Richard-M

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  • in reply to: Ebonics: An obstacle to black success? #22752

    Richard-M
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    Of course language does not define the limits of thought; after all, which came first, the brain or the word for the brain? But you yourself say that “language can provide a framework for thought,” and Ebonics is widely acknowledged to have been developed in slavery. Slavery is then the framework for the language, and we have to consider the conditions of slave life to appreciate this. The slave wanted/needed freedom above all else.If total freedom was not possible they took what they could get. Like walking at a ridiculously slow pace to the fields, for example. This at least gave them them the freedom to assert their individuality, to protest, and to think. Avoidance of responsibility would, in the vast majority of slaves, be paramount. Responsibility consumes more personal time, more personal thought, and if you screw up, more personal beatings, and the master could kill you with virtual impunity. So, it was in the slave’s best interest to appear stupid, not only to save their personal time, but their masters egos, which, if deflated, was generally lethal. After all, who would assign responsibility to an idiot? In order to appear stupid, they had to sound stupid. The masters ears were everywhere. And so stupidity, if only the appearance, is fundamental to the structure of ebonics. But the two are one and the same, and a strategy that helps one to survive in one context (slavery) is patholological in another (freedom). And consider the fact that in ebonics the possessive ‘s’ is nonexistent (sympathesisers say dropped). This leaves one unable to verbally render the distinction between ‘Bakun house’, ‘pancake house’, ‘Common House’,etc. While this may have been a life-saving strategy during slavery, it is dysfunctunal beyond the point of pathology today. You see, I’ve thought about this a lot. I cannot accept the idea that black people are inferior, so I’ve had to come up with a theory that explains the absolutely abominable behavior of so many black people that I see every single f-ck-ng day. Aside from inherent inferiority and my theory, how else are the lousy test scores of african-americans to be satisfactorily explained? Please respond, man, you’re good. Richard

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    Name : Richard-M, Gender : M, City : Kalamazoo, State : MI, Country : United States, 
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