Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Noise In The Hood
A school district in Southern California approved the "affirmation and recognition" of Ebonics into its curriculum as a way to help black students improve academic performance. The San Bernardino Board of Education says a pilot of the policy, known as the Students Accumulating New Knowledge Optimizing Future Accomplishment Initiative, has been implemented at two city schools, according to the daily San Bernardino Sun. Ebonics, a dialect of American English spoken by many blacks, was recognized as a separate language by the Oakland, Calif., school board in 1996. Mary Texeira, a sociology professor at Cal State San Bernardino, believes the program will be beneficial to students.
"Ebonics is a different language, it's not slang as many believe,' Texeira told the Sun. "For many of these students Ebonics is their language, and it should be considered a foreign language. These students should be taught like other students who speak a foreign language."
This is idiotic.
Of course, this is a racial issue. Therefore, I'm less interested in the idiotic meanderings of a school district in SoCal than I am in the opinions of smart black bloggers:
Please tell me this is an April Fools in July joke!
Enough is enough with this political correctness bull.
Perhaps my kid can begin using Nov-bonics, the new language we use in our household. Then the school will have to recognize that as a foreign language and start teaching it!
My fiancee's parents are from Brazil. They legally immigrated to this country (that means they came in with the proper paperwork, became citizens, pay taxes and contribute to this nation) and only spoke Porteguese and Spanish. To learn English, they watched TV with her, things like Sesame Street.
The first thing she tells her patients at the hospital who only speak Spanish or Portugeuse is "stop watching Telemundo and start using your English."
Maybe we need to tell the eubonics users something similar, something like "stop being lazy and uneducated and listen up when teachers are trying to teach you your native language."
Absolutely. Ya know what burns my butt the most about this? The blatant racism of it! People who endorse Ebonics are basically telling inner-city young black people "You're not smart enough to learn English, all we expect of you is to speak the language badly, so we'll recognize it as the best you're capable of." Like low-income housing and affirmative action, this is the liberal's way of keeping a brother down.
I thought the fascinating part of your post was the section of quotes from African American bloggers. I'd be curious to know how you found them. Well done. That's a great perspective to gain.
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