Rachel Jeantel - Impolite or Misunderstood?

Reactions and Perspectives of African American Women in Response to Rachel Jeantel's Behavior on Trial

In order to further understand how culture and im(politeness) further interact our class interviewed three African american females over the age of 19. We asked them them the following questions on Rachel's behavior:

1. How do you assess Rachel's behavior? What do you think about her behavior?

• "Rachel acted like she didn't know about the length of time she needed to be available for trial
• She wasn't told the amount of time and she wasn't prepped...she did the best she could do" - respondent one 

2. How do you think the general public talked about Rachel?

• "Some people tend to pre judge people- this young person was not open to the court, or the courts priorirties" - respondent 1



Don West's Daughter ignorantly uses social media to broadcast upon the said "stupidity" of Rachel Jeantel.

• "her short answers, her snapping, her attitude, came off as a bad character, why would you get upset with them asking her questions when she is trying to help her friend. He (the defense attorney, Don West) made it a point to use Ebonics when reenacting what she said, to make her sound uneducated. How she was portrayed in the media, even if the words uneducated were not used it was definitely suggested" - respondent 3

3. Was there something supportable about her behavior?      

• "She appeared she had other plans, so she became frustrated and stressed out" - respondent 1
• "Justifiable in emotions and reflected upon her frustration" - respondent 2

4. Was there something not supportable about her behavior?

• "I can see people looking at that from different perspectives, when planning something important to them, I can see that police etc should have prioritize the court , so I can see that her attitude as not acceptable. From her perspective I can see it as justifiable, young people prioritize what  they are thinking about"-respondent 3

4. Did Rachel display home training that many are taught in the African-American community?

• "she porttayed home training- there are various types, there is no one style of home training in the aac various social classes cross over, and intersect within hometraining and a particular training style, in terms of personality" - respondent 1 
• "one thing I noticed the second day she was still short paced, making it a point to get her point apart, in that sense, she answered in complete sentences, yes sir no sir, which are considered as polite behaviors" - respondent 3
• "thinking about how I grew up, southern training, no matter what age treat elders with utmost respect, my mother would approve of speaking to elder like Rachel did. How was Rachel trained? Maybe speaking up was a priority in her household" - respondent 3
• "my perception would not say this was the home training I had. I was taught to respect authority figures, depends on household and culture" - respondent 2

5. What have you learned as an African-American woman about behaving in public? What are some of your experiences?

• "when I was a child, you didn’t want to say anything that wasn’t deemed polite. Because if another adult heard you say something impolite it would get back to your parents before you get back to your parents. It varys from ethnic to household. Always use your p’s and q’s. address them clearly. Its not just what you said, it’s the manner in which you said it. You are to make sure that you are respectful" - respondent 1
• "people aren’t raised the same way, in my experience as an African American women my behavior is judged more than other ethnicities, “you guys are cool like for African American people, you have that black people are always late thing going for you” more conscious of stereo types because you don’t want to give people reason to categorize you"- respondent 3
• "I learned to behave, told I would be treated differently as an African American female, often iwould be perceived negatively by whites, I try to demonstrate professional behaviors" - respondent 2

 6. Are there other responses that you would like to share that we may have overlooked?

• "I think the more we relate to one another the better we get at communicating and understanding eachother, individuality and social phenomi the more we can connect as people to people the more we can care about eachother and communicate with eachother how do I want to be portrayed with my own authenticity, there will be people who mis interpret ones behavior, because of there own priorities and concerns, or their own culture." - respondent 1
• "one of the things I’ve learned is to not be so easily offended, and the only perspective I have to go off of is from the only perspective that I know. That’s your opinion that’s uour experience. I cannto control you actions but I can control my own. See things from others eyes, look at thing with a more open view, easily to be less offended"- respondent 3

Misrepresentations of Rachel Jeantel

The Reality 



 Rachel proves to a competent, intelligent, concerned friend of Trayvon's outside of the pressures of the courtroom

Our response to our qualitative data:

We have gathered that the women support Rachel Jeantel for various reasons. One of them being that Rachel is included in their said "in-group", meaning that they relate to Rachel because she is an African-American woman. We can see that people trust and relate others within the same "in-group". For example, you may feel more comfortable and supportive of those within your college rather than a group of students that go to a rival college. The women continuously defended Rachel in a way you would defend your school in competition with other schools within your conference. They brought up many variables to justify the way she was acting including how she did not have enough time, she was not prepped, and may have been upset from the loss of Trayvon Martin. A word that seemed to be repeated was frustrated, frustrated with time, loss, location, situation and almost being treated like a criminal. Rachel is not a criminal but persecuted because of her race and use of Ebonics. The interviewees refused to bring another African-American woman down, after how much their demographic has been previously oppressed. Respondent number one ended her interview with the following quote "I think the more we relate to one another the better we get at communicating and understanding each other, individuality and social phenomenon. The more we can connect as people to people the more we can care about each other and communicate with each other. How do I want to be portrayed with my own authenticity? There will be people who mis-interpret ones behavior, because of there own priorities and concerns, or their own culture.". We think this quote is especially relevant in relation to the women's responses because they truly empathize with Rachel's struggle in being misunderstood as a African-American women. It is critical to band together and communicate in order to understand and connect with each other with no bias of race. Though people will misinterpret behaviors or politeness like Rachel's behavior was, it is up to us as human beings to try and understand and communicate to bridge the language gap which is causing controversy still today in cases like Rachel Jeantels.

