The Story of English Episode Five: It Don't Matter if You're Black or White

My first impression of this episode: wow this seems so old.

I mean, it is literally called "Black on White." Is it even legal to use terms like that anymore? Not socially. I feel uncomfortable calling the little walking guy, who happens to be colored by white lights, on the crossing sign the white man (as opposed to the red man for stop). It's dumb, cause it's obviously a little white man, but still. Race has been put into little colored boxes, and I'm not saying they fit, but now it's impossible to pick up those boxes with out picking up what's inside of them.

This episode places "white" and "black" races into very different boxes very quickly. From the very first minute to be precise. I think this was a pretty bad move on their part because this immediately places the languages into very different boxes. And, well, this is not always the case.

They spend a lot of time talking about "black cultural traditions," which is weird because if someone tried to tell me about white cultural traditions I would spit at them or something. What does that even mean?

English, as we have learned, is composed of very many varieties of European languages. So the "black" part of it is a combination of very many African and Caribbean languages and cultures, many more than we can count or label.

I just feel like this episode was approached very tactlessly. African influence on English is important and interesting, but the way all the narrator discusses it made me scowl my way through the videos. We talk a lot about race in this class and how it actually doesn't exist, and obviously what I learn affects how I think. I mean last year we basically had a whole unit on it. The way this video approached language from a specifically racial point of view made me really not want to watch it. Obviously it was never really offensive or anything, and as of yet no one has made any really angry remarks in the comments regarding this fact. It was just weird to see race and language put in that way, when it would be extremely strange to see it in a similar documentary made in 2012.

"Black on White." The Story of English. Writ. Robert McCrum and Robert MacNeil. Dir. Vivian Ducat, Howard Reid, William Cran. BBC MCML XXXVI. YouTube.