Ebonics: a bad idea becomes a horrible reality

[brickbacon]

@Bryan Ekers

What’chu talkin’ 'bout, magellan?

Wow, it only took one post for somebody to do his best Ebonics impression in a sad, pathetic attempt at a joke.

I really don’t understand why people have such a problem with this. I don’t know many who have a problem with ESL programs, yet when AAVE comes up, everyone is up in arms. Would all of you who disagree with this rather they continue what they are currently doing? That is obviously not working. Why is trying something new such an issue for people who have no stake in the situation?

I think a lot of this stems from the fact that people don’t realize that AAVE (or Ebonics) has rules just like any other language. In fact, they are often derivative, and ironically, more consistent than those of standard English. Here is a good explanation of the point I’m trying to make.

AAVE’s departure from [Southern American English] was a natural consequence of cultural differences between blacks and whites. sociologists, linguists and psychologists, however, believe divergent development of this kind is often passive subversion. Language becomes a means of self-differentiation that helps forge group identity, solidarity and pride. In the case of African Americans, AAVE has survived and thrived through the centuries also as a result of group societal marginalization — through segregation, discrimination and self-imposed social separation.

Most speakers of AAVE are bidialectical since they use Standard American English (SAE) to varying degrees as well as AAVE. Generally speaking, the degree of exclusive use of AAVE decreases with the rise in socioeconomic status, although speakers of AAVE typically readily understand SAE at all socioeconomic levels. Most African Americans, regardless of socioeconomic status, educational background, or geographic region, use some form of AAVE to various degrees in informal and intra-ethnic communication. This process of selective language usage, based on social context, is called code switching. Some phrases in AAVE have entered popular American culture, and these may be employed contextually by speakers belonging to diverse ethnic groups.

AAVE is often erroneously perceived by members of mainstream American society to indicate inferior intelligence or low educational attainment. Furthermore, as with many other creole dialects, AAVE sometimes has been called “lazy” or “bad” English by those who do not understand the process of creolization. A similar perception exists with regard to SAE in Britain and other English-speaking nations. Such appraisals also may be due in part to AAVE’s substitution of aspect for tense in some cases and certain grammatical and phonological reductions. Some challenge whether AAVE should be considered a dialect at all. However, among linguists there is no such controversy, since AAVE, like all dialects, shows consistent internal logic and structure.

In the late 1990s, the formal recognition of AAVE as a distinct dialect and its proposed use as an educational tool, as Ebonics, to help African American students become more fluent in SAE became a controversial subject in the United States.

Why should they continue doing what is clearly not working instead of trying something new?

[bizzwire]

@FisherQueen

Maybe you missed the end of that paragraph, where I talk about how I teach them to use Standard English, too. I also teach my students about improving their reading comprehension skills.

They will need to know Standard English for their first job interview it. Some of them don’t know it now. It isn’t because they’re stubborn or stupid, and just saying ‘they should be expected to speak Standard English already’ doesn’t make it happen. We have to, you know, teach them, and that involves giving them a reason to try to learn.

And they’ll flat-out refuse to learn if you tell them that the way that they and everyone they loves talks is stupid and wrong, but they’ll try to learn if you tell them that there are appropriate ways to talk in different situations, and smart people know how to use them all, and show them authors like the ones I mention, who effortlessly shift between Black or Standard English depending on what’s appropriate.

Actually, I commend your attitude and your approach as grounded in good sense.

My comment wasn’t directed to you as much as the “Ebonics-As-Magic” mentality that I could glean from the dog’s-lunch of an article. Somehow, through a mechanism yet to be explained, this is gonna make everybody well. Well, I suppose if you throw enough shit against a wall, something’s bound to stick.

