Why Me, Why Not Me? By Jalisa Starling

Jalisa Starling’s personal essay “Why Me, Why Not Me?” (2014), asserts that humans have the tendency to misemploy psychological mechanisms intended to cope with unexpected misfortunes. Starling supports this claim by giving a descriptive story of how her family tragedy made her lose her way in life and her belief in God, pointing out how the use of why me can impact a person’s life in a drastic way. Starling’s purpose is to illustrate that situations seen as disasters that can be worse than what it seems in order to consider the reader in such situations we should ask ourselves “why not me?” due to the human ability to handle situations. The intended audience of this essay is to people who takes adversity to extreme measures.

Starling's essay was a tragic personal essay that can touch anyone who reads it, regardless of having gone through such an event themselves. The essay really made me think about why it is that people turn so easily to god. With the death of her family and her being so young, it's easy to understand why she naturally gravitated towards a strong disbelief in religion and in God. I've never been the type to prey to god, let alone believe. So it was easy for me to relate to her guilt, and to her disbelief. Like Starling, many of us could go through these things in life, and somehow things always seem to come together. I'm a firm believer that things happen for a reason. Just like Starling, it is when these things happen that we can possibly find ourselves asking the same thing "why not us".

In Jalisa Starling's personal essay, "Why Me, Why Not Me?" she tells us her side of how her family got murdered when she was just ten years old. She explains how when we go through life sometimes things happen and we tend to say " Why Me?". Starling was visiting her aunt and hanging out with her cousins at the time of the murder and she had no idea until she, "called the house phone over 30 times trying to get someone to answer" (Starling 164) and then her aunt got a call from the hospital and she knew the reason for the missed phone calls. She goes on to describe to us that she locked herself in the bathroom and prayed her family had survived. The only member to her family to survive was her brother Tony. She asked herself and god "Why Me?" and began to push God away because what happened to her wasn't fair. She sums up her essay by telling us she meets a Godly man and he takes her to church, ends up getting married and has two kids. She now asks herself, " Why Not Me?" because everything happens for a reason.

"How it Feels to be Falsely Accused" by Josh Green

Josh Green narrative essay, “How it Feels to be Falsely Accused” (2014), which originally appeared in Atlanta Magazine, magnifies that the criminal justice system is flawed. Green supports this claim by sharing the allegations of Clarence Harrison case. Green allocates Clarence story in order to make aware of injustice in the justice system and to point out the ways that people commonly are accused of false accusation. The intended audience of the essay are for people from Atlanta who have shared similar experience with Clarence Harrison and who like the Georgia Innocence Project to advocate for their injustice.

Like Josh Greene many of us have gone through what he went. Though it might not be as severe, most of us know what it is like to be falsely accused. His story made me think of how much it hurts when you're accused of doing something you know more than you could ever know anything in your life, yet still be punished for it. I put myself into his position and only thought about how stressful it must have been and how much anxiety issues he must have built from being in prison for so long, knowing good and well he was an innocent man. Like him, having this feeling was extremely relatable to me  more than likely to any reader, because being accused of not doing something can sometimes have a huge effect on aspects of our lives that we may not get back.

In Josh Green's story, "How it Feels to be Falsely Accused" he tells us that he was wrongfully accused as a rapist and thrown in jail for, "seventeen years, nine months, and twenty-six days" (Green 221). Though he was sentenced to life in prison then set free, he says that he has lost most of his life. The state rewarded him one million dollars in restitution but bad investments and taxes took most of that money away. He also states that even when your out, " you never get your family back" (Green 222) because his kids blame him for absents and blame him for what they been through while he was in prison. Green then had a bad accident during a snow fall and was hospitalized and there lost the rest of his money. Green now lives off his wife's school kitchen steward income and realizes that his life is gone. When they wrongfully accused Green, they not only took, "seventeen years, nine months and twenty-six days"(Green 221), they took his youth, his chance for success, his family, and yet Green thanks God and takes each day at a time to recover.

"Watch Your Language: Teaching Standard Usage to Resistant and Reluctant Learners" by Mark Larson

In the article, "Watch Your Language: Teaching Standard Usage to Resistant and Reluctant Learners" (1990) Mark Larson suggest that teachers should not correct a student's grammar, but instead teachers should accept and support the language each student bring to school. Larson informs us by flashback of his experience in a 'Hurdle' class, a English support class, and his opinions about abolishing those types of classes. Larson provides the reader with his insight of a "Hurdle class" in order to create a new class to help students learn the material better. Larson writes this article to students to provide students with a perspective, so they would know what they're doing, instead of abiding by the rules for a grade.

