Ebonics Rant
Hooked on Ebonics
(WATCH VIDEO)
Validating Home LanguageAt the end of 1996, the Oakland, Calif. school board inspired nationwide debate with its endorsement of Ebonics as a separate language.
- Dec. 18, when the Oakland, Cal., School Board unanimously passed a resolution declaring Ebonics to be the "genetically-based" language of its African American students, not a dialect of English.
- In the full text of its resolution, printed in the San Francisco Chronicle (Jan. 2, 1997, p. A18), the school board called Ebonics a separate language derived from African linguistic roots, with heavy borrowings from English vocabulary.
- The board declared its intention to instruct “African American students in their primary language [Ebonics] for the combined purposes of maintaining the legitimacy and richness of such language . . . and to facilitate their acquisition and mastery of English language skills.”
- Claiming that “African-American people and their children are from home environments in which a language other than English is dominant,” the board indicated that it would also seek bilingual education funding from the federal government for the teaching of standard English. After a great deal of negative publicity, Oakland backed away from some aspects of its original resolution. Oakland now plans to follow a less controversial path, educating teachers about the language of their students, and teaching students how to translate from Ebonics to standard English.
- Many strongly agree with Oakland’s efforts to recognize and value the language that students bring with them to school, but do not think that the method chosen, teaching them English as if it were a foreign language, is likely to move students from Ebonics to a more mainstream variety of English. Nor do they think that acquiring standard English will guarantee success, either in school or in the world of work.(RACISM)
A language is a dialect with an army and a navy
- The linguist Max Weinreich once said that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. The schoolchildren of Oakland, who are predominantly African American, do not have the kind of power that brings their speech linguistic prestige. The school board tried to do something to change the negative image of black language by calling it Ebonics and asking teachers to learn something about the speech of their students.
- But the American public reacted to the school board’s declaration of linguistic independence as if to an act of secession.
- Black leaders and intellectuals condemned the board’s decision. They denounced black speech as slangy, non-standard, and unworthy of the classroom; they condemned as racist the separatism that would result from any recognition of black English. They warned that Ebonics would give schoolchildren a misplaced sense of pride and that students’ continued use of black English would exclude students from higher education and the corporate boardrooms of the nation.
- The U.S. Department of Education immediately reaffirmed the position it took during the Reagan administration that black English was a dialect of English, not a distinct language eligible for bilingual-education funds. And a delegate to the Virginia House introduced a bill to prohibit Virginia schools from teaching Ebonics.
Is Ebonics a separate language, or is it a dialect of English?
We can say that two people use the same language—or dialects of that language—if they can understand each other’s speech. If they can’t communicate, they are speaking separate languages.
But linguists define languages politically and culturally, as well as by degree of comprehension.
- Most linguists, myself included, think of black English, or African American Vernacular English (AAVE) as a dialect of English.
- Language barriers are erected at social borders as well as national frontiers. When social mobility for speakers of a language is low, dialects abound; when mobility is high, linguistic as well as other distinctions tend to disappear.
Are Ebonics and other dialects of English simply incorrect, sloppy speech?
American schools, particularly in the northern United States, have treated AAVE as a form of language requiring remediation by speech pathologists or special-education teachers. But linguists have known for some time that non-standard dialects, such as AAVE and Hawaiian Creole, to name another example, are
consistent, legitimate varieties of language, with rules, conventions, and exceptions, just like standard English.
- These dialects do not carry the prestige of standard English, but they influence and enrich the standard language, keeping it vibrant and constantly evolving.
- Furthermore, we know that all speakers of a language are able to adapt it to fit changing social circumstances. Given sufficient exposure to new situations, all language users can switch between prestige and non-prestige forms, between formal and informal ones, between intimate and polite ones, without explicit instruction or conscious translation.
- Americans, no matter what dialect they speak, are exposed to standard English through television. As a result, AAVE is not all that different from standard English. It seems then that it takes more than dialectal differences to account for the lack of success in school.
