he dominant white power structure and bilingual education in the U.S. allow non-English speakers, normally of color, to retain their cultural identity? The migration of the English to America and the eventual formation of the colonies led to the construction of whiteness as an ideology of privilege and dominance. Literature from this period shows how whiteness became the representative skin color of the new Americas and subsequently how the new nation embraced this ideology. This developing country was a very conducive stage for literature of all genres to shape and influence the population, because people like the Puritans felt they needed to show distinctly how they were separate from others in order to define themselves. This soon led the white population “.... to justify the exclusion from full participation in their sanctioned community those who were not like them, whether because of religious, national, or racial differences” (Babb 58). Early writers like William Bradford used words like savage and brutish to describe the Native Americans (Babb 61). In calling them savage and brutish he exudes the sentiment that the people he is writing this for (white colonials) are non-savage and non-brutish. Another example is Cotton Mather’s The Negro Christianized. In this book he argues that while it is very important for slaves to be baptized it is equally important to maintain social order by baptizing them into subservience (Babb 65). The Life and Captivity of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson is an example of the captivity narrative, which was also a very influential genre. In telling how she was captured by Native Americans she never recognizes them as human beings only describes them as savages, heathen and “hell-hounds”. These literary examples are among many that create a hierarchy privileging the white English-speaking people, and they set the stage for linguistic imperialism in the United States. I...
