EBONICS AND ENGLISH: WHAT HAS CHANGED?
Years ago, I wrote a piece expressing my opinion about the proposal in Oakland to consider Ebonics a separate dialect from English. I tried to use a little humor while expressing my serious and vehement opposition to the idea. Later I posted the piece on my website and forgot about it, until today, when I watched on television a show about how Black people speak English in America. It was well done and it developed in me a greater understanding of and sympathy for Black people’s slide toward slang, “hip” phrasing, and tonal inflections. The documentary included stories about the Gullah dialect and its connections to the Bahamas as well as segments on Ebonics and street jive, etc.
It offered theories about how and why such distinctive speech patterns emerged, including what happened after the Great Migration when millions of Southern blacks moved to crowded cities like Chicago in the north. The program was informative and persuasive in its argument that Black people aren’t just being ignorant or illiterate talking the way they do; rather they are speaking a version of English with which they are most comfortable, culturally speaking, derived from home, street, and community. This new style of speech was a natural development that needed to be respected and understood: that was one of the program’s themes. However, the approach still has several weaknesses, in my opinion.
First, there are millions of Black people who don’t speak that kind of street slang, jive, rap, etc. at all. Black churches on Sunday morning are not a haven for that kind of speech. Second, Black students are quite capable of learning formal English in school regardless of how their families talk at home. There are thousands of children of all colors who start school with all kinds of ungrammatical bad habits. As I pointed out in my essay on “Ebonics and English”, mistakes made by children while learning English should not be considered a linguistic evolution nor qualify the kids as speakers of a new dialect.
There are children in elementary and middle school who have picked up a boatload of adult obscenities; some kids use four-letter words routinely and nonchalantly; playgrounds are plagued with an epidemic of the “f” word. Presumably, most of these children have not yet been taught that such language is not appropriate for school or have chosen to ignore such academic and moral guidance. In education, the idea is not to validate grammatical errors, vulgar language, hostility to learning, or any bad habits of speech picked up on the streets. A parallel can be drawn to children whose imaginations lead them to believe in fantasy and mythic creatures.
In addition, many kids come to school with a head full of superstitious beliefs; it’s not the purpose of the science class to say “okay” to their false notions but to teach students the fundamentals of the scientific method and discovery through observation, experiment, objective criteria, and the like. Language Arts teachers need to educate students to appreciate the beauty of language; Social Studies teachers should help students develop respect for our democratic institutions as well as our society’s moral and ethical values.
As a former teacher, I would say that lazy students (of any race) usually try to get away with a minimum of effort; the conscientious classroom teacher should help them realize that some considerable effort is required on their part for them to become educated, well-rounded, and productive members of society. Students should understand what it means to become open-minded, compassionate, trustworthy, and responsible individuals. Over time, there should be growth and change in the behavior of even the most mischievous students as they learn to behave in a purposeful and self-disciplined manner.
Ideally, students should want to become well-educated; at a minimum, as adults they should be able to read and discuss ideas across a broad range of topics. They should look forward to voting and participating in the political discourse of the country; they should welcome a chance to learn how to bring about personal and social change by leveraging their education. They should consider an ambitious yet realistic career path; they should develop ethical values for how they wish to live their lives. This is true for all students, of course, not just Black children. A good school with good teachers should set high moral and ethical standards.
The degree to which a few educators defend Black speech isn’t all that helpful; it’s “dumbing down” to students by lowering time-honored academic standards and sacrificing reasonable expectations regarding behavior and discipline. It’s reminiscent of an older form of bias going back to the days when it was argued Black people were ignorant and slow and could not learn as fast or as well as white kids, if at all. What’s the difference between contemporary excuse-making and old-fashioned racism?
One can’t just take “whatever is happening” and anoint it as well-intended and blessed. Where does the scholastic foundation-building fit into this picture? Culturally, acquiescence to street speech, even if well-intentioned, is only half the picture. Along with distinctive patterns of speech came an explosion of drug use, drug-trafficking, and criminal behavior; are we think of all that as merely another unique cultural form?