References

(2013). [Image of photograph]. Sanford, Florida; Cox Media Group. Retrieved December 5, 2013, from http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/zimmerman-trial-juror-rachel-jeantel-interviews-cn/nYrXm/

(2013). [Image of photograph]. Meme. Retrieved December 5, 2013, from http://memecrunch.com/meme/NRK2/rachel-jeantel-is-so-stupid

(2013). [Image of photograph]. West Palm Beach, Florida; Stormfront . Retrieved December 5, 2013, from http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t977868-5/

Phillips, K. (Photographer). (2013). Don West: Offensive Selfie Of George Zimmerman’s Attorney Goes Viral. [Image of photograph]. We usl news. Retrieved December 5, 2013, from http://weusinews.com/2013/06/don-west-offensive-selfie-of-george-zimmermans-attorney-goes-viral/

(Respondent 1, personal communication, December 2, 2013)

(Respondent 2, personal communication, December 2, 2013)

(Respondent 3, personal communication, December 2, 2013)

(Im)politeness and Race

Brown and Levinson 

(Im)politeness is not easy to define. There are different rules of politeness belonging to different cultures which may not apparent to outsiders. As humans functioning in society we are marked in a particular way based on the way that we speak. Different situations require different types of politeness, even within the same culture. Politeness varies between the office, a social gathering, a classroom and church.  "Politeness involves "polite" behaviors." (Culpepper p. 524) The most popular politeness framework is that of Brown and Levinson (1987). There are two types of social norms, prescriptive and experiential. A prescriptive social is a rule of behavior enforced by social sanctions (Culpepper p. 524). For example, a social norm is that a student should be fully dressed when attending class, so the rule is that you should always wear clothes when in attendance to class. Sanctions can be rules in legal systems or can take the form of disapproval from peers or self-guilt. Experiential social norms have a basis on individual experience. Experiential allows you to be able to think about how others are going to react to situations and know of outcomes of your behaviors as well (Culpepper p. 525). Politeness always involves context and contextual judgement. For example, adding "please" to the phrase "shut up" does not necessarily make the phrase "please shut up" polite. In the context of "please shut up", "please" does not give "shut up" a socially positive meaning (Culpepper p. 525).

Face threatening acts are "any action that impinges in some degree upon a person face". Face work is anything you do that reinforces your face.  Face work is used to counteract threats. Face can be categorized by the type of face used (Culpepper p. 527). 

Another important aspect in Brown and Levinson's theory is face, which in this context means public self-image. There are two needs when it comes to face, positive and negative face (Culpepper p. 527). Positive face is, what do I want people to see as a public self image? Positive face seeks approval and wants to be apart of "we."  It seeks to be ratified, approved of and liked (Culpepper p. 527) For example when on the street and you see a friend you can assume your friend wants a nice hello from you to acknowledge their presence. Negative face is respecting others rights and freedoms as well as not imposing on others space and time (Culpepper p. 527).  For example, if somebody is attending a dinner with friends you are not going to impose your opinion on what they should eat. If they want to eat chicken for dinner you will allow them to order chicken instead of imposing your opinion that they should order salad.

 Which form of politeness is this? It is negative politeness, because the women does not want to seem to be a bother to the person in which she wants to borrow the computer.

There are two types of politeness, positive and negative politeness. Positive politeness is a face threatening act that targets what positive face wants (Culpepper p. 530). The speaker will preform acts that the positive face wants. For example, saying hello and acknowledging or avoiding disagreement. Positive politeness could be used by saying something as simple as "the weather is nice today", which is something that can be easily agreed with. The other category identified as negative politeness is identical to positive face, but negative politeness pays attention to negative face wants (Culpepper p. 530). For example, apologizing, being pessimistic, and even treating the hearer as repetitive.

Stella Ting-Toomey's Critique on (Im)politeness

A critique on Brown and Levinsons theory can be easily identified by Stella Ting-Toomey. Ting-Toomey believes that there are cultural variations within face. She constructed the face negotiation theory which proposed that different cultures respond to conflict in various ways (Ting). This conflict puts our "face" at risk and becomes a part of how we deal with conflicts. Society sees and evaluates our face based on cultural norms and values (Ting). An example of this is that individualistic and collectivist cultures have different measures of maintaining face and resolving conflict. In an individualistic culture, people would mostly be thinking about themselves individually. In a collectivistic culture people are more concerned with the needs of the group. Collectivistic cultures are seen more in Asia, Africa, and eastern Europe. Individualistic cultures are seen in western Europe, and English speaking countries. This effects face because collectivistic is more concerned with the face of the group while individualistic cultures are focused more on the individual (Ting).