Are foreign-language teaching techniques useful in teaching English-speaking students standard English?
Second-language educators do not rely on translation alone. Instead they offer a rich combination of immersion and explicit teaching:
- students not only study vocabulary and grammar, they converse, role play, read newspapers and magazines, watch television and movies, and most important, interact with fluent users of the language in authentic communication situations.
- Similarly, students who speak nonstandard varieties of English will become fluent in the more mainstream forms of English only if they can first break down social barriers and participate as equals in authentic, mainstream social contexts.
- Simply translating from one language to another is never enough to achieve fluency.
Don’t students need standard English to be successful in school and in the workplace?
Perhaps. But it is also true that discrimination—on account of their language—against people who speak non-standard English usually masks other, more sinister forms of prejudice. Women and members of every ethnic and racial minority have found that mastering the mainstream varieties of English—say, legal language, business English, or technical jargon—by itself will not guarantee them equal treatment. Even if your language is irreproachable, if teachers, employers, or landlords want to discriminate against you, they will find another way to do so.
- Standard English may be necessary, but it is seldom sufficient, for school and workplace success. And if our sports heroes, media celebrities, and public figures are anything to judge by, success is often achieved without standard English. In addition, few of the success stories of first-generation immigrants to this country involve the learning of impeccable standard English.
Is Ebonics only “a black thing?”
Not all African Americans speak Ebonics, and not all Ebonics speakers are African American.
- A significant number of whites, Hispanics, and Asian Americans who live and work closely together speak dialects that can be characterized as black English. As linguists study AAVE, they find that, just like standard English, it is not monolithic, but comes in flavors and varieties.
- In addition, mainstream English has borrowed heavily from the speech of African Americans. So, in many ways, it is easier to conceive of all the dialects of English as variable and continuous, rather than categorical and separate.
Ebonics Timeline
| 1954 | Brown vs. Board of Education results in the holding that segregated educational facilities were “separate and unequal” |
| January 26, 1973 | The term “Ebonics” coined by Robert Williams at “Cognitive and Language Development of the Black Child” Conference. |
| 1974 | Lau vs. Nichols asserts the rights of language minority students, implying that students for whom English is not native define that group. |
| 1979 | In the wake of the “Black English trial” California’s state board of education adopted a policy for SEP, titled “Black Language: Proficiency in Standard English for Speakers of Black Language.” Use of the term “Black Language” in this document opens the door to extreme Afrocentric interpretations of Ebonics which influence Oakland’s future policies and decisions. |
| 1992 | Ernie Smith in consultations with the Oakland school district staunchly advocates Ebonics as something other than English. |
| December 18, 1996 | Oakland, California school board passes a resolution defining Ebonics as the native language of 28,000 African American students within that school district. |
| December 24, 1996 | Secretary Riley of the US Department of Education makes the statement “the Administration’s policy is that Ebonics is a nonstandard form of English and not a foreign language” balking at the proposed bilingual interpretation of Ebonics “a spokesman said Federal Law specifically viewed black English as a form of English, not a separate language eligible for Title VII money.” |
| January 1997 | Linguists gather in Chicago for their annual LSA conference and issue a resolution intended to affirm the linguistic integrity and legitimacy of African slave descendants. Their use of the term Ebonics, however, as a synonym for “Black English” is quite different from that of Oakland, who declared that Ebonics was unrelated to English. The media in reporting the continuing dialogue surrounding this issue were largely unaware of this distinction interminology, leading to more confusion in the ensuing months. |
| January 14, 1997 | Representative Peter King (R-N.Y.) drafted a resolution that said in part: “Wheras “Ebonics” is not a legitimate language: Now, therefore, be it Resolved, that it is the sense of the House of Representatives that no Federal funds should be used to pay for or support any program that is based upont he premise that “Ebonics” is a legitimate language. |
