Ebonics: a bad idea becomes a horrible reality

Great Debates
141

tomndebb, Given that I’m a devotee of Carter G. Woodson, Asa Hilliard, WEB DuBois, Ivan Van Sertima, Louis Gates, Jr., among others, and afrocentrism in general, you’ll forgive me as I vehementally disagree with you and Magiver that “portraying some accomplishments of some persons as racial accomplishments” is a bad idea, especially since black history exists because of downplayed and omitted contributions by people of color in history books and classroom curricula up until last midcentury, and black history evolved as a discipline specifically to counter those omissions and perceptions. You both think it’s a bad idea, fine. That’s on you two and anyone else who agrees with you. My feeling is that’s no different from the study of early philosophers, women’s studies, gay studies, the studies or the 43 US presidents, only that it’s been hijacked by scholarly extremists and needs more moderate reform. One of the cures for the racial strife in this country needs to be, as you put it, countered with concrete examples.

I share your regards for Attucks, Carter, Hughes and Baldwin. Of course, Hughes’, Baldwin’s closeted homosexuality (or in Hughes’ case, bisexuality) and flirtations with socialism impacted their work, too – as did several other Harlem Renaissance writers and artists.

Feh. Schoolbook texts are absolutely the worst resources to use for an post-middle school understanding of historical personalities and events. They’re (mostly) fine for broad trends, dates and some national events but they’re infected with the exact same “best, brightest, Western and whitest” fervor of most textbooks. Again: by whose standards do we judge the “best” for inclusion into history courses? I can’t imagine you’d endorse eliminating any the U.S. presidents, yet most were far from the best policymakers or leaders in their eras. Like it our not, history is made of many people of ambitious mediocrity. This is the same approach you were advocating before I was criticizing a few posts back.

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Zoe: Thank you, bless you, for that link.

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I suspect that the vast majority of people who defend some application of AAVE would want everyone who graduated high school to be capable of reading, writing, and speaking SAE. (There may be some who would not, but they will be in a tiny minority.)

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tim314. Some people here are evidentally scandalized it would have any role in the educational process at all – including recognizing its worth as a teaching tool writing or speaking.

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Askia, I’m afraid that I am not sure exactly what the disagreement is. Do you not want all students taught about Carver, DuBois, Booker Washington, and others? Or do you only want those people discussed in special classes? If the latter, would it be OK for kids in rural Minnesota and North Dakota to concentrate only on German and Scandinavian immigrant contributions to U.S. history, ignoring the contributions of Irish, blacks, Italians, Poles, etc. while inner city kids concentrate only on black (or, in the Southwest, black and hispanic) contributions?

You are expressing great disagreement, but I have no idea where your ideas differ from mine.

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But you and I may write the same sentence and say it quite differently:

“Mary fed the greasy pork to the dog in the yard,” can be pronounced correctly several ways – all of them “standard” English.

Just as a point of interest, did you know that at one time James Earl Jones was a mute? What a voice!

Do you know why Mid-Western accents are considered the broadcast standard? That’s where the broadcast schools were originally located.

I remained persnickety and professional for twenty years, but not about dialects. It was in a linguistics class in teachers’ college that I learned that my assumptions about “proper English” were mistaken.

If you think that I am mistaken, would you mind going into more detail about the objective standard for spoken English and where you think this standard can be found? Who determined that it was the standard and that other dialects were sub-standard?

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tomndebb. Here’s where I believe you and I disagree or are confused about. This is my last post for now - its the wee hours in the a.m. in Georgia.

  1. I was mildly offended by what I inferred as an unfair characterization of black studies/afrocentrism as ‘one black person’s accomplishments co-opted by black scholars as “racial accomplishments” and also a “bad idea.”’ That may not be how you meant to pharse it, but that’s pretty much how I took it. If you meant otherwise, feel free to clarify. That’s how you legitimately feel, I’m open to discussing it. (Later today, anyway.)

  2. I have never advocated that these people should be restricted to study only this population group simply because they share the same ethicity – -- I think they should be multicultural and as broadly appealing as possible – but given the reality of regional history, shared cultures and (possibly) local interest, I can’t say that if rural schools in Minnesota or North Dakota wished to concentrate on the contributions and accomplishments of Scandanavian and German ancestors, while giving less attention to blacks and Hispanics, that I’d object. This is part of the appeal of the home school and charter school movements and increasingly, local public schools, too. Some might claim this will lead to a Balkanization of how Americans are taught history, but I have some doubts how well the melting pot approach has worked these last 40-odd years anyway.

