Posted on 06/04/2002 9:16:59 AM PDT by Stand Watch Listen
Remember "ebonics?" In December 1996 a national debate erupted about the Oakland, Calif., school-board decision authorizing teachers to use street slang while teaching children standard English. For the last six years, with the connivance of the mainstream media, most Americans have been able to forget ebonics. Unfortunately, however, this foolishness has continued.
Linguistics professors Walt Wolfram and Erik Thomas defend ebonics as the legitimate dialect of a dynamic minority in their new book, The Development of African-American English. New York state regent Adelaide Sanford recently insisted that her support of ebonics had been "misrepresented" and that ebonics is the language of great black poets of the past, such as James Weldon Johnson. In 2001, the Linguistics Society of America (LSA) reiterated its 1997 statement supporting ebonics. And, in 1998, academics Lisa Delpit and Theresa Perry edited an anthology, The Real Ebonics Debate, in which none of the approximately 30 contributions dared to criticize the newly accepted dialect.
"Experts" tell us that ebonics is three things: 1) an African language that is genetically passed on among blacks; 2) a vocabulary that has grown out of the encounter of African slaves with Irish immigrants; and 3) a wholly new dialect created since the 1960s by young blacks to separate themselves from whites.
You might expect someone to have pointed out that the above definitions are mutually incompatible. But no such luck. Despite having a professional interest in rigorous, scholarly debate, most linguistics professors long ago abandoned any pretenses to objectivity. The most common and correct understanding by blacks and whites alike is that ebonics is broken English and/or street slang. However, any educator so defining ebonics is sure to be shouted down, or worse. As a result, those who know better have remained silent as one well-meaning academic once advised me to do.
Although ebonics supporters such as Keith Gilyard publicly have claimed otherwise, children taught using ebonics readers did worse than their peers who were taught with standard English readers. Consider this from an ebonics reader used by professors John and Angela Rickford:
"This here little Sister name Mae was most definitely untogether. I mean, like she didn't act together. She didn't look together. She was just an untogether Sister.
"Her teacher was always sounding on her 'bout daydreaming in class. I mean, like, just 'bout every day the teacher would be getting on her case. But it didn't seem to bother her none. She just kept on keeping on. Like, I guess daydreaming was her groove. And you know what they say: 'Don't knock your Sister's groove.' But a whole lotta people did knock it. But like I say, she just kept on keeping on.
"One day Mae was taking [sic] to herself in the lunch room. She was having this righteous old conversation with herself. She say, 'I wanna be a princess with long golden hair.' Now can you get ready for that? Long golden hair!
"Well, anyway, Mae say, 'If I can't be a princess I'll settle for some long golden hair. If I could just have me some long golden hair everything would be all right with me. Lord, if I could just have me some long golden hair.'"
Ebonics is a pillar of Afrocentrism. It is a movement which, using intimidation, violence and pseudoscholarship, has dumbed down the education of black children beyond recognition, illegally barred whites from teaching black children and deliberately cut poor, black children off from the mainstream of American life.
Afrocentrists maintain that the pigment melanin makes blacks intellectually, morally and culturally superior to whites. They teach black children that ancient black Egyptians flew gliders, that whites who dispute such fairy tales are racists who seek to deny black greatness and that all black educational failure is due to a racist, white conspiracy.
Afrocentrists such as George Washington University professor Robert Williams, who coined the term "ebonics" in 1973, maintain that it is an act of disrespect for a white teacher to correct a black child. Professor Charles Coleman of the City University of New York's (CUNY's) York College has argued that remedial education is harmful to black students.
Progressive white educators who support Afrocentrists insist that it is wrong to correct students' usage and grammar. Unfortunately, this approach leads teachers to give passing grades on writing-proficiency exams. The CUNY remedial students then are permitted to take college-level classes despite possessing only semiliterate reading abilities.
Many middle-class blacks like to sometimes "go ghetto" and use street slang. But these professionals can speak standard English in many cases, better than I can and can always go home. The poor and working-class blacks to whom Afrocentric educators have refused to teach standard English, however, have nowhere to go.
Nicholas Stix writes frequently on education issues and has been an instructor in the City University of New York.
Yo! H-Dog in da house. Don't be feedin' me dis here jive. I got me a gig as Accountz Reeceevable Supahvisah at Midstate Office Supply. And damn if I ain't the baddest stone-cold supastah in da joint. When it comes to puttin' togetha fly Excel spreadsheets, tha H-Dog got skeelz, ya know what I'm sayin'? Don't mess wit' da H-Dog. Word.
Your point about the lack of competence of the teachers is well taken. Although most of us can recall teachers who stood out as excellent, inspiring, and even mentors, most teachers are not recruited from the most talented students in our most competitive colleges and universities. One is reminded of the old saying Those who can, do. Those who cannot do, teach. Although society pays lip service to education, and it is essential to success, it is as if many blacks have taken to heart the old Anglo-Saxon suspicion of those who smell too much of the lamp.
Sad to say, but both Wolfram and Thomas are professors at N.C. State.
I recognized the name because I read Wolfram's book on the Ocracoke Island "Hoi Toider" accent and where in England it originated.
I thought he was a superstar on Excel, not Word.
Oh, I don't know about that. I feel pretty much the same way, but I derive no pleasure from it - it's just a simple fact. Sooner or later, the people pushing ebonics will wise up and stop handicapping their own children in such a fashion - and the sooner, the better - but until then...it's still a dog-eat-dog world out there. And every someone who intentionally or unintentionally removes themselves from the running makes the path that much smoother for me and mine.
1) I immediately listed "Ebonics- East Coast Dialect" on the language section of my resume.
2) My friend Eric ceased to be called "E-dubs" and promptly received a new nickname, "Ebonics."
3) I immediately began refering to the way I, an American of Irish descent, speak as "Ironics."
Dey bin huffin wacky tabacky. The little excerpt written in Ebonic is also a fraud. The author did not once use the requisite Mutha F. With out that term of endearment, no claim to Afrocentric speech is valid.
Dan
I love Herbert Kornfield. I work with a guy that talks exactly like that...except that he's serious. Shame. Smart guy, good technician, guaranteed to go nowhere in the company because he can't express himself.
America Disappearing Down Memory Hole of PC Educators
Source: INSIGHT magazine; Published: June 3, 2002;
Author: Don Feder
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