On Wednesday, December 18, 1996 the Oakland, California School Board announced a decision to officially acknowledge Ebonics, or Black English, as a distinct language. And the shit hit the fan!
The school board announcement was hardly a revolutionary move--the basic concept being to acknowledge that most of the 28,000 Black youth in the Oakland schools speak Black English and to encourage teaching strategies and programs based on respecting the language of the students. The purpose of the Oakland School District was to try to deal with a situation where two-thirds of the Black students are kept back and 71 percent are in special education classes by implementing an enlightened policy of teaching Standard English and other subjects.
But in America 1996/97 this modest proposal became the occasion for tirades of ignorance and racism in the media, high-handed government denunciations of the language of Black people, and the denial of public funds for the education of Black students.
Richard W. Riley, Secretary of Education for the Clinton administration, denounced the Oakland plan, saying "The Administration's policy is that Ebonics is a nonstandard form of English and not a foreign language.... Elevating black English to the status of a language is not the way to raise the standards of achievement in our schools and for our students." This echoed a ruling by the Reagan administration in 1981, calling Black English "a form of English and not a separate and distinct language."
The Clinton administration also announced that no federal funds would be available for bilingual education programs based on the Oakland decision. While the Oakland board did not ask for federal funds, the recognition of Ebonics as a distinct language could qualify them for bilingual education funds. And this "pre-emptive strike" by the federal government--just in case the Oakland School Board asked for such funds in the future--was another profound illustration of how the resources of this society are monopolized and denied to the oppressed.
The Oakland school board decision also called attention to the reality of the deep oppression of Black people--especially the situation of the inner cities. This has also manifested in language. According to an article in the New York Times, January 5, 1994, Black English "has steadily diverged from standard English and become more widespread in poor, urban neighborhoods." In part this illustrates the continued deep segregation of the Black masses--the poverty, discrimination and lack of funds for education. In part it is a form of resistance among the Black youth--a way of using language as a form of resistance to the dominant society.
And why not? Euro-American English, after all, is not the dominant language in this country (not to mention international finance and the Internet) because it is such a fine language. Its status as a language comes from the fact that the British Empire and then U.S. imperialism have been dominant world powers in the last two centuries.
Clearly Black children have the right to learn Standard English--it is in many ways a practical necessity. Literacy in Euro-American English can be an important tool for the masses in changing the world. But unless Black English is treated as an equal language and teachers are trained to respect the language, history and culture of Black people, the learning process can only be an oppressive one. And the whole furor following the Oakland decision illustrates once again that this social system is incapable of dealing with Black people on an equal basis.
Black political figures such as Jesse Jackson and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume were quick to jump out in opposition to the Oakland plan. One could say that their class got their tongue. As we go to press, Jackson was attempting to mend fences with the Oakland school board. But his initial comments on NBC Meet the Press--"I understand the attempt to reach out to these children, but this is an unacceptable surrender, borderlining on disgrace.... It's teaching down to our children"--revealed a bourgeois outlook that the oppressed must prove their worth by learning Standard English. Jackson's logic seemed to be that if speaking the "President's English" is the only path to success in this society, then anything which encourages the oppressed youth to have pride in their language is negative. But why should the oppressed accept the terms of this unjust system and surrender their language?
Jackson also took advantage of the fact that many people do not understand that Black English is a distinct language to create public opinion in the Black community against the Oakland plan. He acted as though the decision to recognize Black English as a language was a slam on the intellectual ability of Black people. This was particularly hypocritical of Jackson who always goes to the well of Black English in his public speaking.
But Jackson was in such a hurry to push his program--based on the myth that Black people can achieve equality within the capitalist/imperialist system--that he found himself at odds with many educators and intellectuals who have been waging a struggle for the recognition of Black English.
"No other form of speech in the history of the English language has been so deplored, debated and defended. Its stigma is ironic: Black English itself was the product of one of the most infamous episodes in history of our civilization, the slave trade."
McCrum, Cran & McNeil,
The Story of English
In opposition to the dominant views in the media which treated the whole idea of Black English with disrespect and contempt, voices emerged to shed light on the reality of the history and culture of African-American language.
Jamaican-born linguist John Rickford of Stanford University appeared on National Public Radio to argue that Black English is a distinct, complex, rule-ordered variation of English, with a coherent grammar linked to African roots. Unlike Brooklyn-ese, valley talk, da Mayor's Chicago white southside talk, or computer-ese, Black English has "deep and profound grammatical differences with standard English." Black English is not just slang: it is not a misuse of English or jargon.
Whether it is called African-American English (AAE), Ebonics, Black/African-American Language, "the language of soul" as author of Manchild in the Promised Land Claude Brown called it, or simply Black Talk, as poet Nikki Giovanni put it, the language of African-American people is distinct and real.
It is a language born in the horrors of the Middle Passage from Africa and developed through slavery, Jim Crow segregation, and the migration of Black people from the rural, plantation South to the cities of the South and North. It has been enriched through the music of blues, jazz, and hip hop. It has deep roots in African language and a spirit of resistance to the dominant culture which continually reinvigorates and transforms the language. Whether one considers Black English a language or a dialect--a distinction that is largely political--its integrity cannot be denied. It has been spoken by 80 to 90 percent percent of Black people at one time in their lives.
In her book Black Talk Geneva Smitherman writes: "The uniqueness of AAE is evident in three areas: (1) patterns of grammar and pronunciation, many of which reflect the patterns that operate in West African languages (for example, many West African languages don't have the English "th" sounds, and in AAE "th" is rendered with the next closest sound, as a "d," a "t," or an "f"); (2) verbal rituals from the Oral Tradition and the continued importance of the Word, as in African cultures; and (3) lexicon or vocabulary, usually developed by giving special meanings to regular English words, a practice that goes back to enslavement and the need for a system of communication that only those in the enslaved community could understand....
"Forced to use the English of Ole Massa, Africans in enslavement had to devise a system for talking to each other about Black affairs and about the MAN right in front of his face. Because of continued segregation and racism, this necessity for a coded form of English persisted even after Emancipation, and it underlies the evolution of Black Language. Black Talk's origin in enslavement and the still-unresolved status of Africans in America account for the constant changes in the Lexicon."
For decades, enlightened educators and linguists have been fighting for a different approach in the schools.
Smitherman was herself involved in a landmark suit in the Michigan schools in the later 1970s protesting the fact that Black children were being classified as learning disabled because they spoke Black English. In 1979 a Michigan court finally ruled that schools must take into account the legitimacy of the language of African-Americans. Los Angeles and San Diego have used this policy for some time.
Teachers who use the Ebonics approach find it to be a more successful strategy for teaching Black students. And many of them view it as a strategy for Black children to advance to higher education and professions. Clearly this is not a revolution--the Ebonics approach does not really challenge the social order which is the root cause of why the language and culture of Black people is suppressed in the first place. Yet, the U.S. government finds the Ebonics approach unacceptable. And Black reformists like Jesse Jackson are freaked out by it. Why?
One answer is that this system cannot tolerate any serious recognition that Black people are a nation within the U.S.--a people with a distinct language and culture. And the whole affair reveals a deep fear in the ruling class that "the center will not hold" in this polarized society--such that any acknowledgment that there are different languages and peoples within the American society is seen as a threat.
From the standpoint of the proletariat--which has no interest in a society where people can only advance by speaking the "President's English" -- the furor over the Oakland school board decision offers further proof that the entire social system needs to be revolutionized. Then and only then can we get to a place where all the people can benefit from the rich culture of the oppressed peoples and people can communicate based on real equality.
4