Mark Lawson's "Watch Your Language: Teaching Standard Usage to Resistant and Reluctant Learners", talks about how student's language should not be corrected by teacher's at school, but it should be accepted as well. In order for changes to be made that are acceptable, the students should know the language as well. English language can be difficult to learn and understand, but if the English language is not being taught the original way, then English will turn into something completely different. I agree with Lawson's suggestions. Students should be able to contribute their own language in to what is Standard English.

The passage focuses on thinking of reading and writing in English classes as it's own kind of language and how his perception has changed on the way he teaches it. Growing up to be a teacher himself he found himself forcing students to learn the same concepts he did before realizing he needed to teach in a new way. So then came his new Methods which were to except the way students deviate from normal writing and using it to their advantage. He emphasized the importance of standing out, as well as the great magnitude of writing "that works for you" (Tom and Romano 1978).

“If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is? By James Baldwin

 

In the article, "If Black Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What is?" (1917), James Baldwin explains that the way people speak today is because of multiple languages merging together. This article was published on July 29, 1979 in the New York Times. The audience is educated people reading the paper and adults who read the paper regularly. The main idea overall is not just "black English" but in different countries that bring slag over and merge with other ways of conveying ideas with people and their languages. 

In James Baldwin’s essay "If Black Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?" he speaks on how Black English is a language of its own.  He says there can be many versions of a language depending on where it is spoken.  He uses an example of a French person living in Paris that can’t understand the different language of a person from Quebec.  Baldwin supports his claim by using history, he talks about how Black English originated from slavery times.  When they came to America they all came from different tribes so they all spoke different languages.  Since they didn’t speak the same language, they came up with their own language.  Baldwin also includes how Black English influenced White English.  Words were taken from the Black English and was changed and used in White English.  He wonders how the white Americans would sound if there were never any black people in the U.S. and did not create their own language. 

In Baldwin’s article, “If Black Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What is?” he states that not only black English and the way black people talk, but also people from France, that if they never came to America, we would be talking differently and so on for every country. According to Baldwin when he says, “What joins all languages, and all mean, is the necessity to confront life…the price for this is the acceptance, and achievement, of one’s temporal identity” (Baldwin) he means that everyone talks differently. People down South will talk differently than people up North because up North it tends to get more formal. Everyone’s dialect is different based on where they’re from and other languages that have influenced them throughout their life. Another way Baldwin describes this is when he states, “I do not know what white Americans would sound like if there had never been any black people in the United States, but they would not sound the way they sound (Baldwin) because black people have a different dialect than we do and we have merged two dialects together. An example of this is “Jazz” (Baldwin) which can be used in a sexual way, and “sock it to me” which is basically saying the same thing but can be thought of just Jazz music. Throughout this article Baldwin generates this idea that without the continuous and interchanging communication today, we wouldn’t talk the way we do.

"Storming the Gate: Talking in Color" by Tiffany Hendrickson

In Hendrickson's personal essay "Storming the Gate: Talking in Color" asserts that people should not associate verbal expression by the color of someone's skin. Hendrickson shows is by giving the reader insight on how she managed to subdue the aversions that she encounter because of the "color of her voice". Hendrickson brings forward this issue in order to highlight the racial divide among black and white in this country by the power of the voice. Hendrickson makes reference to individuals who make racial stereotypes based off of the color of skin by the color of their voice.

I found Hendrickson's essay to be motivational, as she not only prevail through judgments but attend college to study upon the issue "talking in color". Hendrickson gives a definition on code-switching and explains how individuals use code-switching in conversations to differentiate their speech patterns and usage depending on their settings. I can relate because I have used code-switching when interacting with people. Growing up I attended a predominately black middle school and I was ridiculed because I spoke "white". I felt as if I did not belong due to the opinion I spoke "proper English" and not the way a black person should sound. Ironically, we place high value on intellect but how can a person display their intellect when their only judged on the way that they speak. With Hendrickson learning to overcome all the tough journey's that have happened in her life, in the end she has learned to accept and "value the power of her voice" (Hendrickson).

Hendrickson writes about herself being a white girl, but talking like a black girl. She goes on to explain how she, “would like to change the white world’s view of my speech, or at least to fully understand why my speech, and the speech of those who sound like me, are considered inferior” (Hendrickson) and that’s because we have this view of people who do not talk like us are not supposed to look like us or are not as important. Hendrickson writes as she goes through challenges of people looking at her and she knows it’s not because she’s from the “ghetto” but because her mother is deaf and that is the way she learned to talk. She writes about going to college and having a Communications major to prove that she can speak to people of all cultures, she just has to “code-switch” so her voice matches the audiences. Hendrickson overcame stereotypes and became more than she first thought she could, and not by believing what others thought of her, but what she thought of herself and what she knew to be true.