  3. I am both confused by and suspicious of your disdain for what you appear to regard as mediocrity in history. I’m wary of what you desire to see “cut.” You’d already mentioned Crispus Attucks was “silly.” I sort of agree – but whereas you seem to want to cut him, I’d want to simply redress whatever misconceptions students may have already heard about his heroism, give them the real facts supported by outside sources, and move on.

Part of this is because of you did not elaborate on how this approach to teaching about the “best” in a historical context could have some meaningful examples to offer to all kinds students, since you feel including mediocre personalities is somehow “wrong.” It naturally makes me question who you’d consider mediocre, not worthy of teaching, and why. And if they’re not taught by the schools, who will? There are still state educational standards to be met. Again, real history isn’t concerned with the best, or necessarily even the mediocre – just who did what, when and where, and how it impacted their future. Everything else is a point of view.

148

I don’t think that’s right. But to restate it, I think it unwise to “legitamize” ebonics in any way. People say it is a dialect, not slang or lazy speech. I don’t think it matters much what you call it. It is an impediment to the young people who speak it–if the goal is to have them take fuller advantage of our society when they get older.

(Also, from the article mentioned in the post, it clearly says that ebonics is going to be used to teach classes. Whether or not that is what the writer intended to say I dont know, but that is what it says.)

No. And yes. Teaching it to teachers is fine, as it will help them understand their students better. But teachers shouldn’t speak it, unless pointing out that it is incorrect English. Just as my teachers explained that “ain’t” is incorrect. If they want to take a whole class to do this–“Common Mistakes Made in Engish”–fine.

Yes. Yes (and yes). I just don’t think that speaking in ebonics is the only way to facilitate the skill peolpe need to adapt their conduct to different situations. I could see how we disagree on this, as I do not consider ebonics a valid dialect. Part of my reasoning for this is personal experinece.

From K-12 (starting in the early sixties) I went to schools that were almost half black. There were AAs in all my classes and on my sports teams. My colleges had smaller percentages of blacks, but I’ve always had black friends, and to this day play basketball in pick-up games and meet the younger generation. I bring this up only to say that the ebonics we speak of today in no way resembles the speech of the black kids I went through school with. If it was truly a dialect, the changes in 40 years would not be so great. My 6th grade classmate with the laziest speech back then speaks better than many of the young AAs I encounter today (controlling for socioeconomics of the neighborhoods). I think we ended up where we are by being too permissive, too embracing of every difference–that anything that comes out of any culture is just as good as anything else. You’ve touched on that some in some of your recent posts. We have become enamored with not making value judgements (both through a desire to feel good and to avoid being labeled a racist, as I have been earlier in this thread.) But not telling a child that he is doing something wrong when he is, is just cheating him.

The specific complaint to your question would be: we are losing our minds. Some may call ebonics a dialect to give it some stature. And there may indeed be some ephemeral “African-American dialect”, but it does not encompass all of what some want to label ebonics. Does not lazy speech exist in the AA community? Or is all non-standard English that comes out of the community automatically a part of this rich, noble dialect? Are the only people capable of bad English and lazy speech non-African Americans? It seems to me that what people have done is take everything–the dialect, the lazy speech, the poor grammar–and given it all one name to protecct the group from criticism. They forget, criticism is a good thing.

Bring up Charter Schools and immediately people point out to those that have failed. And that would be fine–if they also mentioned the great successes. Yes, some Charter Schools will fail. But when they do, have you really lost any ground? It was a failing school before it became a Charter School. But some Charter Schools succeed beyond anyone’s wildest expectations, so a school that was failing its children (and society) becomes exactly what we all hope every school would be: a place to get a good education and the tools to move on to our best universities. SOMETHING is working. We should embrace these schools, try to understand what makes the great ones so great, and duplicate them wherever we can. The more we do this the better we’ll get at it. Andd the more children that would be rescued from a bleak existence.

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That’s your interpretation. Clearly would be if they actually wrote “Ebonics is going to be used to teach classes”.

