Couple this freedom to express language prejudice with the fact that the Oakland resolution was promulgated by and in a community of color and the outrage is predictable. For the resolution provides a convenient excuse for politicians and the media to lower themselves once again to an occasion. It is this language prejudice and its expression rather than the Oakland resolution that ought to be the object of our outrage and our attention. And in part it is toward the eradication of this prejudice that the resolution is directed.
For this and for the other sound educational reasons raised in the resolution, the Oakland School Board is to be strongly supported. An appendix, and a guide to some of the writing on Ebonics in the popular press much of which can be found on the web. The panel was formed around a question, so let me pose and answer it as the fourth question in this series. However, since answering this fourth question requires nothing of linguistics, but merely the ability to read and analyze the newspapers carefully, I have set it off in this appendix.
The details follow, though here I deal only with the print media. Others will have to assess radio and TV, for I have had no time to follow them. However, my impression from talking to those who did and from transcripts sent to me is that there the story was treated with much the same disdain and incompetence.
For example, on Fox News Sunday Dec. Well, I think it sounds like something the Klan thought up. Returning now to the claim that the print media did little justice to the Ebonics story: First of all, it is important to point out that it is often the early coverage that counts.
Once the story is gotten wrong, there is little that can be done; for after the wrong story, quickly follow the talk show and op-ed-page artists, whose role appears to be to drive spikes into graves.
Informed, balanced stories then generally come too far after the fact, and letters of clarification to the editor — always balanced by contrary letters — are not given the credibility lavished on real, live newspersons. Such was the course more or less followed by the print media on the Oakland resolution.
First there was some simple and brief reportage, in the Boston Globe of Dec. Thus on Dec. As Black kids, we were introduced to a world we had to enter in order to survive, and then we were offered the tools to get there. She struggled and won, so why make life any easier for the students of today? But not everyone won; in fact, relatively few did. The answer? During the slave trade, members of many different tribes were put together on the same vessel.
They were of vastly different cultures, so in order to communicate with each other and also with their English-speaking slave masters of the American South , they created their own Creole. Eventually their children adapted this Creole such that it developed its own grammar, turning into a quasi-language.
Obviously, the story above is simplified. Language, both as a method of communication and a cultural symbol, influences and contributes to how people understand the world around them. More specifically, it shapes the way people come across information and knowledge, affecting how they interpret it. Psycholinguist Frantz Fanon once asserted that to speak a language is to assume its culture. In order to understand a language, its speakers, and its character, one needs to understand its cultural codes.
And it is precisely the understanding of this idea, or lack thereof, which contributes to the misperception of Ebonics and Ebonics speakers. Traditionally schools have treated this kind of speech by children as wrong or sloppy, without acknowledging skills, creativity and knowledge the children can build on.
Rap acts like Public Enemy, N. In The Oakland Unified School District Board of Education assessed a task force which studied problems in Oakland schools in general and also to find out why African-American students were scoring low on standardized tests and had low grades, in comparison to other racial or ethnic groups. The American media focused on the fact that Oakland was making Ebonics its official language, and misreported that the teaching of English would be replaced by Ebonics.
The uproar and backlash from this media angle was immense. Others called it a cynical effort to get federal money for bilingual education.
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