The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language, and the Education of African-American Children

by Theresa Perry, Lisa Delpit

In the winter of 1996, the Oakland school board's resolution recognizing Ebonics as a valid linguistic system generated a brief firestorm of hostile criticism and misinformation, then faded from public consciousness. But in the classrooms of America, the question of how to engage the distinctive language of many African-American children remains urgent. In The Real Ebonics Debate some of our most important educators, linguists, and writers, as well as teachers and students reporting from the field, examine the lessons of the Ebonics controversy and unravel the complex issues at the heart of how America educates its children.

Genres: Education

242 pages, Paperback

First published June 17, 1998

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A VERY HELPFUL COLLECTION OF ESSAYS DEALING WITH THIS ISSUE

Editors Theresa Perry and Lisa Delpit wrote in the Preface to this 1998 book, “For six months, the thirty-member African-American task force (school board members, community activists, and teachers) grappled with the underachievement of African-American students enrolled in the Oakland… public schools… Against the backdrop of this dismal picture of school failure, the above-average performance of African-American students at the Prescott Elementary School caught the attention of the task force members. Prescott Elementary School was the only school in the … district where the … teachers had voluntarily chosen to participate in the Standard English Proficiency Program (SEP)… [which] acknowledges the systematic, rule-governed nature of Black English and takes the position that this language should be used to help children learn to read and write in Standard English… the school board unanimously passed the Ebonics resolution, requiring all schools in the district to participate in (SEP)… The irrational and racist discourse that followed the school board’s approval … has made it almost impossible to have a careful conversation about the important educational, political, and linguistic issues that are embedded in the resolution. [This book] provides a much-needed forum for discussion of these issues.”

The Foreword adds, “The national debate on Ebonics did little to clarify the misunderstandings about the history of the language or to help educators develop curriculum… The authors in this book… have two essential points of unity: a respect for the language spoken by most African-American children---whether one calls that language Ebonics, Black Dialect, and an African-American Language System---and an understanding that African-American children must be taught Standard English if they are to succeed educationally.

“One of the media’s crudest distortions of the Oakland school board’s resolution was the mistaken view that Oakland students would be taught Ebonics in place of Standard English… The difficulty is particularly acute for those African-American students who speak Ebonics because many teachers fail to recognize their language as anything other than a substandard form of English. As a result, teachers may view Ebonics-speaking children as stupid or lazy… As the authors in this book point out, Ebonics is… a language system with roots in West Africa. It is … a creative response to a slave society that did its best to erase African language and culture… Fundamentally, the controversy … is a debate about culture, power, identity, and control. It is a debate about how best to acknowledge and change the reality that our nation’s schools are failing African-American students…”

Geneva Smitherman explains, “Consider this statement… from some Black women just kickin it in the beauty shop… ‘The Brotha be lookin good; that’s what got the Sista nose open!’ … the use of ‘be’ means that the quality of ‘lookin good’ is not limited to the present moment but respects the Brotha’s past, present, and future essence. As in the case of Efik and other Niger-Congo languages, [Ebonics] has an aspectual verb system… These orthographic representations are used to convey a phonological pattern derived from the influence of West African languages…” (Pg. 31)

Wayne O’Neil asks, “AAE [African-American English] is clearly a language since… it does have one school system, or at least its school board, solidly behind it. Thus, a way of speaking becomes a language by declaration---as is usually the case: a way of speaking is a language if you say it is. It is a legitimate language if it has the force of community behind it---a school board resolution, say.” (Pg. 41-42)

Ernie Smith argues, “African-American children are not from home environments in which the English language is dominant… as evidenced by phonetic, phonological, morphological, and syntactical patterns, African-American speech does not follow the grammar rules of English. Rather, it is a West and Niger-Congo African deep structure that has been retained. It is this African deep structure that causes African-American to score poorly on standardized scales of English proficiency.” (Pg. 54-55) Later, he adds, "Eurocentric scholars lack any logical explanation for why, in the entire African diaspora, there is not a single hybrid English and Niger-Congo African dialect that has an English grammar as its base with African words superimposed.” (Pg. 57)

