Dare To Ask Talk And News About Our Differences
Ebonics and American English have a co-shared beginning. If Ebonics is grounded in the mentality of the black slave, then American English is surely no less grounded in the mentality of the white enslaver, the genocidal exterminator, the lyncher and the dispossessing thief. If Ebonics is to be discarded because of its presumed characterizing mentality, only the most stupid of convertees would then embrace American English, given its characterizing mentality. One could give this as the reason Ebonics speakers are not enamored of standard English, except that it would be almost as off-base as Richard’s arguments. So let’s get back to reality.
All languages have varieties. These evolve when people are isolated by geosocial barriers forcing linguistic development along different lines. Everyone speaks at least one such variety. In cases of extreme isolation, two varieties can become effectively foreign to each other. Such varieties do not develop to aid communications between the isolated groups. That is what formal instruction in the standard is supposed to accomplish.
Experts have argued that Ebonics, one of the most distinct varieties of American English, presents “systematic interferences” in mastering standard English, and that attempts to provide standard English instruction to Ebonics speakers without taking this interference into account is neither pedagogically sound nor likely to succeed. Approaching Ebonics as just “bad English” is as misguided and counterproductive as approaching Italian as bad Latin. Persisting at ignoring the experts while continuing to badmouth Ebonics smacks of nothing less than a desire, if not a conspiracy, to continue the under-education of blacks.
Ebonics thrives because it is linguistically competent, extremely adaptive, its undergirding socioeconomic conditions are intact, and, most importantly, the system for educating students out of its usage effectively reinforces that usage.