I heard a radio talk show guy talking about an event that was held in Houston. Supposedly a spelling bee conducted for only African American kids. No other kids need apply.
I googled it a bit and seems that maybe it did happen. Not much information to be found though.
Was this a bad joke?
this may be OT, but it is a classic . The original website seems down but it has been widely quoted.
“Asian Wins First Ebonics Competiton”
[QUOTE=Marni Malarkey]
The Oakland Board of Education held the first of what they hope will be many all-school Ebonics Competitions this past weekend, and the winner, Huong Lee Fong, 13, couldn’t be happier.
The Grade Eleven student moved to the United States from Wuhan, China with his parents two years ago, skipping three grades and becoming fluent in English after only seven months. He tackled Ebonics next, along with calculus, computer science, algebra, trigonometry and economics. At his school, Malcolm X Memorial High, he is at the very top of his class in each subject and in the top two of his class in French, History, Geography, German, Spanish and Physical Education, Shop and Drivers Ed. Fong takes home a prize of $100, a Black History Month Sweatshirt, a complete autographed set of the works of Eldridge Cleaver and a promised dinner with Louis Farrakhan sometime in the next month. Malcolm X Memorial High principal, Leroy Washingon Junior, denied reports he was disappointed that the winner of the competition, designed to increase African-American pride and self-respect, was won by an Asian student. “Not at all, not at all,” he chuckled. "Why, little Huong Lee has worked hard. And anyway, I’m just glad he isn’t a Jewish kid. "
[/QUOTE]
The most impressive thing is that kid took calculus before passing algebra and trigonometry.
Is this serious? CITE!
I really thought it was a bad joke… so I was going to say “a bad joke like this one?”:
“Ask… A…X! Ask!”
If there’s any doubt, I think the line “I’m just glad he isn’t a Jewish kid” should give it away. Unless my joke-o-meter needs calibration, that is.
it originates from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_Newz , a satirical website. Now it seems shut down. It used to be a one man operation vying with TheOnion in quality of satire.
To be clear, the event in the OP is real. It happened May 14. Here’s the site for the outfit that put it on.
Okay, so there was a spelling bee for African-American children. Does that really mean that the spelling bee was for Ebonics?
No, a real event is being conflated with an old satirical story.
Yes, and to be clear I was responding to digs’s post, which I assume was responding to code_grey’s post, not the OP.
I like the way they claim it’ll help out African Americans who don’t have access to quality education.
Fair enough, but all you really need for spelling is a dictionary and a lot of time. And most libraries have dictionaries you can check out for free
ethnic background of the people who thought up this show is not hard to guess. So why read too much into it. It sure beats having a million poor spellers march.
I don’t understand the reasoning. Are they saying that the african-american kids can’t compete with other kids so we have to start our own? Our schools are so bad we can’t compete or what?
So many people interpret these things as making some controversial social statement.
Really it’s as simple as this: Some individual or group decides it would be a positive thing if more black children competed in spelling bees. Now, they could simply promote the idea of black children competing in normal mixed events; and I’m sure that plenty do this.
But in other instances those people may feel an exclusively black competition would be more focused on their goal. And crucially, they’d be assured a black winner, who would be a positive symbol for other children. So they organize such an event.
That’s it. No-one is saying segregation, blacks are teh dumb or we need a shizzle-speak competition.
However, I do not think that was the OPs point. Having a black-only spelling bee seems like a bad joke because it sounds as inappropriate in today’s society as having a white-only basketball tournament or an asian-only street race.
A white-only basketball tournament is inappropriate because white people aren’t a widely-accepted underprivileged minority (even though they are a minority of accomplished basketball players). The rules of appropriate racial or ethnic limited organizations are simply different for privileged classes and underprivileged ones.
I had also heard the same joke that Code_Grey wrote about upthread. I was wondering if it was a re-hash of that story.
Please don’t try to read my mind and say that I had some other motive in mind.
Similar to the African-American spelling bees, there is a series of such competitions for Indian-American children, along with a math bee, geography bee and a science bee (and even one specializing in neuroscience!). According to Slate.com, kids from the North-South Foundation spelling bees were eleven percent of the competitors in last year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee.
Right there is where I have a problem. Why does anyone think in terms of race like this? Can you think of any positives to: I think it would be a positive if more white children _____________? Anything that wouldn’t apply equally to other races?
Then why limit the spelling bee to blacks?
nation-wide, not national. there has to be a more open acceptance criterion to make it a national meet.