Ebonics: Look Who's Talking
By Rene Childress (Reader Opinion)
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When the Oakland school board raised this question of Ebonics, they
rekindled a debate that stretched back almost 30 years. I was a young man
trying to understand the world and the plight of black people. Like many
of my contemporaries, I questioned everything. We questioned beauty
standards. We questioned religion. We questioned the causes for which we
were asked to die.

Our understanding of culture was very immature. We thought it was some
system of ideas that we could just create. We wore African garb and
adopted African names. We demeaned anything that sounded remotely
European (read "white.")

It was out of this set of dynamics that Ebonics was born. The premise
for Ebonics was that African slaves displaced in America developed a new
language. This language had grammatical rules and rhythms that could be
traced back to Africa.

The arguments put forth to support the Ebonics system were quite
scholarly-sounding. The language used to write these theories was the
best American standard English. The debate centered on the need to
understand that we as a people were not speaking incorrect English. We
were speaking another language.

There are two inherently wrong assumptions that we pointed out then. We
need to point them out again. The first is that the people who arrived on
these shores in the slave holds were from some common place, both
culturally and linguistically.

In fact the opposite is true. These people were torn from several
different places and tribes. They had different religions. They had
different customs. Above all, they had different languages. This very
factor was used as a means to control the slave population. Slaves were
not allowed to communicate in their own languages.

Slaves were separated so that tribesmen from the same tribe would be
isolated from each other. This isolation was used as a means to keep
slave rebellions to a minimum.

Our ancestors from Africa were stolen from Morocco in the north and from
as far south as Angola and beyond. The languages they spoke included
influences from Arabic, Yoruba, Mandinka, Azanda and Hausa. Some of
these languages had similar roots, others did not. This listing is by no
means complete. This  part of the continent was widely settled and social
organization was a common occurrence. We should not indulge in the
stereotypes that depict Africa as  some great homogenous black country.
Its history is a varied, colorful and glorious one.

We should not malign her by accepting old world European descriptions of
Africa. The stereotype of Africa was and is that all Africans walk, look
and talk the same. How ridiculous! The other assumption is that African
Americans all speak alike without regard to region, class or educational
level. Again the stereotypes come into play. Typically, black people are
expected to either speak with a drawl or talk street jive. We, however,
come to the social discourse with a language that reflects all the
social factors that affect the way all Americans speak. Do we as a
people speak in such a fashion that is different enough from standard
English to be called a separate language? As a group, we have developed
a very sophisticated code-switching system. The codes are usually very
regional in nature. The same can be said for every ethnic group in
America.

The blacks from Boston and New York linguistically have more in common
with their white neighbors than they do with blacks below the
Mason-Dixon Line. Our language, and I mean the spoken tongue in America,
is a combination of the influences of a diverse culture. We have to
understand that English, as it is spoken, is changing and evolving as I
write this article. The African American, the Puerto Rican, the Mexican,
the Irish, the English, the Slav, the French and a host of others all
contribute to the language we speak in the United States.

http://www.afronet.com/WB/040497-3.html

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