Right from the beginning, American societal structures work to force a sense of recognized and supposedly rightful homogeneity. Serving only to undermine those who exhibit cultural, language, educational differences, etc right from the as soon as the system allows, American education aggressively plays into the racially discriminatory practice of eradicating anything other than an established standard.

In Maxine Hong Kingston’s “Tongue-Tied,” she recounts her experience as a Chinese immigrant who grew up in America. She utilizes her identity as an outsider or at least someone who is treated as such to emphasize the way her education worked against her in terms of growth in language. She calls into question the beliefs of those who push the agenda of the American education system by making plain the injustices commonly experienced between herself and her childhood classmates and through this, brings discomfort to those who believe differences should be punished. When being told to read out loud in class, Kingston recalls that “I stopped often, and the teacher would think I’d gone quiet again. I could not understand “I.” The Chinese “I” had seven strokes, intricacies… I stared at that middle line and waited so long for its black center to resolve into tight strokes and dots that I forgot to pronounce it… The teacher, who had already told me every day how to read “I” and “here,” put me in the low corner under the stairs again, where the noisy boys usually sat.” She was punished by being told to sit with the loud assumably troublesome kids because of her struggle to grasp certain English words because of their confusing differences from their Chinese counterparts. Kingston’s evidence is very effective as it proves time and time again, people similar to her are not greeted with compassion and understanding. Instead, they are further discouraged from the get-go because the system only serves those who they believe digest and learn in the “right” way. Kingston’s employment of pathos is particularly strong especially because being different and experiencing a certain kind of treatment because of it and because it calls into question easily recognizable systems in place today, even those who cannot personally relate most likely have been witness to the systems prejudice against others.

This consistent undertone of racial bias is not reserved for Chinese immigrants as explored by June Jordan’s essay, “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan.” Jordan combines a more logic-based and statistical approach with emotional anecdotes to unveil that from the very start, American education perpetuates the idea that there is a correct standard for English and suppresses Black English: “In addition to that staggering congeries of non-native users of English, there are five countries, or 333,746,000 people, for whom this thing called “English” serves as a native tongue. 2 Approximately 10 percent of these native speakers of “English” are Afro-American citizens of the U.S.A. I cite these numbers and varieties of human beings dependent on “English” in order, quickly, to suggest how strange and how tenuous is any concept of “Standard English.”’ Jordan’s use of statistics here employs logos which serves to expose the true native usage of English and how so many different people of different ethnicities use it but somehow White English is supposed to represent the standard. Although 10 percent—a very large portion—of native speakers of English are Afro-American citizens and the majority of English speakers do not speak White English, it is ridiculous that White English is considered the standard. The English language is extremely ephemeral, but merely due to the acceptance of a version of English by white society, White English has become the “standard”—the reference to which all other Englishes supposedly derive from.

Both writers establish credibility and employ their differing rhetorical strategies to prove and expose the same point. Kingston’s angle of vision is one of someone who experienced literary neglect. Her writing this very essay serves to prove it wasn’t her own lack of skill or potential that caused her American teachers and her peers to treat her as incapable. To those who underestimated her because of their assumption of her language ability and disinterest in engaging and attempting to understand her, she proves them wrong revealing that while the system pushed to set people like her back did not mean she was incapable of learning if given the right tools and methods. This is proven because she at the end is able to express this in the very language she struggled with initially and was given no encouragement with.

Jordan’s purpose, as a professor who teaches Black English, is to enlighten and educate readers of the validity of Black English despite the common establishment of “Standard English” in American educational and professional systems.