Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

Black English as Ebonics 183students. Ainsworth-Darnell and Downey (1998) and Goldsmith (2004)suggest that, under some circumstances, black, Hispanic and otherminority-group youngsters may be more favorably disposed towardsschool than are their white counterparts. Other researchers have shownthat high educational aspirations may sometimes be expected as areaction to social disadvantage, that success in the classroom can be seenas a powerful response to historical oppression and inequality; see Akom(2003), O’Connor (1997) and Perry et al. (2003). Sometimes, in otherwords, the disengagement that Ogbu and his associates have carefullydocumented over a number of years (see Fordham & Ogbu, 1986; Ogbu,2003; and Chapter 8) is not quite so evident. A moment’s reflection willreveal that both disengagement and its more positive opposite areentirely predictable responses to social disadvantage and prejudice, but itwill also suggest that the latter requires more self-discipline and is likely,therefore, to be in shorter supply than the former. In any event, recentAmerican social history shows quite clearly that minority-group difficultiesare real and, some would say, on the increase.While acknowledging the existence of broad social problems, it is stillreasonable to think about what might usefully be done in specific areas.One could agree or disagree with Bill Cosby (1997), for example, when hesays that ‘legitimizing the street in the classroom is backwards. We shouldbe working hard to legitimize the classroom and English in the street’.But the sentiments are not silly, and they are clearly widely held. Indeed,they can be understood in the light of earlier discussions about the way inwhich linguistic difference is translated into linguistic deficit through thepower of social pressure. But these earlier arguments also pointed out thatthe difference-into-deficit transformation was based upon an invalidassessment of nonstandard dialect: it may be pervasive, but it is inaccurateand should therefore be contested wherever possible. It is clear that theblack critics of Ebonics do generally see it as a deficient variety, a point ofview that demonstrates their lack of linguistic awareness, and for whichthey may fairly be criticized. They cannot be criticized, however, for theirgenuine concern for black children, nor, obviously, can they be accused ofrejecting BEV on racially prejudiced principles.This accusation can, however, be levelled at many of the ‘popular’reactions to the Ebonics debate, reactions that are merely specificmanifestations of long-held stereotypes and prejudicial opinions. Thesewere (and are) most easily seen in what passes for ‘humor’; the Lord’sPrayer rendered in Ebonics, or cartoons depicting the English languageslain by the ‘Ebonic plague’, or showing a child at the blackboard having written 7316 and then telling his teacher ‘it’s mathabonics’