Combating White Language Supremacy

To combat White Language Supremacy, professor Inoue promotes Labor-Based Grading.

"White language supremacy in writing classrooms is due to the uneven and diverse linguistic legacies that everyone inherits, and the racialized white discourses that are used as standards, which give privilege to those students who embody those habits of white language already," said Asao Inoue, professor of rhetoric and composition at Arizona State University. 

Inoue said white supremacy culture "makes up the culture and normal practices of our classrooms and disciplines" in his online talk Thursday titled "The Possibilities of Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies." 

Inoue has emerged as one of the leading scholarly proponents within academia to denounce traditional spelling, grammar and punctuation grading norms as racist, and frequently gives talks to campuses to advance his argument.

Inoue has coined the term "Habits of White Language," or HOWL, to describe the standard writing teachers use to grade students' work.

Labor-Based Grading

To dismantle white supremacy in writing classrooms, Inoue suggested implementing labor-based grading because it "redistributes power in ways that allow for more diverse habits of language to circulate."

The method involves assigning grades based on the "labor" students put into their assignments, rather than the grammar, style and quality of their work.

"Labor-based grading structurally changes everyone's relationship to dominant standards of English that come from elite, masculine, heteronormative, ableist, white racial groups of speakers," Inoue said in his presentation.