The idea of declaring “Ebonics” a language pisses me off in so many ways.
Naming it “Ebonics” for starters, makes it a racial issue. Hey, you want to learn a racial language? Learn Afrikaans. Or Swahili.
Ebonics isn’t a language, it’s just bad English. It’s poor black kids who grew up in uneducated homes (no doubt as a lasting effect of slavery) speaking improper English. Yes, in spite of the fact that they have an opportunity for an education (even if, in many cases it’s not a less-privileged one) they don’t pay attention in school, don’t do their homework, and don’t learn English. It’s more important in “the hood” to speak like a “hard-ass gangsta”.
But taking a broken education and trying to have that declared an “official” language is a copout. It was never going to work, because in order for it to be declared a language there would have to be rules, and the whole point of that broken ghetto language is that it intentionally breaks the rules. It’s like a big, black, middle finger.
But what I really want to know is, why hasn’t it ended? All the alliteration and “def jam poetry” of Jesse Jackson, Luis Farrakhan, and Malcolm X got them nowhere. When Al Sharpton started speaking English, his popularity grew. And today, we have a black President… but it should be noted that he only speaks English. He studied instead of dealing drugs. He went to Harvard and became a star attorney.
The “black communities” got mad at Bill Cosby when he said black people should stop trying so hard to be “black”, and just start being “people”. Well, that’s sad. He was right.
