Diagramming Sentences or Alienating Souls?

Author: Wekesa Madzimoyo

This image was a part of a FB post and article: A Picture Of Language: The Fading Art Of Diagramming Sentences.  Here are some of the FB comments:

• I remember diagramming sentences in school and really loved doing it on the blackboard and finding the placement of every word in the sentence. Oh! what a wonderfully thrilling challenge and I usually got them correct."
• "Wish they still taught it in school."
• I'm convinced this is at least part of the reason today so many people can't write or use proper grammar."
• I certainly do remember doing this! Loved it!

Certainly, many enjoy misty-eyed memories of English instruction. If that's your lot, I'm glad that you had instructors, families, and/or situations that foster great memories.

I must mourn. While some saw us diagramming sentences, I felt that we were dissecting and alienating souls.

Part of my "not knowing, or "not caring" about "proper" grammar was in part a rebellion against the implied "improper" label directed at us - African people - via the door of "improper" usage of the oppressor's language.

Being taught to use the English language code to challenge oppression, and even to get to know and appreciate African and African-American language codes that we spoke would have helped me have fun with diagramming sentences.

I wasn't asked or allowed to analyze my Great Grandfather's "Gwine" as in "I'm gwine (going) tuh da sto." My mom called him “Papa.” I knew him as “Papa Down The Road.” I remember the mild shock of discovering that his name was really Oscar McClain. My mother's eyes lit up when she said his name. Dad always made sure we visited – with a gift - usually a cigar and a nip.

Papa Down The Road aka Oscar McClain  Photo by Wekesa
Madzimoyo - All Rights Reserved.

Papa’s language code was never invited into the school, and certainly not into the language class. Instead, I was taught to distance myself from it, and hence from him. Not one time did the instructor make sure that I could communicate "correctly" or "properly" with Papa. His code was simply not worth diagramming, I suppose.

My mother, grandfather, uncles were ministers;  language was central in our family. Our language was like our dancing on Friday night or shoutin' on Sunday morning - hot, moving, sensual, rhythmic, philosophical and correct in ways that the English language and English people weren't and probably never will be.

Sometimes I did mix Papa's or the minster's language in my responses at school. Instructors would lay it on the cold surgical table of proper English and cut it out. Where they saw only grades and red marks on paper, I saw blood streaming...

I know. I was there. Learning to speak the oppressor's language better than "they" was also source of family pride, it was a hope that I wouldn't suffer as much, a prayer that whites would accept me (us), and a rejoinder to the claim that we were inferior: "See, we can speak your own language better than you."

Sawdust. It was like chewing on sawdust. Over the long night of oppression, our retreat to survive had morphed into surrender. We didn't learn English to evade, invade, or gain a strategic advantage that would lead to liberation. We didn't nurture or develop our own language codes for our own purposes. Dunbar’s 1896 “We Wear the Mask” had become too faint of a reminder.

Now, by the 1950-60's, we sought to become the mask. The prevailing strategy was to show that we had mastered the words and the syntax of the language which severed our ancestor's tongues.

Fortunately, mixed in with my family pride at my English language acquisition were spikes. “You, talkin’ white” was also a challenge hurled at my increasing English language prowess. It was a sharply pointed admonition for me to remember to wear my proficiency as a mask, and a tool to invade and evade. I know now, that such a challenge was a legitimate request that I REASSURE them that I wouldn't lose my connection to them and that I wouldn't take on White views about them as my own.

Grand Ma Hettie’s insistence on speaking her language code with style and flair reminded me not to become the new slasher - cutting our people's tongues and spirits by seeing them as “improper” when they chose to speak a different language code than our oppressors.

Grandma - Hettie Tucker
Photographer - Unknown. Property of Tucker Family - all rights reserved.

She was a great thinker, cook, farmer, and shooter, and a-prayin' kind of woman. Her constant prayer included

“ thank you, Lord, for waking me up this morning; keeping me clothed in my right mind...”

She didn't shadow her spirit or her speech no matter where she was. Her doing so kept me clothed in my right mind and made sure that I didn’t unwittingly become the mask of terror.

I was in at UNC-CH by the time I heard Claude McKay's “If We Must Die.” It grabbed me  - instructed me on how I could use this language to express my disdain for the countless tongues, arms, legs, hands, and hopes that had been severed or twisted by English and other racist instruction.

Then came David Walker’s “Appeals,” then Henry Highland Garnet, Francis Ellen Watkins Harper, Ida B. Wells and countless others helping to make sure my grandmother’s prayers were answered.

I had graduated before I learned of Sterling Brown’s "Long Track Blues," "Battle of Joe Meek," and "Conjured." When I meet Zora’s Tea Cake and Janie, I was in heaven. I could trust them to navigate language codes without losing their souls or inducing me to lose mine.

My family was welcomed in their house of instruction - in their language classes.

Where were they when I was in the 4th grade at PS 26 in Brooklyn?
Where were they when I was at J. S. Spivey in Jr. High School in Fayetteville, NC?

I did have Black teachers who worked to make it fun and relevant. They even managed to get me to win an award or two. A handful was like Ms. Meterine McClean and Ms. Fannie Jenkins.  Tall, dark-skinned Ms. McClean was my Jr. High School Librarian who introduced me to the Carter G. Woodson's ASALH encyclopedia set. This was years before I would discover his Miseducation of the Negro. She nurtured my love of reading.  When Ms. Jenkins, who saw education as a battle too, encouraged me to fight oppression. I aced Geometry.

It was hot in the classroom for more reason that one. The first nine weeks were about to end, I was slouching in geometry class. Ms. Jenkins asked me to stay after class. In more of a connecting that condemning voice, she said: "Boy, you know you can do this work. What's your problem?" For some reason, I knew I could trust her with the truth. "I don't want to be here. I wanted to go to E.E. Smith. I don't want to be at this white school." Son, she said, "I don't want to be here either. I was forced to come, just like you were." Could it really be that she wasn't going to talk me out of being angry and disappointed? We talked, she agreed to be the faculty adviser to the newly forming Black Student Union and said "Since we're both here. We might as well make the best of it. So, why don't you do this geometry?" I said I would if my geometric proofs didn't have to follow those in the book. "As long as they are correct," she said. I still love Geometry to this day - fifty years later.

Though stumbling and often giving mixed messages, my family, community,  a few teachers, and the Black Power Movement made sure that in the tug-a-war for my soul, my psyche, my allegiance, and my power, that English language and other instruction - as dissection and alienation - didn't win.

Education in 2017 - be it grammar, geometry or computer programming - is still a battleground for the identity and souls of our people. It's not popular to talk in such terms today. The warriors are old now, and the generations-old alienation and identity blood-letting have morphed into what educator and author of From Mediocre to Marvelous, Debra Watkins calls "self-loathing." Student resistance is still present - only the enemy (oppression) is often mistaken for self. The old and new warriors are called to become healers and builders as well.

My mother also taught me not to "make you happy twice," and I fear that while you may have been happy to see me come, I'm getting close to you becoming happy to see me go, so I'll take my leave now.

Gwine spend some time with Papa Down the Road. Did I tell you that he lived ‘till he was 103? That's a mark for me.

Gwine na sit on da porch, talk with him, sip some of that "cone lika" he liked, and get lost in the sounds, rhythms, imagery and wisdom of those old stories he loved to tell.

Wanna come?  C'mon. Get up off that cold surgical table and join us. There is plenty of room on Papa’s porch.

PS: This awareness has spawned AYA's Family Lore Project. Check it out:

(C) copyright Wekesa O. Madzimoyo 2017