[tomndebb]

Previous discussions have included:

How does one speak Ebonics
Where did the “black” accent come from?
Ebonics (or let me axe you a question)
AAVE (ebonics) continue discussing please
Ebonics of the World…

that black english, like any other slang, changes with extreme rapidity

Actually, street slang, like any other slang, changes with extreme rapidity, but AAVE, which is a dialect that has been studied for over forty years, has a grammar, syntax, and vocabulary that transcend street slang and change much more slowly–just as with any language.

since Black English isn’t a language but a dialect

A language is a dialect with its own military. (One definition that is jocularly accpeted among linguists.)

discounting her dismissal and characterization of the term Ebonics itself as “needlessly silly.”

However, she has a point. The dialect has been known by several stuffy sounding terms through the years that at least dignify it with the fact that some academician felt it was important enough to study as a science and bestow a stuffy title upon it. Williams’ coinage of “Ebonics” simply came up with a “catchier” word that is more easily abused by people who do not believe that it is a genuine language or dialect. African-American Vernacular English is a lot harder to build a stupid joke around.

[Askia]

Heh. I knew it wouldn’t take brickbacon long to sound off on this.

Re-reading the article, I’m even more unimpressed. Here’s the first five graphs

Incorporating Ebonics into a new school policy that targets black students, the lowest-achieving group in the San Bernardino City Unified School District, may provide students a more well-rounded curriculum, said a local sociologist.

The goal of the district’s policy is to improve black students’ academic performance by keeping them interested in school. Compared with other racial groups in the district, black students go to college the least and have the most dropouts and suspensions.

Blacks make up the second largest racial group in the district, trailing Latinos.

A pilot of the policy, known as the Students Accumulating New Knowledge Optimizing Future Accomplishment Initiative, has been implemented at two city schools.

Mary Texeira, a sociology professor at Cal State San Bernardino, commended the San Bernardino Board of Education for approving the policy in June.

These are the first five graphs of that article. It’s garbled and incomplete. Note that the first graph (the lead) mentions and indirectly quotes a local sociologist, but doesn’t bother to identify her until the fifth graph. The pilot policy, described as Students Accumulating New Knowledge Optimizing Future Accomplishment(s?) Intitiative is obviously an acronym… the SANKOFA Intitiative… sankofa is an Akan word that roughly translates as, “Go back to the past to reclaim the future.” The reporter or the editor, should have been savvy enough to realize that SANKOFA meant something and provided meaning for the word. This is easily obtained information that nicely alludes to the nature and goals of the program and absolutely should have been in the article. But the goddamn name of pilot initiative the policy is based on isn’t even mentioned until the fourth graph. And no word from anyone in the San Bernadino schools is directly quoted in the first quarter if the article! This is crap journalism, and possibly someone new on the job re-writing a press release.

That lead needs to be scrapped, the SANKOFA Intitative pilot pushed to the top, the tidbit about what sankofa means included immediately afterward, an interesting and relevant direct quote from SOMEBODY connected with this from the school system needs to be presented in the first five graphs, (the higher the better)… etc.

Ditto what brick said.

[Askia]

@tomndebb

However, she has a point. The dialect has been known by several stuffy sounding terms through the years that at least dignify it with the fact that some academician felt it was important enough to study as a science and bestow a stuffy title upon it. Williams’ coinage of “Ebonics” simply came up with a “catchier” word that is more easily abused by people who do not believe that it is a genuine language or dialect. African-American Vernacular English is a lot harder to build a stupid joke around.

Not that much harder. Anyway, at least Ebonics enjoys the pedigree of being around since 1975 and precisely coined, whereas the terms Black English, African-American Vernacular English are endlessly changing. Odds are that the term African-American will no longer be in vogue in another 10-15 years and AAVE will be changed again.

[QuickSilver]

@brickbacon

Why should they continue doing what is clearly not working instead of trying something new?

At the risk of appearing inflamatory; thousands upon thousands of immigrants come to America without working knowledge of the english language and manage to integrate themselves into society successfully by learning a language that quite often does not even share the same alphabet as their mother tongue.

Why the lowered expectation for learning mainstream english for a segment of population born and raised in America?