| January 15, 1997 | At a special meeting of the Oakland school board, a revised version of the controversial resolutions was passed. A major change stated that Ebonics is “not merely a dialect of English” a different stance from the original document which had claimed that there was no relationship between English and Ebonics. This is significant in that it more closely aligns the position of Oakland with that issued by linguists at LSA. |
| January 16, 1997 | Texas calls for additional research and information to resolve educational problems confronting African American students. |
| January 23, 1997 | Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa) chairperson of the Senate subcommittee on Labor, Health, Human Services, and Education, convened Ebonics hearings. He opened the hearing recounting his own linguistic heritage as a child of Yiddish speaking Jewish immigrants, alluding to the legacy of linguistic diversity that is “such an integral historic component of American culture." |
| January 23, 1997 | Senator Lauch Faircloth (R-N.C.) speaks next at the Ebonics hearing, decrying the politics of race and their Ebonic surrogates as one of the most “absurd” examples of extreme “political correctness” that he had ever encountered. |
| January 23, 1997 | Representative Maxine Waters (D. Cal.) an African American woman who served as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, responds directly to Senator Faircloth, expressing her opposition to his statement and affirming her understanding of the Oakland school board’s intention to teach standard English, not Ebonics to its students. |
| January 23, 1997 | The hearing shifts to comments from Oakland educators and an Oakland high school senior of considerable academic distinction. |
| January 23, 1997 | The next speakers are an African American minister, a conservative African American radio talk show host both of whom were highly critical of Ebonics |
| January 23, 1997 | Four scholars speak before the Senate, including Michael Casserly, Executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, Orlando Taylor, dean of Graduate studies at Howard University, William Labov, internationally acclaimed leader in the field of sociolinguistics, and Robert L. Williams, professor Emeritus from Washington University in St Louis and the creator of the term Ebonics. |
| January 23, 1997 | The Senate hearing end with Senator Specter stating that he fully expected to convene one or more hearings with other witnesses who had not yet had an opportunity to testify. In the end, no such hearings were convened. |
| March 3, 1997 | California holds politically contentious hearings that sputter as soon as African American Ebonics detractors accuse members of the California legislature of racially motivated political opportunism at the expense of California’s black students. |
There were many examples of racist reactions and political satire which followed the hearings, and Ebonics continues to be a topic under national discussion. However, as media attention began to diminish after the hearings, so too did the political fireworks that had been ignited. To this day, the Senate hearings have not been reconvened, and no new legislation has been passed to significantly address the problems facing African American students in schools today.
"Returning to the language of African American slave descendants, there are two ways to handle revising linguistic classifications for minority students:
One might argue (as I have) that current classifications are too restrictive (Baugh 1998), or one might argue (as Oakland did) that African Americans, by way of their Ebonic linguistic inheritance, already meet existing criteria for LEP. Neither approach has made any real headway because the prevailing political climate is such that most citizens link standard English to intelligence and personal discipline. (pg 52)
Reprinted from: Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice, by John Baugh. (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Additional Resources:
Oakland Resolution Complete text of the 1997 Oakland School Board resolution that sparked the controversy. (CLICK FOR COMPLETE TEXT)
READ THIS ARTICLE
When the headlines appeared this week that the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) had issued a request to hire up to nine linguists
proficient in Ebonics, it appeared it might be yet another cruel joke about the language of African-Americans. After all,
who can forget the onslaught of racist “humor” and the angry vitriolic comments that circulated internationally after the
“Oakland Ebonics controversy” a little over a decade ago.
The DEA may not have known the full ramifications of its decision to label the language of many African-Americans, “Ebonics,” but we bet they know now. The word itself is a controversy. The truth is, very few people would have even realized that the DEA was hiring over two thousand linguistic experts fluent in over one hundred different language varieties had “Ebonics” not been on the list. But what is causing this uproar? What can we learn from this moment? What does this highlight about the relationships between language, race, and power in America? As a linguist and a legal scholar we hope to offer an analysis that will allow us to learn from this moment.