All the quote in the article says is:
[ul]
[li]Students who speak this dialect at home should be taught like students who speak a foreign language. It has been pointed out that ESL does not typically involve teaching classes in the foreign language.[/li][li]Students learn better if they understand the language being used. The article does not specifically say whether that language is Standard English or AAVE.[/li][/ul]

The only evidence that any teachers would be speaking Ebonics is your interpretation of an ambiguous sentence in the article.

What linguistic training do you have that lets you predict how much a dialect can change in a generation?

Well, why don’t you separate it out for us? Explain which parts are a legitimate dialect, and which are lazy speech or poor grammar.

150

What the hell is “lazy speech”? How can speech be lazy? Either you say one thing or you say some other thing. It’s not like time and energy are saved by saying “I be broke.” Why are you using the word “lazy” when it clearly isn’t appropriate.

Given that “lazy” clearly isn’t an appropriate characterization, why do you think that word jumped to your mind?

And no, this is not an impediment. All of us speak differently to our mothers than we do to our boss. All of us use a different set of vocabulary and grammar when we talk to our friends as opposed to when we are writing a paper for school. Heck, go to India (or anywhere else in the world) and you will meet hundreds of people- many with little education- that are able to navigate the world while having four or five languages that they use for different situations. People are perfectly capable of holding different language paradigms in their head and figuring out when to use which ones.

Why do you think African-Americans would be any different?

151

So your complaint essentially seems to be that people are speaking of AAVE or Ebonics respectfully, as a recognized dialect with its own linguistic integrity, and you don’t like that. You want AAVE to continue to be evaluated solely in comparison with “standard English”, stressing that it is “incorrect”, “lazy”, and inferior.

Whether this indicates anything about your feelings toward black people, I don’t know and I don’t want to inquire. It definitely indicates that you are pretty naive and ignorant about linguistics. Why should we listen to your opinion about what you “consider a valid dialect”, rather than to the opinion of trained linguists who actually know something about the subject?

But most importantly, your preferred approach of continuing to denigrate AAVE as merely “incorrect” English seems pedagogically stupid. Yes, everyone here agrees that all schoolchildren should learn to speak and write “standard English”. But you want to make the task of teaching standard English to dialect speakers harder, by unnecessarily insisting that their native dialect is “wrong” and “lazy”, rather than different.

This, IMHO, is foolish and counterproductive. Speakers of one dialect or language who are learning a closely related one need to understand the differences between the two, and the ways in which a correct formulation in their native dialect has to change in order to be accepted as correct in the learned dialect.

Take an example: As a native English speaker from the US currently living in the Netherlands and learning Dutch, which is very closely related to English, I often use English structures that are incorrect in Dutch. I might express “Today I’ll go to Leiden” as “Vandaag ik gaa naar Leiden”, which sounds like a perfectly normal and correct word order to me as an English speaker. Bzzzt! Dutch places the verb second in such a sentence: what I should have said was “Vandaag gaa ik naar Leiden”.

It is much more helpful to have a teacher explain that difference than for him/her simply to scold me for speaking “bad Dutch” or “lazy Dutch”. Yes, I need to learn what the correct usages are in standard Dutch, rather than go on speaking my own hybrid “Dunglish” which will sound weird and wrong to Dutch speakers. But there’s no need to disparage or denigrate the structures of my own language, which I know very well and use very correctly, as a mere “inferior” or “lazy” or “bad” form of the Dutch I’m trying to speak.

Similarly, as the teacher quoted in the excerpt from Zoe’s link described, it is more useful to talk about translating from correct Ebonics to correct English than it is to try to paint Ebonics as intrinsically “incorrect” or “lazy” or “wrong”. If you really care about helping children learn English, rather than just enjoying feeling superior by sneering at their native dialect, ISTM that that’s the approach you should be encouraging.

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magellan01:

No worries. :slight_smile:

And wonderful post, Kimstu.

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This doesn’t change my opinion.

And if it’s a dialect, why “phonics”? Ebonese or Ebonic would make it sound more like the name of a dialect or language. That “s” at the end makes it sound that much more amateurish.

154

Dank je Gad, you da man. :wink:

155

I suspect, however, that you are not actually comparing AAVE across 40 years, but youth slang across 40 years–and those are different.

