"Because of my special skills, I could also be employed as a translator of Ebonics into Redneck. For example, we begin with a simple Ebonic phrase: "Yall don be messin wif me." First we translate that into traditional, outmoded, old-fogey WHITE English: "All of you are requested to cease being aggressive." Now we take THAT sentence and translate it into a THIRD language, spoken mainly in Appalachia, the Deep South and East Texas: "Yall don be messin wif me."
The main difference between the Ebonic sentence and the Hillbilly translation is that, in Hillbilly, there is a full expectoration between the words "messin" and "wif." So the sentence actually SOUNDS like this: "Yall don be messin (hock one up and spit it out) wif me." The Oakland school board is absolutely right. This has opened up a whole new field of serious academic investigation. Ebonians unite, for your right to jive! "