Linguistic Issues
The firestorm due to the DEA’s request to hire experts in “Ebonics” highlights several educational, social, and linguistic ironies, each of which can help us understand issues of language and race in the United States and globally. First, from a linguistic perspective it is upsetting — and quite frankly, frustrating — that after decades of linguistic evidence and research trying to convince the larger public that the language variety of African-Americans (known by linguists as “African-American Language” or “African-American Vernacular English”, AAVE) is systematic and rule-governed, the only people we have managed to convince is the DEA.
As evidenced by the spate of caustic, hateful responses on Internet websites, so many Americans continue to believe that the language variety of African-Americans is nothing but “substandard,” a “bastardization of English,” or “just plain ignorant.” The irony here is, of course, that those who continue to make such comments are only highlighting their own ignorance about language, as these statements cannot be supported by scientific evidence, nor are they given any credence by the Linguistic Society of America. In fact, linguists note that such comments represent mere social judgments based in classist, racist views of black people (even if made by black folks themselves).
In the DEA’s list of languages, it is both interesting and instructive that “Ebonics” falls right in between “Ebo,” a Nigerian language often referred to as Igbo, and “English.” What many do not know is that much of the distinctiveness of the language of African-Americans is due to the language contact situation created by slavery, where African languages (with Igbo being one of them) came into contact with European languages (in this case, English). The language variety developed in a unique manner due to centuries of de jure and de facto segregation and is now the most widely studied variety in the United States.
African-Americans continue to develop the language variety, as it has become an important symbol of ethnic identity, political solidarity, and cultural pride. What the uninformed refer to as a “bastardization of English” is actually not unlike the many varieties of Creole that have grown out of similar language contact situations around the world. In short, “Ebonics” which is is the linguistic legacy of the African slave trade, decades of legal and social segregation, and the denial of formal education to generations of African-Americans. It is, in part, the linguistic result of white supremacist, state-sponsored oppression and neglect.
Legal Issues
The truth is that the language variety spoken by many African-Americans is distinct enough from Standard English to be terribly misinterpreted. It is of particular importance that it is understood to be a language and treated as such in the judicial system. African-Americans are grotesquely overrepresented at every stage in the criminal justice system. And African-Americans are the most likely Americans to be subject to crime of various sorts. The effectiveness of criminal investigations depends upon an ability to interpret evidence. Despite the fact that African American vernacular is often mimicked and is popular on the nation’s airwaves, fluency in this language is not the norm.
And despite the fact that it is a language that is denigrated by being characterized as “broken” or “ignorant,” it is in fact, a language and as such, any given person may or may not be competent in it. Not all African-Americans are fluent in it, and it is not exclusively spoken by African-Americans. Many of its speakers are also fluent in standard English and “switch codes” depending upon context and audience. Like any other language, it is learned and there are varying level of competence among speakers. AAVE remains a primary language in poor and working class African-American communities across the country. If our criminal justice system is to more effectively protect the residents of communities that are most likely to be the victims of crime, then knowledge of the languages spoken by perpetrators, witnesses, and victims is key.
Moreover, in every language community in which investigations of criminal activity are taking place, investigators seek translators. They seek speakers of Korean, Spanish, Russian and Japanese. African-American language is no outlier in this respect. What is different is that ignorance and bigotry have clouded judgment in this instance.
The risks of having DEA and other criminal investigators who are not competent in African-American language might be even greater than in other instances. There is abundant evidence of discriminatory treatment of black suspects in every aspect of the criminal justice system. There is also a great deal of research which reveals widespread unconscious discriminatory bias in U.S. culture. A misunderstanding of words in the law enforcement context is a recipe for disaster in such a context. When there is uncertainty about the content of speech, the presence of racial bias increases the possibility that investigators will presume a meaning to words or phrases that confirm negative stereotypes about Black criminality.
