Dear friends:
I'd like to share with you the text of an Op-Ed article that the New
York Times invited me to write last Thursday, after I had expressed my
dissatisfaction, through the University of Chicago's News Office, about an
interview I had had with one of their reporters. I submitted the article on
Friday, mid-day, and was told today that it will appear some time after New
Year's. I understand it will be trimmed. So you may as well see the original
text.
Sali.
Ebonics Or African-American English:
What's In A Name And Can School Systems Ignore It?
By Salikoko S. Mufwene*
The Oakland School Board's decision to recognize African-American
English, called "Ebonics" by some African-American scholars, as a
separate language from American standard English should force us to
look at a deeper question.
Linguists have learned that there are other nonstandard American
vernaculars. There are also many equally underprivileged children among
whites in various parts of the country and other ethnic groups whose
problems also need to be addressed.
We must come up with a more general educational reform for all
students who speak nonstandard English. And if African-American
youngsters are the majority of those who wind up in special needs
programs, this may reveal some negative aspect of our society that in
itself deserves attention. School boards alone may not be able to
resolve the social class problems. The more we focus on ethnic
background and not educational needs, the more we may be hurting those
we want to help-perhaps stigmatizing them even more.
According to the Dec. 20 New York Times, "Blacks make up 53 percent of
the (Oakland) district's enrollment. But they are 71 percent of special
education students and only 37 percent of students in gifted and
talented classes. Blacks' 1.8 grade point average on a 4.0 scale is the
lowest in the district." These are sickening statistics, and one cannot
dismiss the contribution of language offhand-even though it may not be
the only relevant factor. The city, the state and the nation should do
whatever they can to avoid failing such an important proportion of our
youth, on whom the future depends.
The name "Ebonics" is not necessary. The variety itself is not a
separate language any more than are other nonstandard American English
vernaculars. Neither need it be stigmatized any more than the other
vernaculars. However recognizing African-American English as a
legitimate dialect of English does not mean that it operates by the
same grammatical rules or that it differs from standard English only by its
vocabulary and its phonetic system-including its distinctive
pronunciation of words and intonations. African-American English is not
lazy speech or the result of some inherent inability of descendants of
Africans to acquire English "adequately." There is plenty of evidence
against such fallacies.
Perhaps overemphasis on the influence of African languages in the
development of African-American English has not helped dispel these
myths. Although we know little about how African-American English
developed, the fact is that every variety of American English is the
result of language contact in a new social environment. All of them
have some nonstandard British English influence, which is in part why
all American varieties of English are different from British
varieties.
On the other hand, it is not by accident that nonstandard vernaculars
in both North America and the United Kingdom share several features.
For instance, multiple negatives that do not undo each other (e.g., "I
ain't seen nobody nowhere"), usage of "done" before a verb to show
that a state of affairs has been obtained already (e.g., "he done gone
and took it"), and lack of subject-verb agreement in the present tense
or in the past tense of "be" (e.g., "he don't care" and "we was beat").
Many of the British who brought English to America were speaking
nonstandard vernaculars of their language themselves. This fact doesn't deny the
role of Niger Congo languages in determining the patterns of
African-American English. One must, however, be cautious about
attributing every peculiarity to this group of languages.
Still, regardless of the factors forming the African-American English
system, the tragic reality remains that American schools are failing a
large proportion of the speakers of
this vernacular. Shouldn't something be done? This is the question that
the Oakland School Board is addressing, and board members should be
praised for doing so.
The main issue is whether the proposal to teach standard English to
African-American English speakers by using techniques for second
language teaching is justified. Here I think the Board needs more
constructive advice than criticism. The idea of teaching standard
English as a non-native variety is certainly a good move; after all,
standard English is native to very few. This educational approach might
also work well with other groups of students who speak nonstandard
American English.
However, my concern with teaching standard English as a second
language is that it may fail simply because speakers of
African-American English, like those of other nonstandard vernaculars,
know that they are being taught another variety of their language.
While the linguistic problems they face are due largely to structural
differences between standard English and African-American English (as
in cases of second language learning), one need not specifically teach
standard English to African-American English-speakers the same way
English would be taught to speakers of Chinese, Swahili or Spanish.
Such an approach to the problem may become counterproductive, because
it disenfranchises African-American English-speakers, making them feel
like foreigners in their own country.
Teachers should be trained to identify their students' problems
correctly and use better techniques to teach standard English more
successfully. It is useful to get inspiration from second language
teaching, but one should not apply those techniques literally, because
the conditions of teaching and learning are not the same.
One question that concerns me is whether the problem the Oakland
School Board is addressing is an ethnic problem. Are African-American
kids the only ones in the predicament that has been debated? Are we
right in ethnicizing the problem or should we rather treat it as a
general social class problem-to the extent that African-American
English is typically associated with the lower stratum of
African-American society and with the ghetto? (I will ignore the fact
that not everyone in the ghetto speaks African-American English as
stereotyped in academia.)
Some have speculated that the Oakland School Board embraced the term
"Ebonics" to clear the way for state and federal funding. It is a shame
that state and federal investments in school programs are so rigidly
legislated that a school system would have to resort to this kind of
strategy. If they really calculated things this way, can we really
blame them? On the other hand, is it not embarrassing that it may be
more difficult to obtain funds to address problems of American citizens in
school than to secure funds for the linguistic needs of immigrants? Both
groups are entitled to equal chances of success in a society where beating
the competition is
almost a motto.
* Salikoko S. Mufwene is Chairman of the Department of
Linguistics at the University of Chicago