There are certain things I cannot say without recourse to my language. It's terrible to think that a child with five different languages comes to school to be faced with books that are less than his own language. And then to be told things about his language, which is him, that are sometimes permanently damaging...I know the standard English. I want to use it to restore the other language, the lingua franca.
-Toni Morrison
This observation by African American author Toni Morrison effectively reflects the dilemma embedded in the debate recently sparked by one school district's intention to use what Morrison calls the lingua franca to teach black students standard English.
It's probably safe to say that before the Oakland, Calif., Board of Education's Dec. 18, 1996, resolution recognizing Ebonics as the native language of African Americans, many of us took whatever examples of black speech we might encounter as either street or ghetto slang or incorrectly spoken standard English. (Ebonics was coined by linguist Robert L. Williams, from ebony and phonics.)
According to John R. Rickford, Ph.D., of Stanford University, "black English," or African American Vernacular English (AAVE), as the linguistic community prefers to call it, is "a highly structured and systematic language" that reflects the unique experiences of African American culture. Rickford, an AAVE scholar, helped draft the Linguistics Society of America's Jan. 3, 1997, resolution supporting Oakland's recognition of Ebonics. That resolution acknowledged 30 years of scholarship documenting AAVE and insisted, "Characterizations of Ebonics as 'slang,' 'mutant,' 'lazy,' 'defective,' 'ungrammatical' or 'broken English' are incorrect and demeaning."
Providing credence to this view is the work of such linguists as Geneva Smitherman (author of Talkin and Testifyn: the Language of Black America, 1977) whose work has helped support the view of black English as an essential manifestation of black culture to be recognized, nurtured and preserved.
Those linguists and educators who support the concept of using what is called contrastive linguistics to help students learn standard English expect that comparing linguistic structures and vocabulary will heighten children's awareness of the differences between AAVE and standard English and enhance their ability to speak the standard with less errors. Rickford cites studies in Europe and the United States that suggest placing value on a child's vernacular can accelerate achieving proficiency in the target language. Anecdotal evidence from some classrooms appears to support that contention, although large-scale, controlled studies are lacking.
Others familiar with African American culture and speech express concern that the Ebonics/black English issue deflects attention and effort away from the complex of factors affecting reading and writing competence among African Americans.
"The important thing about teachers listening to Ebonics is for them not to equate it with the students' being stupid," says Alvin Poussaint, M.D., professor of psychiatry at the Judge Baker Children's Center in Boston, Mass. "It means they've learned a way to speak in their community or home that's a natural way for them to speak, which they then carry with them to school." While the language is part of who they are and their connection to their community, it doesn't absolutely have to exist to preserve a black identity, he says, adding, "There are many other things to being black and having a black perspective than speaking a certain kind of language."
He dismisses charges that efforts to establish standard English competence implies a denigration of African American culture. "[African American children] need standard English to function in this society," says Poussaint, "and even to enhance and go more deeply into their culture."
Furthermore, Poussaint believes it is not the syntactical and phonetic errors teachers object to, but rather the profanity African American children pick up from the streets and incorporate in their everyday speech, which is not necessarily part of Ebonics. The teachers take the profanity as a sign of disrespect and a threat to maintaining classroom discipline.
Similarly, Nathaniel Normant Jr., Ph.D., of Temple University's department of African American studies, contends that the language teachers complain they can't understand is actually the code and slang of hip-hop culture, which he considers much different from what has been identified as features of black English vernacular. Normant also disputes the view that Ebonics is a separate language and prefers to view it as a dialect of standard English. Nor does he believe, as some linguists have contended, that the particular structure of AAVE causes interference with African Americans' ability to learn and use standard English (linguistic interference). He contends his research shows the same errors are evident in low-level writing by African Americans, whites, English as Second Language (ESL) students and foreign language speakers generally.
Despite its recent high profile, the use of AAVE to teach standard English is not new. Under the Standard English Proficiency Program (SEP), Ebonics is the means by which African American students in 18 of California's 1,000 school districts currently learn English. As early as 1979, a federal court upheld the right of black parents in Michigan to have their children educated in Ebonics.
Roots of EbonicsNormant points out that the present circumstances have roots in two developments that collided in the 1960s-the Black Power movement, with its celebration of African American culture, and the simultaneous propagation of the view that African Americans are genetically inferior in intelligence and cognitive ability. The Black Power movement led to linguistic analysis that traced AAVE to West African roots (replacing theories that American slaves mimicked the Old English of original white settlers). At the same time, research purporting to document inferior cognitive ability and intelligence in African Americans led to the subtle anticipation among educators that such students would not do well in school. Although the latter view has since been discredited, it is still, Normant contends, an influence upon the educational establishment.
While it is considered that AAVE is more likely to be spoken by working class or lower class African Americans, it has not generally been acknowledged that nonstandard English is likewise spoken among whites. Salikoko Mufwene, Ph.D., professor and chair of the department of linguistics at the University of Chicago, contends that many features associated with AAVE are also found among white nonstandard English; constructions such as I dun told you, phonetic habits of dropping the g from ing, replacing th with d and consonant clutter simplification (tes for test).
"We talk about the situation of African Americans as though it were unique," says Mufwene. "In fact, what is unique about it is that it is more conspicuous. When you see a black person you think he's from the lower working class even if this person isn't speaking African American English. When you see a white, you think they must probably be from the middle class. You have that prejudice." Mufwene's observation suggests one reason for negative reactions among some teachers who tend to associate the AAVE spoken by their students with substandard English spoken by uneducated or illiterate whites. This reaction has been used as the basis for criticism by some African Americans who feel that whites have used AAVE to justify racial inferiority.