I can get lost listening to my kids’ friends talking the early 2000s melange of valley-speak and 'hood speak that has made it back to Ohio. I know darned well that my parents and their friends could not always follow the speech of my friends when I was in high school or college. And all these differences are from the same racial and socio-economic groups without having to interpret across a dialect barrier, as well.

If you can show me a study by a linguist that demonstrates a clear change in grammar and syntax (as opposed to a change in buzzwords) in AAVE between 1965 and 2005, I will back off my position, but I really think you are confusing street speech with the dialect, itself. Based on that impression, I really believe that you are starting from a fundamental error in your position.

156

People of AA descent are hardly the only ones “guilty” of lazy speech. I hear it all around me, every day. People who mis-use words, who mix tenses, who --name it, it’s done. Heck, there are threads and links all the SDMB about the misuse of words.

IMO, such “lazy speech” should be corrected-when you’re in school (once you’re out, you’re on your own). Unfortunatley, this is not often done.

Personal anecdote:I had NO grammar lessons as a kid. Really. We learned grammar indirectly, by reading stories and analyzing them. Also, our writing was critiqued and grammar mistakes pointed out. I went to school in the late '60’s and all thru the '70’s.

It wasn’t until I took German in HS that I started to understand English grammar. This strikes me as backwards, but I’m known to be odd.

This was nonsense, as is my school district’s current version of grammar which is something called “Daily Oral Language” (we’ll just ignore that it should be Verbal, not Oral and move on). It’s crap–it’s good as an exercise, but does almost nothing to inculcate the underlying language structure and rules. It is only an exercise. This is an upper middle class, well supported district with about 65% white, 30% black-the rest Asian or Indian. (numbers are a rough estimate).

I fully support heightening teacher awareness of street slang and dialects. It could only help-and that is where it should stop. I like the idea of having kids translate Shakespeare into contemporary language etc. But I still think that the focus should be in teaching SAE–especially in writing. I understand the impulse to help “Jamal” feel better about himself, but think it does no long term good. It’s a sop-Jamal is going to graduate and face a harsh world where speaking and writing in Ebonics is not well accepted. To me, it’s not a white vs black thing-it’s having a commonly agreed upon language structure that meets communication needs. Hell, if the French had won that long ago war, we’d be arguing in French.

The inclusion of such great black writers as Hughes, Thurston and Morrison should go without saying. History is another thread, let’s just say I think the approach to history should be different.

I will also say this. I work with alot of Nigerian(4) and Ghana-nian (what does one call someone from Ghana? andway, there are about 6 of them) immigrants. NONE of them want their kids to pick up this Ebonics (we have talked about this at work)–ALL of them emphasize education, staying in school and dedication to academic achievement. ALL of them speak “proper” SAE with strong accents. I credit their schooling within their home countries. I may have trouble with their pronunciation at times, but I never misunderstand them as to meaning.

A person can take an essence of the dialect into the larger world and use it --but it should not be the primary source of communication. I think that Jive or Ebonics or whatever is a great thing–just as any dialect is a great thing–IF the speakers of it can succeed in the larger world. This has just not been so for AA’s here, overall. There are many reasons for this; to only address language and expect great strides is silly. What would be ideal is to teach the kids to switch between the two. Somehow this discussion seems to hinge on an all or nothing choice.

IMO, what is needed is more teachers, more money for books and programs, more investment within the public school system. Charter schools are a good start. But a school reflects its community–and if the community is struggling to survive, there is precious little time and talent for schools.

Nowhere do I ever want to see papers turned in using Ebonics as a standard of excellence; debates made in Ebonics; presentations done in Ebonics (unless that is the focus). To do so would do the kids a disservice. (not saying that was proposed, just saying).

Apparently, these feelings make me a racist somehow. So be it. Whatever.

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Long time reader, first time poster, so please be nice…

As a linguist (yes, an actual, bona fide linguist!) who is currently working on an NSF grant to study African American English (AAE) in historical and regional variation, I think I might have some insight.

AAE is not an ephemeral street-slang that changes every few minutes. From the earliest recordings of African Americans in this country, we can see somethings, especially grammar, have not changed much (except in the way that all language changes over time). Where exactly AAE came from is the basis of much debate, which I think would be of little help here. As far as regional variation goes, there is some, how much is still under investigation. What is apparent, though, is that the variation is becoming less obvious as better transportation increases interaction across regions and the spread of “urban” or “hip-hop” culture increases the overt prestige of AAE.

