reignited a decades-old controversy over the legitimacy of
black English. USA Today, 12/20/1996.
7. “Ebonics” is not a language. The School Board of Oakland,
Calif., has made a disgraceful decision for which it deserves
to stand in the corner until further notice. Its recognition of
“black English” as a language, and directive that teachers
“respect” it, is a blow to education. The Boston Globe,
12/21/1996.
8. Some say that endorsing a dialect as a second language would
lower standards and condemn kids to a life of unemployment
because standard English is the only language of the working
world. The Dallas Morning News, 12/21/1996.The message moves beyond its original sphere at an ever increasing
speed, abetted by the media, politicians, and sometimes those with a
commercial interest in the outcome:
1. Scholars debunk merits of “Ebonics.” The Herald Sun,
Durham, NC, 12/29/1996.
2. The vagary of the Oakland, Calif., political hierarchy to
propose that (presumed) mature, college-educated adults
stoop to the vacuous mentality of a jive-talking, callow,
maligned faction of society is the ultimate level of lunacy and
perversity becoming the daily norm of this drug-crazed mass
of inhumanity cavalierly referred to as the human race. Are
the politicians in Oakland really concerned with improving
education, or are they looking to establish another
bureaucratic program to help fulfill their personal agendas of
nepotism? Their political prescription (Ebonics) to this
“cultural cancer” is analogous to the medical community’s
covetous approach to the spectrum of medical maladies
prevalent in this country – treating the symptom rather than
the cause. Buffalo News, 1/27/1997.
3. The Ku Klux Klan could not have come up with a better plan
to impede the academic progress of young black children than
the idea of teaching Ebonics as a separate language. Crain’s
Chicago Business, 1/27/1997.