June Jordan’s “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and The Future Life of Willie Jordan” is a phenomenal piece of literature on the bias of “correct English”. Jordan makes the argument to her students, that Black English is a standard language. She even dedicated her article to one of her students at the University of Stony Brook, Willie J. Jordan Jr. June Jordan begins her article by describing how African Americans are losing
their connection with their language. Jordan paints an emotional picture as she illustrates that African Americans are being told to act, talk, and walk a certain way. “We begin to grow up in a house where every true mirror shows us the face of somebody who does not belong there, whose walk and whose talk will never look or sound “right,” because that house was meant to shelter a family that is alien and hostile to us.” Jordan is saying that as African Americans grow up, they are taught how to act, talk, and walk in a standard way, the white way. Black English is a forgotten art as now families are teaching their children that it is unacceptable to speak freely or the way they want to because it sounds incorrect to white folk. As black children walk past their mirrors at home, they start to familiarize their actions as wrong, it suggests they shouldn’t talk a certain way or that they need to speak proper “Standard English.”

Jordan develops a great argument by discussing how different forms of English are used in countries across the world. She begins this article by mentioning, English is used as an “intranational communication” (Jordan, pg. 363) by more than 33 countries. Jordan proceeds to point out that “there are five countries, or 333,746,000 people, for whom this thing called ‘English’ serves as a native tongue” (Jordan, pg. 363-364). According to Jordan, English is a strange concept, it is spoken differently by millions of
people yet somehow, it’s understood universally. Jordan brings up another logical point, she points out that the standard of English is different in Zimbabwe then it is in Malaysia. This raises a question to the reader, if all these countries can speak English in their own ways, why is Black English rejected as a form of standard English? Some countries like India have 14 co-existing languages, which are all legitimate spoken and written
languages. However, in the US there is only one language that reigns supreme to all others, it’s white English, the US standard English.

Jordan was a professor at Stony-Brook University, this is where she taught a course called “In Search of the Invisible Black Woman”. Her class consisted of young black women and men, with the exception 5 or 6 white people. During her course she assigned a forty-page reading of Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” she came in the following class ecstatic to hear what the students had to say about the book. To her surprise there was a silence among the class, she heard a student’s distant murmur and questioned it, the student questioned why the book sounded the way it did, which started a large class discussion critiquing the book on its language which happened to be Black English. “But I decided against pointing to these identical traits of syntax; I wanted not to make them self-conscious about their own spoken language- not while they clearly felt it was ‘wrong.’” Jordan used an emotional approach here mentioning that the students were critiquing their own language. To the reader, it’s quite the shock, how can these students not recognize their own language? She refrained from showing these students their reflection in the mirror she mentioned previously. The image they would see is one that is
not their own. To them Black English didn’t sound right it was written in a way that was unfamiliar to them. It seemed funny to them because it wasn’t the English they were taught growing up. They were taught that there was a proper way to speak English in the US, there’s a certain way sentences should be structured, there’s a certain way sentences should be punctuated, and there are certain ways that words should be spoken.

June Jordan and her students wrote down the first paragraph of “The Color Purple” and as a class they translated it from Black English to “Standard English” or in other words White English, the one they understood. They began to analyze the paragraph and
express their negative reactions to their spoken language, soon after, many students became enraged because they have never seen their spoken language written down. Jordan knew that this would get a reaction out of her students, she wanted to show them
that they were being taught to silence themselves. It was a rather emotional response as they desperately began to question whether it was too late to learn, why they never learned Black English, and could they learn it now. Consequentially, Jordan’s students were now eager to learn about Black English and asked if she could then teach them, not knowing if she could teach them efficiently, Jordan told her students “I’ll try.”

It was early September 1984; Jordan was now teaching a new course called “The Art of Black English” it was full of eager young adults including Willie Jordan who was one of her previous students. He was a student who was very interested in learning both black and standard English further. Jordan designed a set number of rules that were needed to
speak and write in Black English, as well as understand it. The set consisted of 4 set rules and 19 guidelines that helped the young students learn Black English. This was Jordan’s effort in showing these kids that Black English could just as well be Standard English. She was giving it the legitimate definition as being an independent language just like White
English is, it was given a set of rules and guidelines which enables people to use it and label it as their standard language, which appeals to logos. Once these set rules were attached it validated the language and verified it to be its own standard of English. This was a huge step forward as Black English was being taught to these college students who would learn to embrace and love their language. It would allow these to later in life
teach it to their kids so that their language is never forgotten again.

Jordan, nearing the end of her article, once again uses an emotional approach. She describes how one of her students Willie Jordan had a brother who was wrongfully killed by police. Jordan and her students decided as a class that they would write a letter to news outlets to bring light to Willie’s situation. Collectively they decided that they were
going to write the letter in Black English. This is ultimately what Jordan wanted to do, she wanted her students to convince that Black English is a standard of English. They were now taking ownership of it and writing a letter to news outlets, addressing the death of an innocent black man. To Jordan and her class this a monumental power move.

Ultimately, the paragraph was rejected by “Newsday” and the individual letters were not accepted by “The Village Voice.” Even though it seems that their efforts resulted in a failure to be published, Jordan showed these college students to not be afraid of their own voice, they have power in their words and writing. It certainly helped Willie, Jordan tasked Willie with writing a letter about everything he learned from that semester. It was a well detailed and powerful short letter; he placed a large emphasis on the inequality and prejudice against black people in the end of his letter. As he learned to develop himself in Black English it helped him realize that white men were trying to suppress his words and just have him follow them blindly. He was convinced that Black English was a standard of writing