AAE is not “lazy.” It is just as complex (in some ways, such as tense and aspect, more so) and regular and logical as standard English. If need be, I would be more than happy to give a grammar lesson, but I hope I don’t have to.

Unless someone in the board of ed is on some sort of illicit drug, classes WILL NOT BE TAUGHT IN AAE! That would be offensive, not to mention silly. These kids do not need to be taught how to speak AAE, they already speak it. What they need to learn is the logical consistency of AAE and how it compares to standard English. There have been many studies (I can get citations if need be; don’t know any off-hand) that have shown people trying to learn English as a second language do better if they have an understanding of the grammar, etc, of their own language. This is not to say AAE is a different language, but I’m not about to get into a debate about the definition of a language versus the definition of dialect. Anyway, what the Oakland school board planned to do, and what I assume is happening here, is to teach the kids some linguistic background to AAE, then explain how it relates to standard English. The documentary “Do You Speak American?” has a great scene of just such a program, with the kids playing a Jeopardy-type game, where they pick out the non-standard grammar and replace it with standard grammar.

Characterizing AAE as “lazy” or deficient in some way smacks of racism. Not to say people who say this are racists, but I do beleive that these characterizations come from a substratum of racism, if that make sense. Just think of what is deemed standard (ergo, “correct”) English. I’ll give you a hint: it’s what the rich, white men speak.

Anyway, here’s something Walt Wolfram, a leading scholar on AAE, had to say about the Oakland Ebonics scandal that I think will be helpful to everyone here:

http://www.cal.org/ebonics/wolfram.html

Hope this was helpful!

158

Oh, and here’s the webisite I got the Wolfram article off of:
http://www.cal.org/ebonics/
That has more articles and such that might also be helpful.

159

Here is my take on it. I am certainly not a linguist, though I’ve studied quite a lot of Black culture and history. I would like to frame the debate in terms of the psychological issues involved rather than debating the legitimacy of Ebonics as a dialect (though the evidence I’ve seen lends great weight to it as one).

My wife and I are both college educated professionals. Her ex, the father of my two oldest sons, is a high school dropout, as is his new wife.
Now, we constantly impress upon them that college is something that they should strive for- but we have to walk a fine line so as to not put down the other set of parents’ lack of education. Even if we don’t mean to, pushing for college too forcefully will make them shut down so as not to be ‘disloyal’ to that side of their family. So we stress the positives, and very seldom mention the negative effects of an incomplete education.

I imagine that it’s the same with AAVE. It’s one thing for teachers to stress the importance of standard grammar, pronunciation, and enunciation, but the kids have to go home at the end of the day. It’s not a stretch to me that a child will shut out instruction if he sees its net effect as a betrayal of his loved ones. it’s not about cool- it’s about being able to go home and not be contemptuous of your parents, siblings, and peers. You don’t want to be pushed outside of the group, so you maintain non-adaptive habits.

That’s why the art of code-switching is the most important thing teachers can teach these kids- but they can’t do that if they only understand one side of the code. Also bear in mind that this is not simply true for AAVE- we have worked hard on (and have mostly succeeded with) teaching our own children that they can be ‘country’ around their family and peers, but that it’s not appropriate for the classroom or work.

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But why are you disagreeing with me when that was the point with which I disagreed with Magiver?

Off the top of my head, I don’t have any “mediocre” people I would eliminate–but I haven’t been in high scool in a long time and I was taught the DWEM curriculum. I guess Attucks would be a good example of what I mean (in history, not literature): here is a dockworker who joins a mob to go intimidate British troops, gets shot for his trouble, and is now lionized as a champion of freedom–with a whole lot of imaginary and conflicting biography added to the tale and only part of his ethnic heritage recognized.
In terms of literature, we already sleight any number of excellent writers simply because we do not have enough room in a year to squeeze them all in. I would not want to see some obscure author from 1880 of whom no one has previously heard wedged into a curriculum, eliminating some good white writer.
On the other hand, I would have no problem with adding W.E.B. DuBois to a curriculum that currently highlights J.S. Mill, (and I would bet that DuBois does not get enough exposure, today), but I would not want to see him replace Mill, although he could probably replace Thomas Carlyle for American readers without any problem.