District to 'affirm' Ebonics

[dolanp]

Kindergarten lesson

Check out Jack. Check out Jack rollin' a joint. Toke Jack toke.

 

[odysseus]

In essence, those who have actually read the work of black-vernacular researchers and are teaching blacks know that the discussion of Ebonics should not be to "elevate" Ebonics into Foreign language status alongside latin and german, but rather to give it validity as _A_ langauge. The last thing that a black kid needs to hear is, "You don't know how to talk". The truth is, he does - but not necessarily STANDARD ENGLISH.

I have tried, but just cannot agree to this line of thinking. While it is an accepted mode of speech for a culture is fine, but it's place is not in the halls of academics for English grammer. Do you know how many ESL students who actually speak another language have had to work hard under the grading pressures of English literature classes to elevate their skills to a standard? What did they get out of it? An education and a better developed skill in standard English. I see no advantage to elevating Ebonics as a valid language in academics (outside of an urban studies course or socialogical study) for the teaching of English. It actually does a disservice, AND gives special status unfairly.

This brings me to quote another point you made...

The alternative is to broadly invalidate nearly 12% of US population as mute and dumb. How willing do you think a student, esp a high school student who sees people beaten and killed on a regular basis, would be to learn from any teacher then?

There is no invalidation of Ebonics by not recognizing it as a "valid language". How is it that you see it is? It exists, as do other examples of culturally modified English, in many other venues. Your characterization of the absense of validating it as leaving it to label people "mute and dumb" is where the problem also exists: that we must tailor our academics because it will victimize those who are not on par. How about actually giving them another after hours class to aid them? How about their parents? Where can we draw the line and say you do this minimum, or seek help to get yourself there? Or is it you feel being a co-dependent to continued social victimization is the right course?

 

[dasmi]

"English, mother----er! Do you speak it?"

Love that line.

 

[308win]

Ebonics Conjugation of the Verb Be: I be; you be; we be.

This country needs legislation establishing English as the national language - now! :banghead:

 

[Marshall]

While doing a search, trying to research the term Ebonics, I found a few examples. I thought I would post them for education purposes.


Seldom...My cousin gave me two tickets to the Knicks game, so I seldom.

Hotel...I gave my girlfriend crabs, and the hotel everybody.

Foreclose...If I pay alimony this month I'll have no money foreclose.

Income...I jus' got in bed wit de hoe, and income my wife.

Honor...At the rape trial, the judge axed my bro' who be honor first?

Penis...I went to a doctor and he gave a cup and said penis.

Israel...Alonso tried to sell me a Rolex; I said man, that looks fake; he say, no, Israel.

 

[odysseus]

Not very Highroad there...

While doing a search, trying to research the term Ebonics, I found a few examples. I thought I would post them for education purposes.


Seldom...My cousin gave me two tickets to the Knicks game, so I seldom.

Hotel...I gave my girlfriend crabs, and the hotel everybody.

Foreclose...If I pay alimony this month I'll have no money foreclose.

Income...I jus' got in bed wit de hoe, and income my wife.

Honor...At the rape trial, the judge axed my bro' who be honor first?

Penis...I went to a doctor and he gave a cup and said penis.

Israel...Alonso tried to sell me a Rolex; I said man, that looks fake; he say, no, Israel.

 

[1 old 0311]

Bill Cosby addressed this recently. He said " black children must learn ENGLISH. THEY NEVER WILL BE ABLE TO GET JOBS OUTSIDE THE BLACK COMMUNITY IF THEY CAN'T COMMUNICATE".

Kevin

 

[Marshall]

Oh lighten up, they're jokes obviously.

Anyway, this whole thing is a slap in the face to blacks, in my opinion. It basically says you're not smart enough to learn real English so we won't teach it to you. It's obscene. It doesn't prepare them properly for a future of competing in a competitive job market and puts them at a disadvantage in life. It's ludicrous. But who am I to argue for betterment for the students being taught this, I'm just a dumb prejudice white boy.