[FisherQueen]

@QuickSilver

Why the lowered expectation for learning mainstream english for a segment of population born and raised in America?

What is the lowered expectation you refer to? Have you read the whole thread, and are you sure you understand what the proposed program will do?

[tomndebb]

At the risk of appearing inflamatory; thousands upon thousands of immigrants come to America without working knowledge of the english language and manage to integrate themselves into society successfully by learning a language that quite often does not even share the same alphabet as their mother tongue.

There are a number of things that interfere with the teaching of language when the mother tongue is too close to the desired outcome. These can be as disparate as the Stroop Effect or the simple fact that in any word list, six words might have identical meanings, three words have similar but different meanings, and one word may have meanings that are utterly at odds and that similar (mis-)matches occur in grammatical structure. People learning wholly new languages do not suffer these impediments because they do not have the same odd mix of familiar, unfamiliar, and misleading familiar-but-different words and constructions. Everything is new and the new language does not suffer interference from the old.

Beyond that, it is difficult to tell from the abomination of a news article, but it is possible that the only persons who will be taught AAVE will be the teachers in order to help them address the students. I would have a negative response to teaching kids AAVE and then asking them to switch to SAE in the middle of their studies, but until we know what the actual curriculum is, I am reluctant to condemn it completely.

[John_Mace]

@Askia

Corrected link. This is yet another badly-written idiotic California article that misinforms the intentions of the school system. Ebonics is always primarily taught to teachers unfamiliar with African-American culture.

Wow. Someone needs to teach the author of that article the difference between a sentence and a paragraph. I hope that was a mistaken transcription from the article to the server where it’s stored, and not the way it was originally written.

The article offers no details about how Ebonics is being used, so it’s impossible to critique the program. One question I would have, though, is whether Ebonics is a unified dialect across the country. Is it more or less the same dialect (if that’s the right term) that is spoken in rural Mississippi, NYC, and Oakland CA? Also, as I said earlier, before I’d spend money on an Ebonics program, I’d study how school systems in other countries handle the problem. Most European countries have regional dialects that vary considerably more than Ebonics does from Standard American English.

[brickbacon]

@Askia

Heh. I knew it wouldn’t take brickbacon long to sound off on this.

Is this a good or bad thing?

@QuickSilver

At the risk of appearing inflammatory; thousands upon thousands of immigrants come to America without working knowledge of the English language and manage to integrate themselves into society successfully by learning a language that quite often does not even share the same alphabet as their mother tongue.

First, African-Americans aren’t immigrants. A very important distinction. Second, thousands of AAs have managed to do the same. Did you read the article I cited? Look at the code switching part. Third, today’s immigrants are afforded many of the things you seem to be against. You can take driver’s licenses and other tests in various languages, and they have ESL programs in many, if not most, schools. Are you advocating we get rid of them? Your basic point that people should suck it up like others have done before them is counter productive to the goals of our society. If you can make things easier for others, and help make them more productive citizens, while not substantially inconveniencing others, I think it’s reasonable to do so. It’s like saying we shouldn’t have wheelchair ramps because wheelchair bound people prior to those laws being in place were able to get around okay.

@QuickSilver

Why the lowered expectation for learning mainstream English for a segment of population born and raised in America?

I think it’s important to note that acceptance of AAVE will also help people of other ethnic groups. Anecdotally, AAVE seems to be embraced by many people of various ethnic and racial groups. Plenty of white and Hispanic kids express themselves with AAVE.

This “lowered expectation” you speak of is purely a byproduct of your arrogance, and unfamiliarity with AAVE and the education system that exists in most schools. If you had bothered to read the cite I linked to, you would see that the opinion that AAVE is a lazy, corrupted, disjunctive version of standard American English is not supported by the facts. Please read the article before you respond.

[Ms2001]

@jimpatro

Provide Ebonics equivalents to the following words:

Melancholy
Contemplative
Sad

Each similar but subtly different.
I can’t get behind your statement, English is one of the most expressive languages on Earth.

