Ebonics 2
Ebonics 2Ebonics
The other day I was talking on the subject of Ebonics. I feel Ebonics should be a language. I mean black adolescents that are seen as stupid and non-educated mostly use it. The talk compelled me to do some extensive studying on the subject.
Ebonics is the new academician’s jargon or buzzword for what we used to call “Black English.” Ebonics comes from the root word Ebony that means black or dark. So since Ebonics is considered Black English I am assuming that the word is the only possible reason for calling it that.
In Oakland, CA, which is the city that is home to the first school board in the nation to proclaim, that Black English is formal language. For centuries, racist educators have used language as a weapon to sabotage the education of Black English speaking students. It has been a handy tool to label them “retarded/slow”, and warehouse them into special education curriculum, and set them upon fast tracks to lifetimes of academic failure.
Black English is a combination of African languages and Standard English. African Americans should be awarded linguistic medals of Honor for it creation against impossible odds. To deter rebellion and increase fear and control, slave masters deliberately separated African slaves from fellow members of their tribes. Often, these same slave masters were functionally illiterate and ignorant of English themselves. From that linguistics stew of confusion, we fashioned a formal Black English. Just as in French, many of these languages have no “th” sound. Instead the French speak “t”. Instead Africans speak “d”. Thus, “theatre” becomes “tayatra” and them becomes “dem”.
Many native African words are included in Standard English vocabulary. For example “okra, uh-huh, and uh-uh” are all formal African words. But, as Black English is slandered as mere “slang”, African contributions are also ignored. In this racist America, everything “black” is bad. (Examples:...
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