The importance of having our own Language...

"Note: this was written prior to my vacation, having went home, I can attest to the realities discussed in this piece as still being true today."

As I was out doing a little shopping today going from store to store, from swap meet to swap meet, I found myself in stores and shops owned by a diverse group of people including but not limited to Black folk, Asians, Arabs, Whites etc.. But the one thing most of these stores and when I say most I mean well over ninety percent of them had in common was the store clerks of these stores and shops were mostly if not exclusively Mexican men and women barring the owner and his family. Clearly this is because the majority of those who frequent these stores and shops are Mexican. However, I thought back to how our community shops and stores that were mostly if not exclusively frequented by Black men and women were also owned by people from outside our community but they did not hire us to work in these stores and shops as they now hire Mexican men and women to work in them. Then it dawned on me, it's the language!

It is no secret that Black men and women were robbed of everything that was uniquely ours and those things were replaced by things that were uniquely European. This includes religion, culture and the language we speak. Surely we all have thought about if not debated the fact that Black folk in America are amongst the small group of Black folk on the earth that speak one language exclusively and it is the language of our oppressor, but how often do we stop to think over how much this reality has worked against us.

During our enslavement here in America we had to develop a language system that was only understood by us, this was done to pass messages alone and warn others of coming danger or possible planned escapes or insurrections. White folk did not understand what we were saying and thought we were just talking and singing but within our words was a message for our people. This historical reality underlines the importance of having ones own language and demonstrates how empowering having a distinct language can be or at the very least it demonstrates how empowering it is to communicate with ones own people in a way that is different than how we communicate with others.

Today in America, Mexican men and women are a good example of how empowering having ones own language can be while simultaneously reminding us how disempowering being robbed of ones language can be.

If merchants who set up shops and stores in Black communities to make a living off of our dollars had to speak a language that was unique to us in the way Spanish is unique to Mexican men and women we would see a different reality in our communities. Imagine if Black folk in America primarily spoke Swahili or Yoruba and English was our second language, this would mean all outsiders looking to do business with our people and in our communities would have to learn our language or hire us to help them do business in our community versus just moving in and setting up shop. Present day realities says that outsiders would employ us versus learning our language on their own as witnesses in places where Mexican men and women are the majority of shoppers. However, being that we only speak English which is basically the language of the land, the merchants serving our community need to only speak it, thus there is not a need for them to hire any one from our community so that they can communicate with us as they must do to communicate with Mexican men and women who only speak Spanish.

The loss of our language by way of our enslavement and not having a language that is uniquely ours has enabled outsiders who come to this country and need to learn English (the language of the land) to do business here to also use the English language and the fact that Black Folk only speak the English language as their catalyst to prey on our people and our community thus exploiting one of the many fallouts from our enslavement “The loss of our language”.