Provide Standard English equivalents for the following sentences, each similar but subtly different:

I was eatin’ waffles before school.
I be eatin’ waffles before school.
I eatin’ waffles before school.

I bought this shirt.
I been bought this shirt.

[Askia]

brickbacon. Even when we occassionally disagree, I personally find your participation in these threads as predictable and comforting as sunrise.

QuickSilver. It’s not a question of lowered expectations. It’s a question of lowered conformity. Blacks tend not to conform to standard American English anymore than Cockneys conform to British Broadcasting Corporation english.

We don’t speak a different language, we speak our own patois, an awesomely persistent 400-sump’tn year old ethnic dialect of creoled terms and language roots that transcends geography and frequently class lines. Regional colloquialisms and accents aside, African-American people in San Bernadino speak the same nonstandard Ebonic rules as African-Americans in Boston, Birmingham, Atlanta, San Antonio and Detroit.

(Do Jesus! You sho aine never lied. Other folks be lyin’, but this nigger here be preachin. Sho’ do! Ain’t that the truth? Uh-huh, yeah, sho’ I’m right. Preach it! Tell it, brother!)

Also, African-Americans who wish to integrate don’t have a problem shedding (or at least code-switching) ebonic terms and ghetto patois in the workplace. But these folks either escape from their families in order to conform or are encouraged by their families to defy the speaking standards of the masses of black people to do this. One key challenge educators face is that simply getting students to adopt Standard American English as something relevant. Doing so is often met with hostility, belligerent defiance and the dreaded accusation of “acting white.”

Additionally, blacks who did break radically with African-American norms in speech, mannerisms and appearance to conform to white society are often (historically) seen as “dangerous”, “radical” and “uppity” no matter how Eurocentric they tried to be. Changing their ways did not guarantee any real acceptance in white society (pesky little things like the right to vote and not being barred from entering white public parks, libraries and schools), unless they took the additional disconnect of passing for “white” – a scandalous and often unforgiveable betrayal to your black family members who don’t play that skin game.

So – to quote a former student – “if acting all white don’t do you no good, and white people be acting like mo’ and mo’ like niggas anyway, why I gotta be the one changing how I is?”

The previous isn’t the norm of business, communications, most media industries or nearly all professions, but it’s basically fine if you’re a baller or a rapper.

[bizzwire]

@FisherQueen

Okay, I understand what you’re saying, but it’s not what’s being proposed.

No one is suggesting teaching students how to speak in Black English. Like you say, they already know. What they’re suggesting is giving students a choice. They will still take English class, where they’ll read great literature and modern classics and learn Standard English, just like they always have.

First, I don’t see how you pulled this from the article. From what I read, the idea was that classes would be taught in Ebonics:

Texeira said research has shown that students learn better when they fully comprehend the language they are being taught in.

I can see this being the case for a group of, say, freshly-arrived Hmong regugees, or a people who have had little, if any exposure to the English language. What we’re talking about are m[sup]th[/sup]-generation Americans.

If they want, they can sign up for a class to learn about the history of African-American culture, where they’ll perhaps start to feel proud of who they are, worthy to walk in the steps of their greatest ancestors ('cause these kids don’t know WEB DuBois, or sometimes even Malcolm X), and eager to do great things themselves.

I don’t recall reading this part in the article.

Look. My great-great grandparents came from Lithuania, Romania, and Poland. We were pretty much the dregs of eastern Europe. I consider myself no more Lithuanian, Polish or Romanian than most of the children in the San Bernadino school district, nor do I feel a need to feel proud of my Polish, Lithuanian or Romanian culture. or the most part, my “ancestors” were not great people. They were not Kings, or warriors; they were humble, despised and persecuted inhabitants of the shtetl and the ghetto. Ok, with the ocasional biblical scholar and golem-maker thrown in. Those that came to this country didn’t need to feel good about themselves. They didn’t need to have their egos stroked. Their key to success (or at least not being killed) was learning to speak the language, studying hard, sacrifice and assimilation (of course controlling all the media and the world banking system helped ;j ) They were not taught in Yiddish. Well, okay, they were, but not at the taxpayers nickle.