John Rickford explains, “In fact, slaves were often separated from models of English usage, and in the course of acquiring English, developed first a pidgin and then a creole language---a mixed. Simplified variety of English strongly influenced by their own native languages.” (Pg. 60-61) Later, he adds, “If you look at the most different variety of Ebonics, it’s probably spoken more by the working and lower classes. But the thing is, almost all African Americans speak some variety of it to a greater or lesser extent. Even Re. Jesse Jackson … will [use] a number of rhetorical features of African-American English speaking styles. That’s why when you turn on the radio, if you didn’t know that it was Jesse Jackson, you nonetheless would know that it was a black speaker.” (Pg. 64)

Oakland teacher Carrie Secret notes, “[We] dared to honor and respect Ebonics as the home language that stands on its own rather than as a dialectical form of English… our language patterns and structure come from a family of languages totally unrelated to the Germanic roots of English… I think our using second-language learning strategies has more impact on the students. The view is, ‘We are teaching you a second language, not fixing the home language you bring to school.’” (Pg. 79-80)

English teacher Hafeezah AdamaDavia Dalji suggests, “I have always understood that as long as African students respond to and accept, without question, European reality, they will never be able to see, think, feel and act in a fashion that affirms and protects their being.” (Pg. 105-106)

Monique Brinson comments, “Ebonics is effective in teaching literacy because it is spelled the way it is spoken. When asking children to use developmental writing techniques, I might say, ‘Just sound it out.’ Because Ebonics is phonetically structured, it frees students to focus on their own ideas and to use their own language and creativity in their journal writing.” (Pg. 139)

Geneve Smitherman states, “Blacks… have been differentially affected by white racism, and that has created class distinctions within the Black community. Differing degrees of competence in Standard English is one way these distinctions are manifest. Not all Black children suffer from language barriers. Indeed, at King, the only Black children having great difficulty were those from the Green Road Housing Project, who were both Black and poor. The other Black children attending King were from middle-class, professional families, and were also competent in Standard English; they were skilled at code-switching and, hence, ‘bilingual.’” (Pg. 168)

Oakland school board member Toni Cook recounts, “My youngest daughter has had that criticism: ‘You talk like a white girl.’ It’s another way of saying, ‘How come you don’t sound like us?’ It hurts to be accused of that,.. When I was a girl, it was a goal to speak Standard English, not a ridicule. I have no idea how that changed.” (Pg. 176)

This is a balanced, and very informative of the issues involved in this controversy, that will be ‘must reading” for anyone studying this area.

[sydney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard about the Ebonics debate when I was younger but never really understood it. Like a lot of people, I assumed that some school system out in California had resolved to stop teaching black children Standard English and teach them Ebonics, instead. I also mistakenly thought that Ebonics was some sort of slang or sloppy English.

This book, a series of essays, interviews, and documents, tackles all of those misperceptions and prejudices and gets to the root of the Ebonics debate. The authors explain what Ebonics is (they argue that it is a distinct language with Pan-African origins), what the Oakland resolution really said (that the school system should recognize Ebonics as a language and therefore teach children who spoke it using aspects of culturally-sensitive bilingual Standard English instruction), and how the debate was twisted by careless and racist reporting.

Whether or not you agree with the assertion that Ebonics is a distinct language, this book is a fascinating look at a debate that got a lot of attention a few years ago and continues to be relevant today. It is obviously really one-sided (so the word "debate" in the title is a bit misleading), but it's clear, easy to read, and really informative. I learned a lot from this book.

Highly recommended.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was written as a result of a decision by the Oakland, CA school board validating Ebonics as a language, as you would classify "French" or "English" a language.

I read the book during research for a thesis in my linguistics class and became really interested in the subject. I even changed my thesis to examine the validity of Ebonics as a language. Really, really fascinating.

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must-read for educators in the U.S. It opened my eyes to the Ebonics debate and inspired me to create a more open-minded environment in terms of different types of spoken language in the classroom. It is well worth the read!