Definitions label AAVE as improper and bankrupt of any cultural value

Culturally sustaining and antiracist assessment demands that we both affirm and empower the lifeways of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) students. To do so requires that cultural words and expressions be included in our assessments. Moreover, I argue that what is considered “cultural” expressions/words are simply words that are not a part of White Mainstream English (WME). Indeed, WME is considered standard, normal English, so, in this context, those words would be appropriate to include in an assessment. Words, however, that are commonplace in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), for example, would be considered “culture-specific” and removed from the assessment as construct irrelevant. Again, this White supremacist approach devalues and dehumanizes BIPOC students. In focusing on removing construct irrelevant variance, we remove all context. This practice, in large part, is designed to remove “race” from the items. Such an approach to assessment requires students to identify the music of Beethoven and Mozart, interpret the poetry of Emily Dickerson and Sylvia Plath, and analyze the writings of Shakespeare and Tennessee Williams, but ignores Culturally sustaining assessment (as if it does not exist) the language of Hip Hop—the most popular musical genre in the world comprising nearly 24.7% of all U.S. music album consumption in 2018 (Leight, 2019)—in instructional spaces and on assessments. Assessment companies do not commission Hip Hop lyricists to provide texts for reading comprehension or listening comprehension tasks. Yet this language is widely used and understood by American students and employs one of the most sophisticated vocabularies of any musical genre (Kendi, 2019). Nonetheless, despite having won the Pulitzer prize for music in 2018, Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics would be considered culture-specific and inappropriate for inclusion on assessments due to construct irrelevance.