37 are black and 715 are white.

Given that 81.6 percent of the faculty is white, they are very likely to dominate each student’s schedule. This dynamic establishes a disconnection that affects the minority population in a variety of ways that I can only begin to gauge. One particular area affected is language, specifically for those who speak in African American Vernacular English. This is not limited to African Americans, and certainly doesn’t include all African Americans, but those who are in this group may experience difficulty when expected to “code switch” to the expected Standard American English.

Through linguistics courses and the GVSU Teach-In, “Black English in the Writing Center,” I have been enlightened about this English dialect. Many fail to recognize the validity of AAVE. This form of communication is not “dumbed down” English. It is a rule-governed dialect.

For example, those who speak AAVE may say the phrase, “I be hungry after school.” Speakers of SAE might say “I am always hungry after school.” The first variation is not incorrect English. It is not dumbed down and it is certainly not random. It is illustrating a rule. Instead of conjugating the verb ‘to be’ into am and including the word always, the non-conjugated “be” in the first sentence represents a repeated state of being. It is referred to as the “habitual be.”

If someone were to use “be,” a speaker of this dialect would know if the usage were correct or incorrect. Just like with SAE, we know the intricacies of our language, although we may not know the exact reason as to why it is wrong or right. We just know because of an internalized grammar system.

If a student who speaks SAE were to try to speak AAVE, they would have difficulty because they don’t know the grammar. The same goes for the opposite. Could I tell you whether to use “the” or “a”? Of course. Could I explain why? Not very well.

Students are sometimes made to feel inferior or that they are a bad writer because of university expectations, when there’s nothing wrong with their dialect. Students who come from a home speaking SAE are just advantaged in writing classes because they don’t have to try to learn another grammar system.

At the Writing Center, being aware of many faculty expectations, when students come in for help, we try to provide them with knowledge of SAE grammar. There is a conflict, however, knowing that there is nothing linguistically inferior about their dialect.

Yet many people still feel that SAE is better. Why? It comes down to power and prestige. Society is so persistent on the idea that professional writing can’t be in AAVE because it’s “incorrect” but as it’s been established, this is not the case.

Just like at the Teach-In session about this topic, I’m encouraging this conversation to be continued on campus. What do you think? How can this gap be closed? What can we do so that all students feel that their language isn’t inferior and are given equal advantage in their education, despite the lack of diversity at GVSU?