I truly believe people have been given longer sentences because they weren't able to communicate effectively or because they weren't viewed as credible because English wasn't their first language or because they spoke AAVE or Chicano English or had lower literacy.

1/9

There's been much injustice on the basis of language. What this means is that there are people sitting in jail for perhaps and extra year or more because they used something like zero copula in their speech, a major characteristic of AAVE, for example.

2/9

This kind of thing happens from the lowest levels all the way up every institutional power structure. This kind of thing has been talked about a lot in the educational system for 50+ years, but it's been harder to talk about this in regard to the criminal justice system in

3/9

our country because we cant really do studies in prisons like we have in schools.

Of course, there's things that are happening and there was that 2016 paper by Rickford and King on the George Zimmerman case, but we got a long way to go.

4/9

As Rickford and King argued, linguistic prejudice very likely had a significant impact on the Zimmerman trial.

I remember there being people claiming Jeantel didnt even speak English which is obviously a false statement and also just plain hateful.

5/9

When you say things like this about the way someone else speaks, it comes from a very ugly, racist place.

What's crazy is that it's almost still acceptable to discriminate against people based on their dialect or language.

6/9

Even if what's really happening is racism or sexism or whatever, it's so easy to hide that behind linguistic discrimination. One of the main places this happens? Employment.

7/9

It's very easy for people to say someone didnt have the "right communication skills" for the job or "they weren't a good [cultural] fit".

It's a very easy way to throw out women and POC

It happens in sooooo many other areas, too, like housing!!!

8/9

I dont think people get how much language impacts everything in life and is an incredibly important topic when we are talking about social justice.

9/9