In California, naturally, there is a push to normalize black slang in the classroom.
Black Californians United for Early Care & Education (BlackECE), a nonprofit advocacy organization, is promoting what it describes as an effort to challenge “harmful language hierarchies and affirm black English as a legitimate, rule-governed language rooted in black history, culture, and community.”
They’ve even coined a new phrase: ‘African-American speakers’ (trying to equate this dumbing down of the English language with Spanish, Chinese, etc.).
There are about a million and a half dialects in Chinese. But you know what? Everyone has to speak and write in Mandarin.
This seems to be another way to coddle children and not have them be able to communicate with their less-melanined peers. One of the women (again, of course) at the forefront of this stated:
Williams also reflected on her own experiences, saying speaking black English came with embarrassment because of its slang and grammatical differences. She said she often felt pressure to “talk white” instead of speaking in the way that felt most natural to her.
Stacy Washington, in an article, points out that:
This resembles quite strongly the educational double standards that once prompted future president and then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush to say, “Some say it is unfair to hold disadvantaged children to rigorous standards. I say it is discrimination to require anything less — the soft bigotry of low expectations. Some say that schools can’t be expected to teach, because there are too many broken families, too many immigrants, too much diversity. I say that pigment and poverty need not determine performance. That myth is disproved by good schools every day. Excuse-making must end before learning can begin.”
Was he looking into the future? These activist nonprofits are working to enshrine bigotry instead of banishing it.
We should give children — all of them, regardless of race — the high standard of speaking English well. We should urge them to achieve their very best, because they can — and ultimately because without a clear, well-enforced standard, many of them never will.
Hopefully this will go away as quickly as ebonics did.
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