Ebonics

The other day I was watching a television special on VH1 called “I Love the 80s.” I’m sure some of you have also seen this. For those of you who haven’t, it’s a program where all these celebrities sit and talk about all the things that were popular in the 80s or important events that happened then. One thing they discussed that I found extremely interesting was the fact that there were many schools in the 80s that had classes for what was called African American Vernacular English. This was more commonly referred to as “Black Vernacular English,” “Black English,” or “Ebonics.” Basically, students went to classes that taught English but as a black person was perceived to speak it.

Those in favor of Ebonics state that the language has distinctive vocabulary and verb tenses that separate it from “Standard English” (what is normally taught in schools), and that it has specific pronunciation features along definable patterns. These factors are thought to have been adapted from Creole languages as well as other West African tongues. In 1974, the Conference on College Composition and Communication argued that students had a right to their own language. In 1979 a federal judge ruled in favor of Ebonics, stating that when teaching black children to read and write, schools should be adjusting to the children’s dialect and that it is unfair to expect a child to adjust to the school instead. The same judge commented that by neglecting the black students’ language, schools were contributing to the failure of such students to read and use Standard English proficiently. This made sense to a lot of people, and many believed that the use of Ebonics classes would bring down the illiteracy rate among African Americans.

My question to you all is this, Do you agree with the judge’s viewpoint? Why or why not?