20 At the same time Clementson is pointing out the bigotry implicit in
calling an African American “articulate,” she points out:
With the ballooning size of the black middle and upper class,
qualities in blacks like intelligence, eloquence – the mere ability to
string sentences together with tenses intact – must at some point
become as unremarkable to whites as they are to blacks.
(Clementson 2007; emphasis added)This narrow definition of acceptable English (with tenses intact) is
one that is echoed by other prominent African Americans and
undercuts the primary argument, though the writer seems unaware of
this.Suggested further reading
Gitlin, T. (1980) The Whole World Is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the
New Left. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Herman, E.S. and Chomsky, N. (2002) Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the
Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books.
Media Matters for America (2009) Emerging Culture of Paranoia. April 13. Available at:
http://xrl.in/567u.
Popp, R.K. (2006) Mass Media and the Linguistic Marketplace: Media, Language, and
Distinction. Journal of Communication Inquiry. 30 1: 5–20.