 

[Kim]

Ebonics will get you about as far as white trash trailer talk. Now as a white person or a person of no color to be PC. If anyone told poor white persons their children should be encouraged to speak dumb as it its the language of their culture( ie poor, white, southern,) do you believe they would embrace that concept. I think they might just jump on you like a mad cat in a bag just let out by grandma.

 

[Sindawe]

Check out Jack. Check out Jack rollin' a joint. Toke Jack toke.

You're about 40 years too late for that. My 1st grade reader (Dick & Jane's Fun with our friends IIRC) had a nice long poem about how much Jane loved speed, how she could go forever and never get tired of the sensations that speed would bring on. Yes, the author was referring to going fast on a bicycle, but even at that young age I could spot the double meanings of words and knew about the effects of methamphetaimes. Poor Ms. Reinsburger never could figure out what I found so funny in Dick & Jane.

He said " black children must learn ENGLISH. THEY NEVER WILL BE ABLE TO GET JOBS OUTSIDE THE BLACK COMMUNITY IF THEY CAN'T COMMUNICATE".

Quite true. When I worked in biotech, I vetoed several job seekers due to their inability to speak proper english, despite having B.A and B.S degrees in Biology or Chemistry.

 

[peacefuljeffrey]

I can't wait til the day when street, courthouse, and other signs have to be rendered in Ebonics alongside English and Spanish.

That's when we will really be able to laugh at our country and say that it truly has become a pathetic shadow of what it ever was.

Many many morons seem to be hell-bent on making that a reality.

-Jeffrey

 

[4v50 Gary]

Those kids may have esteem but they'll have plenty o' problems in college and when they try to enter the job force. Then they'll really develop self-esteem problems. Furthermore, I would not want any child whether they are black, white, yellow, brown or red or name-your-color to be given a second class education. If there's ever a reason for going back to desegregation, this is it. For those who want normal school, no ebonics will be taught or used. For those who want 2nd class school, ebonics will be the predominant "tongue."

 

[Nightfall]

So the strategy here is to not only accept a failure to speak a language correctly, but to standardize this failure as legitimate. This is going to help students how?

"Okay class, enough of you got 2+2 wrong so that the NEW answer is 5."

 

[stevelyn]

For many of these students, Ebonics is their language.....................

And that's exactly why they'll go nowhere in life if they do not learn to communicate effectively. :banghead:

 

[Rebar]

Well, they're in a bind.

As Blacks climb up the economic ladder, they are less and less likely to vote democratic. Black leaders, having sold their soul to the Democrats, need to keep those votes rolling in. Thus this plan by those same black leaders to keep their people ignorant and poor.

It's a form of sharecropping, except the master-blacks harvest the poor-blacks votes, and keep the ground "fertilized" with ignorance, racial hate, and socialist rhetoric.

 

[Marshall]

So black leaders are basically in the slavery business. Interesting viewpoint.

 

[Kim]

I agree Thomas Sowells book "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" is an excellent book. Ebonics has absolutely nothing to do with Africian language. The blacks in this country are centuries removed from Africa. If you believe the prophets of black racism keep on believing that black children are speaking some "language". Surely some here have visited a place like Barbadoes. Heck the Blacks there speak perfect English with a British accent. Why aren't they speaking some mixture that sounds like Ebonics. Ebonics is poor, white southern talk that got moved to the liberal plantation of Northern segregated big cities. Only difference is the south has tried to teach all the children of all colors how to speak properly. The liberal cities have enslaved them again by patting them on the head and saying 'Oh how cute, Darling just listen to this -----Oh we must preserve this primitive people and their language"

 

[beerslurpy]

Bill Cosby addressed this recently. He said " black children must learn ENGLISH. THEY NEVER WILL BE ABLE TO GET JOBS OUTSIDE THE BLACK COMMUNITY IF THEY CAN'T COMMUNICATE".

