Look what I found! An old college response paper... I could not have been more clever. This is not my usual sobering subject matter... Well, I guess it is. But I found an old college response paper, after being assigned the book The Ebonics Debate to review and respond to. I thought it was stupid and I'm sure that my response reflected my attitude. However, as it turns out, in my opinion, it's amongst the most entertaining things that I've ever written. I won't be upset if you disagree.
Special note to those who feel that, "actual linguists call it African American Vernacular English," maybe you should read the book:
I first heard the term Ebonics in the mid-1990s. My first thought was that it was another cleverly attempted, racist joke, a play on words in regard to black dialogue in connection with the English phonetic system, hence the Ebonics Phonics system. I blocked it out it over the years, and given the fact that I have gone out of my way to disregard and pay no mind to mainstream media sources, due what I believe is biased news and misrepresented people of color so abundantly and colorfully represented, I wasn’t aware of a debate.
Until recently, I overlooked this issue. But as I come to the close of my graduate study at the University of Wisconsin, this issue has been highlighted. I have now analyzed it and I am ready to respond. Quite frankly, the word Ebonics, itself, offends me. I really believe that this is nothing more than another spoke in the wheel of the investment in whiteness, and lends itself to the cloaked ideology of racism.
What I mean is, that there are people of color, of African descent in particular, who claim they understand what Ebonics represents and what it means, and who are not the slightest bit offended. They have excused the white idealists who sponsor this term and ideology, because they believe that they were only trying to define and give a name to the language which African American people speak and that its use is in good faith. Ebonics, of course, was the response for trying to address the disparity in achievement between black and white students and in how to find a solution the problem.
I stated earlier that this was cloaking the ideology of racism and was promoting an investment in whiteness. I said this, because the very ideology of white investment is one of privilege, which is allowed because of an assumed veil of superiority. This is an assumed superiority over all non-white races and ethnicities, but primarily over the black Diaspora.
It seems funny to me that when southern whites speak with broken English (i.e. “Y’all c’mon back now, here?”), it is romanticized and called a southern drawl. When whites on the East Coast of the United States wrangle and tear apart the English language (i.e. “Yeah, I’m talkin’ ‘bout all ‘o you’s over there…”), it’s merely considered an Eastern accent. But when black people say, “Let me ask you a question,” they are quickly admonished by the usual white proprietors of the English language that the word is ask not axe.
But because southern white people speak with a southern drawl, and because whites on the East Coast speak with an accent, I don’t recall anyone changing the whole school curriculum to adjust their learning abilities to the way they speak. This ideology is racist in itself, as the power brokering, “dominant” society has named this word Ebonics, as the official language of an “inferior” people, and have decided to turn this into a real subject-based part of inner city school curriculum. Of course, this is for the benefit of black children, so they can learn the culture of the white man better by translation.
Whites should not be surprised when they hear President Barack Obama or his wife Michelle, “speaking so well,” or shocked that Tiger Woods is, “so articulate.” On the other hand, they should not compare the rest of black America to the likes of these black Americans, who speak perfect English, because not even the most pristine American using the English language speaks it correctly, at least in the eyes of the British, who themselves express disapproval of the way Americans have destroyed the English language. In fact, it should be a slap in the face to the ideology of whiteness to condemn the various black dialects, because it was the ignorance of white slave owners, who taught a people of another continent – complete with their own language – to speak the South’s version of its broken American English, and made it a crime to speak any other language.
Now, when immigrant Europeans, Latinos, Africans, Middle Easterners and Asians come to this country, they usually speak their own language and even when becoming fluent in American English, they will still speak it with their own dialect mixed in. Yet, there have not been classes taught to them in their accented English so that they might better comprehend what’s being said. Blacks, who practically all migrated to every part of the United States from the South, have in fact, all learned their dialects from the white man himself. Now these migrational black people are being ridiculed for their dialogue and are being written off as a people who don’t have a capacity to learn. Sound like they learn just fine.
The Oakland Ebonics Resolution, written by the Oakland school board, based on a system used by one of its schools, Prescott Elementary, actually states that:
“…numerous validated [unnamed] scholarly studies… demonstrate that African Language Systems are genetically based and not a dialect of English” (The Ebonics Debate, 1998).
Are you kidding me? This is the same nonsensical thinking, which claimed its basis in the biological sciences - sciences that were used in the 19th century to rationalize white supremacy and justify slavery. In my opinion, Ebonics can’t be justified. It is the epitome of giving up on our black students and accepting mediocrity as a means of success.
I’m not one who believes that all people learn in the same fashion, but there’s no getting around the English language. Granted, the English language is complicated and complex, and there are more rules applied to English than any other language, but black children and black people in general, have the ability and the intelligence to learn it, no matter which dialect they speak in. To prove my point, I would remind the reader that, blacks in the Midwest, the East Coast, the Southern West Coast, the Northern West Coast, the South, the Dirty South, and the Gulf states all speak with different accents and dialects. Having said this, I must ask, which part of all these dialects is Ebonics going to be published under and who is going to determine the rules for such?
Ultimately, I guess my point is that the idealist social scientist has to stop trying to label blackness and put it in a box. The message to the teacher and the student should be, no matter what you sound like, real power comes more from what you write as opposed to what you speak. It is my belief that if you can read it, you can write it. It is also my belief that if our children are taught by getting hooked on Ebonics, they will never be able the get hooked on phonics. The speaking of black dialect is a normal, natural phenomenon, something unavoidably learned at home and throughout the neighborhoods. It’s not something to be taught in our schools. Teaching Ebonics is teaching illiteracy.
As I remember, I got a round of applause from my fellow students after reading it out loud, but chewed out from my professor. She didn't find it amusing - at all. Though it does have a serious theme, I sure hope you all we amused.