And if you want to talk about the corrosive effects of racism, well, it’s true that our skin color was no different from the mainstream, but when you’ve got a beezer like the prow of a Viking warship and a last name like “Saperstein,” (used for illustrative puposes only) somehow, people seemed to know you were…different.

Sorry, but we need less fragmentation in this society, not more. Once everyone is happy and healthy, and a productive member of society, then we can afford to celebrate what makes us different. Let’s focus on what we have in common, first.

[even_sven]

It is only through pure ignorance that this subject keeps popping up again and again. The whole debate is based on the strawist strawnman to ever straw the straw in strawman land.

Nobody is talking about or has ever talked about teaching classes in AAVE. Nobody is talking about giving tests in it. Nobody is talking about saying in any way that schools should not teach or should demphasize teaching standard English. Nobody is saying that the expectations for graduates is that they should be able to speak clear, correct standard English.

What they are talking about it admitting that AAVE exists (seems undebatable to me) and that teachers ought to be trained about how best to teach AAVE speakers standard English.

I’m not sure why in the years since this “outrage” first began, so few people have taken a moment to examine the very basic facts about what they are so outraged about.

[Stephe96]

Are we gonna Valley-Speak classes next? If not, why not? Why not Redneck classes? “Git 'er Done-101” Oh! What about Surfer-Dude Language?

The fact that this stupid idea is being taken seriously at all is simply amazing to me. It was the funniest joke in Airplane and now ostensibly intelligent people are actually considering implementing it. Unbelievable. Oh, wait. I’m sorry…I meant to say, “Yo, man! Like that be whack’n sh*t!”

[yBeayf]

Are we gonna Valley-Speak classes next? If not, why not? Why not Redneck classes? “Git 'er Done-101” Oh! What about Surfer-Dude Language?

The fact that this stupid idea is being taken seriously at all is simply amazing to me. It was the funniest joke in Airplane and now ostensibly intelligent people are actually considering implementing it. Unbelievable. Oh, wait. I’m sorry…I meant to say, “Yo, man! Like that be whack’n sh*t!”

Did you actually read any of the posts before yours?

[Ms2001]

@bizzwire

First, I don’t see how you pulled this from the article. From what I read, the idea was that classes would be taught in Ebonics:

Quote:
Texeira said research has shown that students learn better when they fully comprehend the language they are being taught in.

That doesn’t say “the language they are being taught in” is Ebonics, and nothing else in the article says classes will be taught in a different language. The point, as I understand it, is to teach these kids (and their teachers) the differences between the language used by the students and the language used by the teachers. To help the students fully comprehend Standard English by comparing it to their own dialect.

[Marley23]

@yBeayf

Did you actually read any of the posts before yours?

Have you read any of his other posts?

[bizzwire]

@Mr2001

That doesn’t say “the language they are being taught in” is Ebonics, and nothing else in the article says classes will be taught in a different language. The point, as I understand it, is to teach these kids (and their teachers) the differences between the language used by the students and the language used by the teachers. To help the students fully comprehend Standard English by comparing it to their own dialect.

It’s ironic that we have all read the same article, yet we can’t agree what the hell it said. My understanding (which is why I included the quote ) was that teachers will be taught AAVE so they can better teach their kids. I interpreted that (and the quote) to mean that they would be teaching in AAVE.

But I may very well have misunderstood.

[Stephe96]

I don’t know. Just imagine the reaction if, say, Trent Lott said something like, “I’m afraid blacks can’t really learn all that well unless they are being taught in their own street slang. I propose we teach our educators how to understand the black dialect in an effort to reach out to black kids.”

I believe he’d be crucified.