ABSTRACT
The specific circumstances may have been different, but for each of us-Bob, Bette, and Renee-our explorations into issues of race, language, and culture began with what Bob has called teachable/researchable moments. Bob’s moment hinged around a class reading of a Nikki Giovanni (1971) poem, “Beautiful Black Men.” Feeling the poem to be a celebration of African American slang, language, and culture, Bob imagined that day’s lesson with his high school class of African American juniors to be a romp through a discussion of vibrant imagery before moving to other work. However, what slowly emerged on that day were concerns and questions raised by his students about how they felt Giovanni was mocking Black dialect and, on learning that she was African American, how she was even betraying the African American community. Spurred by his own working-class concerns about language, his students’ issues raised by the Giovanni poem, and a growing popular and academic zeitgeist around the ways language and culture transacted, Bob urged his class to begin collecting examples of dialogue around them so that the class could explore the power of language up close and with personal connections and context.