Criticism of Impoliteness within the African American Speech Community

We realize there are issues within the adequacy of impoliteness. We can go beyond face notions and realize that culture directly effects (im)politeness within communities, individualistic or collectivistic. Scholars need to pay special attention to levels of politeness around the world. We recognize that it is unfair that politeness around the world is always subjective to "white" politeness. It goes beyond please and thank yous because though please and thank you may seem necessary in the United States, these ways of proving "politeness" may not be considered as politeness in other parts of the world. For example Rachel Jeantell in the recent controversial Trayvon Martin case was subjected to a more of a white definition of politeness, when on the other hand many people in the African-American speech community supported her behaviors besides the fact that she may have been frustrated or unprepared. It seems foolish to compare politeness within different cultures because these cultures hold different value sets, and histories. For example someone who lives in the North Pole versus someone who lives in the Saharan desert would have different sets of rules of (im)politeness because the needs and values vary between each location and culture. To truly understand the rules on impoliteness within different cultures you must examine each culture individually. Only once you understand the values, priorities, history and background of the people then you can begin to decipher what the particular culture might consider polite and impolite. It becomes critical to take steps to begin to understand the people around yous culture before judging their politeness. When you finally understand their culture only then you can start to decode what is polite and what is not. It is unfair to judge those based on your own cultures set of rules for politeness. It is also critical to understand that within these cultures the rules of politeness are bound to change so it is imperative to become fluid with these changes in order to become a better communicator and understanding those around you without judging them based on your own rules of politeness. 

References

Culpeper, J. (2009). English language description, variation and context (pp. 253-535). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillian.

(2010). [Image of photograph]. California; CSUF College of Communications Entertainment. Retrieved December 5, 2013, from http://procomm.fullerton.edu/stella.html
Ting-Toomey, S. (2005) The Matrix of Face: An Updated Face-Negotiation Theory. In W.B. Gudykunst (Ed.), Theorizing About Intercultural Communication(pp. 71–92). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

What is race?

Race is defined in various ways, but we believe only one of them is correct. The first one is that race is simply the color of your skin.  Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, a German anthropologist, physiologist, and comparative anatomist, was the first to show the value of comparative anatomy in the study of man's history, and his craniometrical researches justified his division of the human race into several great varieties or families, of which he enumerated five the Caucasian or white race, the Mongolian or yellow, the Malayan or brown race, the Negro or black race, and the American or red race. So this divides humans into five great families (Human Differentiation).  Anthropologist Nina Jablonski theorizes that variations in human skin are adaptive traits that correlate closely to geography and the sun's ultraviolet radiation, not race.

an example of african hair

The second one is that race is major divisions of human kind, having distinct physical characteristics.  For example, the White race has a nose defined as being high and narrow, as opposed to Asians that have a low, ridged nose.  This can be continued to be defined by other physical characteristics, like hair.  For example the Black race as black, wooly, hair.

A third definition of race includes race as a group of people sharing the same culture, history, and language.  This is more of a definition of ethnicity, which is defined in terms of a population of human beings whose members identify with each other, on the basis of a real or a presumed common genealogy or ancestry.  Furthermore ethnic groups distinguish themselves differently from one time period to another, typically defining themselves but also defined by stereotypes (Ethnicity vs Race).

An ID card used in the era of Apartheid
 in South Africa to identify "race".

The fourth and final definition we believe to be correct, is a cultural category or social construct, a particular way people talk about themselves or others.  We believe this to be correct because most traits are inherited independently of one another.  The genes for skin color have nothing to do with genes for hair texture, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, or athletic ability (Race).  This would negate our second definition of race, that some people still actually believe to be true.  Though people might separate themselves into different ethnicities, we are among the most similar of all species on Earth.  Of the small amount of total human genetic variation, 85% exists within any local population. Race is a modern idea because ancient societies did not divide people in groups according to physical characteristics, but now we do (Race).  For example, modern slavery predates race.  In South Africa during apartheid, the Population Registration Act of 1950 formalized racial classification and introduced an identity card for all people over 18, specifying their racial group (Boddy-Evans).  Boards were established to come to an ultimate conclusion on those people whose race was unclear.  This separated families when members were decided to be of different races.  The four races chosen were Black, White, Indian, and Colored. 

References

Aparthied Era Laws: Population Registration Act of No 30 of 1950 (African history ed.). (n.d.). N.p.: About.com. Retrieved November 13, 2013, from http://africanhistory.about.com/od/apartheidlaws/g/No30of50.htm

Ethnicity vs. Race (p. 1). (n.d.). N.p.: Diffen. Retrieved November 13, 2013, from http://www.diffen.com/difference/Ethnicity_vs_Race

Human Differentiation: Evolution of Racial Characteristics. (2009). N.p.: internet looks. Retrieved November 13, 2013, from http://www.internetlooks.com/humandifferentiation.html

RACE- the Power of an Illusion. (n.d.). N.p.: PBS. Retrieved November 13, 2013, from Human Differentiation: Evolution of Racial Characteristics. (2009). N.p.: internet looks. Retrieved November 13, 2013, from http://www.internetlooks.com/humandifferentiation.html

History- race in the USA. (2011). N.p.: American Anthropological Association. Retrieved November 13, 2013, from http://www.understandingrace.org/history/index.html