Now we hear “I’ll cap his ass” instead of “I’ll kill him.” Are we to condone the new slang lyrics in rap and hip-hop without examining the substance of what is being expressed? Are we to adopt the path of least resistance at the expense of sacrificing our deepest moral values? Is validating this colorful linguistic divergence more important than teaching students it is immoral to kill? The question isn’t whether Black people sometimes speak a vernacular in their own special way; the question is whether such speech is a positive development or merely a reflection of the poverty and despair in the communities from which it emanated?
Accepting “street speech” in the classroom may sound like a progressive step but in reality it is a step in the wrong direction. It undermines the purpose of education and saps the strength of the teacher to make a difference in the lives of his or her students. When “street culture” teaches children to disrespect teachers, encourages vulgar language and defies social convention, it is not a culture worthy of the name. Think of the horrifying lyrics in certain rap songs, so extreme that “gangsta rap” has become its own genre.
Aggressive lyrics based on gang violence have become commonplace. Lest one argue that it’s “only” words, a recent search of the phrase “murdered hip hop musicians” brought up 42 names, including stars whose verbal sparring through their lyrics may have contributed to their early deaths (Tupac Shakur died in 1996 and The Notorious B.I.G. the following year). Is encouraging an obsession with drugs, booze, money, abusing women, and gun violence a better philosophy than the American call to respect “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?
Here we see a fundamental American value which gangsta rap threatens to replace. Pretending that a new dialect has formed independently of these types of dangerous social and cultural phenomena, including gangs, drugs, and violence, is to engage in an act of willful blindness. That so-called “unique” urban speech pattern comes with a unique life-style: singing and speaking in a way that encourages disrespect for social authority, for school, for women. Is that a step forward or a step backward? I submit it is a giant step backwards.
It is undoing years and years of social progress achieved by earlier generations, often involving great sacrifice. What Black communities need are not more clever ways of bantering English; what they need are genuine opportunities for housing, education, and good-paying jobs. They need respect for their history, culture, and contributions, not a glamorized adulation of a rapping teenager who is not old enough to be a spokesman for anybody and who often lacks the maturity to understand the bigger picture.
Spending a lot of time explaining why some Black people have a distinctive speech pattern may sound intellectually intriguing but it misses the whole point. Black people are Americans; they deserve the same rights as everyone else along with opportunities to exercise those rights. Making of them a linguistic subset–a divergent group of English speakers–does not help solve any of the basic underlying problems and crises our society constantly faces when it comes to class and racial inequality. While efforts are being made to give Ebonics an independent existence, the much longer history of Black achievement is being blunted, stymied, and sabotaged.
Yes, the television program was informative and persuasive. It helped deepen my understanding of how certain linguistic idiosyncrasies came about in the first place from a historical and cultural perspective. In the end, however, I remain unconvinced. I’m not buying into the viewpoint that Black people speak English so differently that it’s another language or dialect. No it isn’t! The most I will concede is this: If I had the time, I might rewrite my original piece on “Ebonics and English.” I can see now that I may have been too rude in my approach while trying to infuse the piece with humor. The reader can decide for himself whether the attempt at humor was worthy or misguided.
More importantly, however, the reader can decide if the serious points I raised are justified and worthy of further discussion. I contended then, as I do now, that Ebonics is not a genuine dialect nor should it be considered a foreign language. I haven’t changed my point of view.
The English language has an incredibly long history of literature–of poetry, plays, short stories, and novels; it also gave life to historical documents expressing a deep democratic political philosophy. Many of Shakespeare’s best plays retain their full vitality after four hundred years! Jefferson’s eloquent and inspiring words in the Declaration of Independence have been translated into many languages around the world.
That’s the other side of the coin; it’s not just a question of whether we should be tolerant toward street slang but what we are willing to give up. We must not forget that the wider validation of Black street speech will, in time, begin to usurp the English language and its historical influence established long before the first rap song ever existed.
I, for one, am not willing to give up the poetic beauty and persuasive power of the English language without a fight!
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