In this instance Ebonics experts are being hired for DEA investigations. But language experts can and do serve an important role in various kinds of legal processes. For example, housing discrimination cases often rely upon the evidence of what John Baugh calls, “linguistic profiling,” or the use of speech markers as a basis of discriminatory treatment. It is essential that we understand how proxies for race, like speech and style, are used to discriminate.
In the 1999
Clifford v. Commonwealth case, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that a witness could testify that a person speaking on the telephone “sounded Black” without violating the rules of evidence. The problem the court faced in it’s opinion was that because there is such little knowledge about black English as a language, the testimony and the courts affirmation of that testimony came across sounding like speaking AAVE was somehow inborn or inherent to black people. It is not. However, courts can and should be attuned to the appropriate assessment of language as a source of evidence and identification.
Educational Issues
There is a serious educational point to be made here and it is perhaps the most tragic irony highlighted by the DEA’s decision to hire experts in “Ebonics.” For decades, linguists and educators, including their leading national organizations, have maintained the position that the language of African-Americans (as well as “Chicano English,” “Puerto Rican English,” varieties of Spanish and indigenous varieties), can be a powerful and effective tool be used in classrooms in order teach students how to transition between “African-American language” and “standard English.” Globally, we have research that supports this fact: Wherever you have students who speak marginalized language varieties that are different from the “standard,” it is actually beneficial to use the language of the students as a resource to learn the “standard.”
So, the tragic irony is that while schools and educational policy-makers continue to deny the legitimacy of African-American language, the DEA has no problem doing so. Rather than waiting until youth turn to criminal activity as a way out of poverty, we first need to recognize the pedagogical value of African-American language in schools as a way to stop America’s “school-to-prison” pipeline before it begins. In short, the legitimacy of African-American language is needed from the educational arm of the federal government, not the enforcement arm.
For over three decades educators and linguists have diligently been making this point in the classroom and in the courts. In 1979 the case of
Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children et al. v. Ann Arbor School District was decided in a federal district court in Michigan. The suit was brought on behalf of African-American students who suffered academically because the Ann Arbor school system did not take the fact that they were AAVE speakers into account as a matter to be addressed in instruction. The court ruled on behalf of the students in that case, and yet 31 years later we have not instituted a means of addressing the role of language in sustaining educational inequality and nurturing this society’s opportunity gap.
Finally, the DEA’s Ebonics can of worms exposes the ugly underbelly of anti-Black racism in the United States (just check the long list of Internet comments, and those that will surely follow this article). Rather than spouting off ugly comments that expose our ignorance, readers should take the time to inform themselves. University libraries are filled with linguistic studies of the language of African-Americans that point out that the variety is systematic and rule-governed like all language varieties. In inserting “Ebonics” in its list of languages, the DEA has infuriated many Americans because the mere inclusion of the variety by a governmental body legitimizes it to some extent (despite the negative and unhelpful link to the criminalization of African-Americans). We should ask ourselves: Why am I so infuriated by the legitimization of the language of African-Americans? Are my feelings based in scientific analysis or social prejudice? African-Americans who immediately decry the the existence or recognition of Ebonics must ask themselves if they are motivated by shame or legitimate concerns.
If the response to this moment devolves into ridicule and shame, we lose an important opportunity to improve a deeply flawed and unequal system. Instead of making this about bigoted and classist jokes about “drug dealers,” let’s use it as an opportunity to learn more about the people who live in this society, and do a better job of protecting them.
As part of this opportunity, we must recognize that, since all language varieties, including “Ebonics,” Igbo and English, are deemed equal by linguists (folks who devote their lives to studying language), it is only our prejudice and the lack of political will that prevents us from valuing and legitimizing a given language. Standard English is not the standard because it is superior, but because it was and is the language of the powerful. Sharing power in a multi-ethnic democracy requires both making standard English accessible to all of the nation’s children, and valuing all of the nation’s languages. After all, how we feel about a particular language is a strong indicator of how we feel about its speakers. Check yourself.
