Prof. Michel DeGraff's opinion essay “As a Child in Haiti, I Was Taught to Despise My Language and Myself” (New York Times, October 14, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/14/opinion/haiti-kreyol-creole-language-education.html) is an entry point for us to begin to analyze the super power of language as weapon both for white supremacy and for resistance against it. Prof. DeGraff's case study is the colonial and post-colonial history of his native Haiti, especially in the realms of education and nation-building. His talk enlists some key lessons from history in order to highlight the transformative power of language in shaping a better world. This talk is also a call for direct action: By fully embracing linguistic diversity and anti-racist approaches in linguistics, and by advocating for universal access to education through children's native languages, we can help foster inclusive nation-building endeavors toward more justice in the world. Prof. DeGraff concludes with the Kreyòl saying, #ToutMounSeMoun ki fè #ToutLangSeLang — every person is as human as the next, and every language is of profound importance to its speakers.


Michel DeGraff is Professor of Linguistics at MIT, co-founder and co-director of the MIT-Haiti Initiative, founding member of Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen and fellow of the Linguistic Society of America. His research contributes to an egalitarian approach to Creole languages and their speakers, as in his native Haiti. His writings also engage intellectual history and critical race theory, especially the links between power-knowledge hierarchies and the hegemonic (mis)representations of Creole languages, Indigenous languages and other non-colonial languages and their speakers in the Global South and beyond. His work is anchored in a broader agenda for human rights and social justice, with Haiti as one spectacular case of a post-colony where the national language spoken by all (Haitian Creole) is systematically disenfranchised while the (former) colonial language (in this case, French) spoken by few is enlisted for socio-economic, political and geo-political domination. Such devalorization of Kreyòl and other non-colonial languages worldwide, especially in the Global South, is embedded in long entrenched patterns of structural racism and white supremacy whereby language and education are enlisted as tools for neo-colonialism from within and from without. Michel DeGraff tackles these political challenges as he unveils age-old myths about Creole languages in linguistics and as he engages the MIT-Haiti Initiative in a broad campaign for democratizing access to quality education and for the universal respect of human rights. Through the strategic use of Open Education Resources in Haitian Creole (Kreyòl), Platfòm MIT-Ayiti effectively sets up a model for other communities to constructively enlist their native languages as tools for quality education and for inclusion in all other spheres where knowledge and power are created and transmitted. More details at: http://mit.edu/degraff, http://facebook.com/mithaiti, http://twitter.com/mithaiti, http://instagram.com/mithaiti This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx