The answer is cyclical. Recruiting more BIPOC students early, addressing the social-academic and financial challenges, and increasing the visual representation, will in turn attract more BIPOC students to the field, helping to address the challenges. To serve our clients and patients most effectively, the diversity of our training programs—faculty and students—needs to reflect theirs. CSD’s growth depends on everybody cheering for it, representing it, and reaching for it—because the work we do is life-changing.

* (False, 'Recruit') BIPOC students by providing education about and awareness of the fields, starting in elementary school. * (False, 'Retain') BIPOC students in CSD programs by addressing our social-academic partnerships and financial challenges. * (False, 'Represent') BIPOC students by increasing diversity in university faculty and cohort groups.

It’s inspiring how we persevere through these struggles and journey on to become an SLP or audiologist despite them. But my conversations with colleagues indicate that truly drawing more BIPOC students into the professions requires targeting the three “R”s: recruit, retain, and represent.

A Black audiologist, who was born deaf, had received services since infancy, but didn’t meet their first Black audiologist until high school—an experience that led them to the field of audiology. Perhaps an undecided undergraduate student might search the department faculty demographics, see the lack of diversity, and decide not to pursue the major, the graduate program, or the career.

Many BIPOC professionals pointed to difficulties posed by low numbers of faculty of color in their programs. Role models who look like you allow you to picture yourself in that space or doing that thing. In my program, seeing my speech-language pathology professor as “Dr. Black Woman SLP” helped me to see myself following the same path. I was lucky to land her as my mentor because—as I found out later once enrolled—she was the only Black faculty member in the department. My White cohort-mates, however, had a variety of examples to emulate.

BIPOC colleagues on social media reported similar experiences. An SLP who identified as Black and Hispanic struggled to find their “group of people” and never felt like they “truly fit in” being only one of three people of color in their cohort. One Black SLP felt alienated from fellow students’ study groups as everyone else worked together to succeed, and a former speech-language pathology graduate student left their program because of a difficult social experience. This social and academic exclusion seems to take place in graduate school, when students have already committed to a CSD career.

My next theory was that our graduate school experiences may turn us away. People tend to gravitate toward those who look like them or have a perceived commonality. As the only Black student in my graduate school cohort, I didn’t look like anyone else and probably was assumed not to have much in common with other students. After not being invited to participate in study groups and outings, I took the initiative to invite myself to social events with fellow students and to form academic partnerships with them, which was exhausting.

Lack of awareness could be one reason BIPOC students are not drawn to CSD—we simply do not know about the field. But in my Facebook conversations with BIPOC and White CSD professionals, I found no discrepancy between the two groups related to when they learned about the fields (in eleamentary/middle school, high school, or college/adulthood). Most learned about the field as older adolescents, perhaps suggesting that the professions need more outreach to younger students.

Overall, BIPOC audiologists and SLPs shared that although they may have experienced challenges such as social differences and questionable biases and discrimination, it didn’t change their commitment to continuing in CSD. But they said if graduate programs want to attract more BIPOC students to the professions, they need to step up efforts to be inclusive. In my conversations, four themes emerged: awareness, relationships, finances, and representation.

The statistics clearly indicate that far fewer people who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) are drawn to the field than those who are White: In the 2021 ASHA Member and Affiliate Profile, 8.7% of speech-language pathologists and audiologists self-identified as a racial/ethnic minority; 3.6% as Black/African-American; 3.1% as Asian; 1.5% as multiracial; and less than 1% each as American Indian/Alaska Native or Pacific islander. (Not every respondent chose to self-identify.)

"I am reminded of the man who filled in an application for an insurance policy. One of the questions he had to answer was, 'How old was your father when he died and of what did he die?' "Well, his father had been hanged, but he did not want to put that in his application. He puzzled it out for a while. He finally wrote, 'My father was 65 when he died. He came to this end while participating in a public function when the platform gave way.'"

My favorite illustration of a euphemism is one offered by Everett Dirksen, a former senator from Illinois, on the Senate floor: "Mr. President, there is such a word as 'euphemism.' I do not think I have looked it up for years, but I suppose 'euphemism' is something that seems like what it ain't. Perhaps that is as good a definition as I can give.

"Prettified language is all around us. A 'graffiti sprayer' is a 'wall artist,' a 'prostitute' is a 'sexual service provider,' and one of the causes of death among young American males is 'legal intervention' (e.g. 'getting shot by cops')."

But when the Bosnians used the term "ethnic cleansing" to sanitize the murder of hundreds of their enemies, we encountered a euphemism that not only obscured the truth but transcended into evilness.

We often use the term "passed away" for "died" when offering condolences to someone who just lost a loved one. And we refer to the person's "body," not "corpse," lying in the "casket," not "coffin."

As a teacher, I often instruct my students to avoid the euphemism - an inoffensive word or phrase that is less direct and less distasteful than the one that represents reality. Of course, not all euphemisms are bad. Some are consciously used to protect people from unpleasantness. Others, however, can cause harm.

Of course, we have to wonder why companies insist on "downsizing" employees instead of "firing" them. Are they "showing compassions" or just "sugar coating" the truth?

Richard Lederer, in Crazy English, offers these examples of how violent words and terms often shape and define our view of reality: "The world of business is a veritable 'jungle' or 'cut-throat competition,' a 'rough-and-tumble' school of 'hard knocks,' and a 'dog-eat-dog' world of 'backbiting,"back stabbing,' and 'hatchet jobs.' Some companies 'spearhead' a trend of 'price gouging.' Other firms 'beat' the competition to the 'punch' and gain a 'stranglehold' on the market by fighting 'tooth and nail' to 'slash' prices in 'knockdown-drag-out, no-holds-barred' price 'wars.'

Most people know how a switch in adjectives can either irritate or flatter people: Do you refer to a person as "slender" or "skinny"? Does someone have a lot of "nerve" or plenty of "courage"? Is he "miserly" or "thrifty"? Some even realize how a change in verbs can alter the meaning of a sentence. Will you "emphasize" or "hammer away at" their shortcomings? Did he "compliment" or "flatter" his assistant? Do you "gloss over" or "sugar coat" the problem?

"Basic to doublespeak is incongruity, the incongruity between what is said or left unsaid, and what really is. It is the incongruity between the word and the referent, between seems and be, between the essential function of language - communication - and what doublespeak does: mislead, distort, deceive, inflate, circumvent, obfuscate. "Doublespeak turns lies told by politicians into 'strategic misrepresentations,"reality augmentations,' or 'terminological inexactitudes,' and ordinary sewage sludge into 'regulated organic nutrients' that do not stink but 'exceed the odor threshold.'"

Understanding the difference between the extensional and intensional meaning of a word - the denotation and connotation - is critical to both understanding meaning and being aware of how others may be slanting the language to sway us.

We try to show that the word is not the thing, that the further a word deviates from its referent, the more likely it is to be misleading or deceiving.

"The United States changed 'The War Department' to 'The Department of Defense' because words matter."

"The difference between 'fetal tissue' and 'unborn baby' (referring to the same thing) is arguably the most debated issue in the country."

"When President Bush used the word 'hostages' for the first time in August 1990, it made headlines; up to that time he had been using 'detainees.' The change of terms signaled a change in our posture toward Iraq...."

According to ASHA's Position Statement on Social Dialects (on.asha.org/ps-dialects), SLPs are required to demonstrate certain competencies to support the accurate differentiation between dialect and disorder: "These competencies include knowledge of the particular dialect as a rule-governed linguistic system, knowledge of the phonological and grammatical features of the dialect, and knowledge of nondiscriminatory testing procedures." Despite ASHA's well-intentioned position, lack of dialectal training and awareness persists in our profession. Couple this with use of standardized measures that assume fluency in and adherence to MAE, and the results can be problematic: It can lead to over-identification of AAE-speaking students as needing remedial services. Misidentification of typically developing AAE-speaking students can also result in placement on lower educational tracks or in remedial programs. Such placements potentially eclipse students' academic pursuits and hamper their professional aspirations (see sources).

The survey, conducted from 2015 to 2016, included 390 respondents and revealed that roughly 24% of SLPs working in schools have received consistent training to support speakers of AAE. Meanwhile, a noteworthy majority of SLPs--76%--received minimal training to differentiate between dialect and disorder.

it is, to this day, denigrated as a symbol of ignorance and poverty. The negative perception is so pervasive that speakers are often stigmatized, traumatized, and shut out of educational opportunities, jobs, and more. In school, AAE-speakers are often looked down on, misunderstood, and stereotyped as "less than." Some teachers and SLPs may also have lowered expectations for AAE-speaking students.

AAE has its roots in slavery, and the practice of placing enslaved Africans into linguistically diverse groups in order to prevent uprising or revolt. Those enslaved Africans, my ancestors, ingeniously acquired a new linguistic system--without a shared linguistic background, and in spite of being denied formal education and access to literacy. The varied underlying structures of their Western African languages, combined with the lexicon of their oppressors, yielded a system through which they could communicate in ways not always understood by those who had enslaved them.

I had effectively been censored, as had many of my classmates. Fortunately, I had another dialect with which to communicate in the school setting. Code-switching, therefore, allowed me to express myself in less-accommodating environments.

I knew when and how to adjust my dialect to navigate specific communicative situations. I could twist my words to fit almost any situation, and this linguistic dexterity was to my benefit--especially in school. I was hip to when a response required "tidying up," so as not to detract from my message, or when I could add a little flava--a verbal twist of time perhaps--to poetically respond to yo-momma cracks on the playground. When the words had my culture's unique spin on them ... that's when I really felt like I was being me.

I found that AAE-speakers can be misidentified as having speech and language disorders--by speech-language pathologists unfamiliar with the dialect. This led me to conduct my doctoral dissertation research on the training of SLPs to differentiate AAE from a disorder.

Later, of course, as I pursued my graduate studies in speech-language pathology, I realized that a number of AAE-speakers are unfamiliar with MAE and code-switching.

The solution seemed simple enough: They should switch it up like I did, especially in the classes taught by teachers who were not also AAE speakers. It all seemed so simple.

Her refrain, clearly articulated in AAE, threatened that I bet' not talk like dat at school. Her reminder echoed in my head for years. My parents and grandparents, all adept code-switchers, had raised me to speak both AAE and Mainstream American English (MAE). Daily interactions and family get-togethers were marinated in AAE. MAE was reserved for interactions in mixed company, addressing elders, more serious discussions among family members, and education.

It was the dialect used by my childhood babysitter as she recited Dunbar's poetry. It's the dialect of discussion at the local salon while getting your plaits, twists, or braids. It's the dialect used by the pastor of the local church. It might even be the language of wolf tickets*, but it's most definitely the response to 'em.

Understanding AAE: A national survey of school-based SLPs indicates a need for more training on African American English--both its viability as a linguistic System and its deep cultural value.