Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Black English as Ebonics 175responses to BEV in the classroom. Of considerable interest here aredebates about the ‘African-ness’ of BEV, on the one hand, and its status asone English dialect among many, on the other. These definitional mattersare not only of narrow academic concern; they have figured in morepublic discussions too, notably the Oakland ‘case’ (see below), in whichclaims that ‘Ebonics’ was basically an African variety could have beenimportant factors in the type of educational provisions to be made forblack children at school (see Rickford, 2002; Smith, 2001).As it turned out, the Ann Arbor case was a precursor to a still morewidely discussed situation: the resolution of the Oakland, California,school board, in December 1996, declaring Ebonics to be the nativelanguage of its black students. There are several reliable overviewsavailable in the literature; among the important monographs are those byBaugh (2000), Kretzschmar (1998), Pandey (2000) and Ramirez et al.(2005). My citations from the actual Oakland decisions are taken from thelast of these sources. Among the best paper-length discussions are thoseof Barnes (2003), Baugh (2002), Deák (2007), Rickford (2002), Smitherman(1998) and Wolfram (1998). Recently, De Bose (2005) provided alanguage-planning approach to BEV, paying particular attention to itsuse at school.And what is Ebonics? The term was coined by researchers taking partin a conference in St Louis devoted to the language of black children.Baugh (2004: 307) writes that the ‘scholars at the 1973 meeting were allAfrican Americans’, but in the preface to his edited collection, Williams(1975) states that ‘many’ white researchers were also there. In any event,the term (constructed from ‘ebony’‘phonics’) arose from the desire todefine and describe black language from a black point of view. ‘Ebonics’can be generally taken as synonymous with other terms includingBlack English (BE), BEV and African American Vernacular English(AAVE) although some have tried to draw distinctions (see Rickford,2002). Speicher and McMahon (1992) observed that since BEV is not adialect spoken solely by black people (see above) and since the termcontinues to be seen negatively in the media and elsewhere, the label‘Ebonics’ may be preferable. They go on to say that ‘it avoids directreference to the race while maintaining an association with African-American culture and, therefore, a link to the African traditions thatsurvived in the code’ (Speicher & McMahon, 1992: 401). All reasonableenough, except that it is rather difficult to see ‘Ebonics’ as not makingpretty obvious reference to black people!In 1996, Oakland was one of a handful of cities in which a majority ofthe citizens were African Americans, and many of their children were