Word. Black people need to start listening to blacks like Bill Cosby and Jesse Lee Peterson. Unless they enjoy lives of government dependency and being beholden to the likes of Jesse Jackson.

 

[Standing Wolf]

The last time I was looking for a copywriter, several of the cover letters and résumés went directly into the other pile because they hadn't been written in standard American English.

 

[griz]

Welcome to THR Silverlance. Here are some comments and questions about the points you raised:

First, how can you say Ebonics should be recognized as a language but deny that it “is” a language?

Next, you say you agree with the doctors that Ebonics should be treated as a language because, among other things, it is Subject-Object-Verb. Yet the example you give uses SubjectVerbObject just like real English. Why is that? You also say it has something to do with “re-appropriation” and/or “taking back their ethnic identity”. Would you please explain what that means? I don’t get it at all.


You ask about your example, “Can we do that using Standard English?" I would say yes, why not?

And finally, you say that the only choices for a high school student are to be declared mute and dumb, or be taught English with Ebonics. I would propose teaching them English in the ten years you have already had them in school. I think that would be the most beneficial thing for the students. If the school system has failed to teach them English in that time, I don’t think you will accomplish that small miracle in a couple years using Ebonics.

 

[R.H. Lee]

The purpose is to keep them down, keep them second class citizens, perpetuate dependency that their statist masters need to remain in power. That's all.

 

[peacefuljeffrey]

This all just makes me think of a line from "Airplane!":

"Laid 'em down and smack-'em, yack-'em!"

(Although that was not the same language: that was Jive.)

-Jeffrey

 

[Art Eatman]

I was raised in Austin, Texas. As a kid, I never heard any black person speak anything remotely resembling Ebonics.

I went into the Army in 1954. In the second eight weeks of basic training at Fort Bliss (El Paso) we got a bunch of guys in from New York and New Jersey; many of them were black. I never heard anything remotely resembling Ebonics.

I've known rural blacks and city blacks in the Deep South; not just "way back when" but today as well. I've never heard anything remotely resembling Ebonics.

It seems to me that Ebonics is a very recent development. No historical track record to amount to a hill of beans. Certainly no record outside of a very limited area.

Sorry, but given the handicap for any sort of upwardly-mobile future for those who (apparently) primarily think and speak Ebonics, I can't help but see it as a sham and a scam.

Art

 

[seansean]

silverlance, I can't say this strongly enough. EBONICS IS NOT A LANGUAGE. Ebonics is slang that's gotten too big for it's britches. Teaching black children ebonics in school is incredibly insulting, and a slap in the face to all african-americans(I'm one). How can anyone defend this?????? There is no credible rationale for this at all, no matter how you try to spin it. I know my history, and it doesn't matter how long it took for us to recover from slavery, or any other excuse you or anyone else cares to make. Ebonics is not spoken in the boardroom, in a doctor's office, or anywhere else outside the hood. This is a real shame, and it frankly makes me sick that anyone would try to justify this nonsense in any way, shape, or form.
p.s.
I just went to the website for the san bernardino school district, they have a press release up, stating that ebonics will NOT be a part of their curriculum
http://www.sbcusd.k12.ca.us/new/19/uploads/NR04-0506.pdf

 

[lbmii]

Silver Lance,

Thank you for your thoughtful post. The black slang is indeed influenced by African languages. Often the influence is in subtle ways. I understand that some of the spoken distortions of English words often are a blend between an English word and an African word of the same meaning. I understand that some of the distortions to the vowels are African language influenced.

I find of interest the word order of Black slang verses proper English. I have found that when I read a lot of German or French writings that have been translated with little to no rearrangement of the sentences into typical English form, that my own sentence structures will tend to be more German or French in style.

Could you give some sentence examples of Black slang word order (Subject-Object-Verb) verses Standard English word order (Subject-Verb-Object)?