Black immigrants in the United States: Transraciolinguistic justice for imagined futures in a global metaverse

Abstract

Abstract As the world continues to experience the recent wave of racial reckoning and its associated backlash, the field of applied linguistics has been called upon to renew efforts through which language functions as an avenue for redemption and restoration of humanity and of the world. Acknowledging the role of racialization in the language-related challenges faced nationally and globally has spurred on a wave of examinations that extend beyond a focus on the intellect and that increasingly allow for a simultaneous grappling with what it means to advance language solutions that equally center human sensitivity and the body. Among such acknowledgments have been the effects of racism on language use by immigrants, including immigrants of color, many of whom are often introduced into the U.S. as “languageless.” We operate now on the verge of an imminent global metaverse within which the world will soon largely exist, provoking questions about the degree to which language, and racialized language, will continue to function as the primary mechanism for operating in a future world order. Given this impetus, I draw from the Black immigrant experience in the United States in this brief essay to demonstrate why the future of applied linguistics in a global metaverse must be concerned with “transraciolinguistic justice” that: (1) creates opportunities beyond racialized [language] as a function of the imminent global metaverse; (2) disrupts the racialization of [language] for relegating citizenship based on national norms as a function of civic engagement; and (3) dismantles racialized [language] and borders that hold up the exclusion of “foreignness” to transform the relational experience. The impending reality of a global metaverse that lays flat distinctions among migrants while also introducing a plethora of spaces where racialized language further functions as subtext in a nonmaterial world calls for a (re)thinking of what it will mean to instruct, assess, plan for, and preserve [languages] in a soon to be, predominantly, virtual global existence. Civic and legal engagement in a global metaverse that can potentially transcend racialized language allows for the disruption of perceptions that advocate a lack of connectivity of diverse human publics across national and global borders. Relational healing through a focus on transraciolinguistic justice in a global metaverse represents an opportunity to restore the brokenness of the oppressed and cultivate opportunities for building bridges across diverse realities, critical to the abandonment of centuries of, and the introduction of, an era of peace. To the degree that the field of applied linguistics is prepared to engage transraciolinguistic justice, will determine, in large part, the extent to which it adjusts to a largely virtual world.