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The Back to Ebonics movement has been around for a couple of decades. It gained some traction in the seventies during the era when everything Black was pronounced as beautiful. Emerging from the ugliness of segregation and Jim Crow laws which did see the systemic evisceration of the dignity of Black individuals, the Black is Beautiful slogan was understandable from the standpoint of psychological preservation. Ebonics—the Black Vernacular that is believed to capture the unique and singular way many Blacks speak—was regarded by many as a means of also protecting the dignity of Black self-expression.
Few in academia, or in mainstream society for that matter, took the Ebonics movement very seriously. Everyone knew that if any Black person wanted—at minimum—a job as a hotel receptionist, a customer service agent in a call center, or a clerk in a retail store, he or she would need to speak standard English. The latter was the lingua franca of business and commerce, and that was not about to change. If Blacks aspired to achieve economic parity with their compatriots, then they would have to become bilingual.
Lately, the Back to Ebonics movement has morphed into a devoutly nasty and pernicious new form. It has transmogrified into a hegemonic call to replace standard English as the norm. It regards requiring Black students to use standard English as anti-Black linguistic racism. Blacks required to speak standard English are believed to experience violence, persecution, dehumanization, and marginalization. The leader of this movement, a Black professor at the University of Michigan by the name of April Baker-Bell, has sponsored a document to abolish what she calls “White Mainstream English.” She believes that Black students who are forced to write their papers in mainstream English are victims of Anti-Black Racism.
The idea that standard English speaking and writing requirements are emotionally harmful, as Baker-Bell claims, goes beyond shallow identity politics. It is rooted also in the de-colonialist and Anti-Western civilization agendas that seek to eradicate from school curricula and educational models any European universal foundations that underlie pedagogy, method and content. If reason, logic and the idea of an objective reality are declared racist, then little need be said for why language, based on objective rules of grammar, should be seen as anything but the arbitrary imposition of Dead White Men whose goals are to marginalize the speech practices of non-white speakers of English. Baker-Bell is part of a phalanx of educators who think that grammar is racist—that is, the grammar that governs the use of standard English.
If Baker-Bell (pictured above) and the promoters of “Black English” were simply advocating non-stigmatization of the language, then few would have issue with them. It is generally not advisable to induce shame in people who experience their emotions and their identities in whatever form of language in which they communicate. Few ordinary speakers of Black English outside the academy, I believe, would go so far as to call what they speak another language. They regard Black English for what it truly is: broken English, a rendition of a type of American patois. Linguists who argue that chronic grammatical infelicities, such as verb/tense and subject/object confusion with interrogative pronouns such as who versus whom, are irrelevant as a metric for differentiating between standard English and broken English are dishonest. They are operating from the principle of some kind of political expediency or political correctness.
To indict white speakers of standard English as linguistic colonizers and imperialists is untenable and empirically false. To begin with, millions of non-white and non-native English speakers voluntarily learn the language with great zeal for the simple reason that it is the global language of trade, commerce and business. There does not seem to be any bottom-up resistance to learning English from immigrants all over the world. The resistance comes from a cabal of race hustlers who are totally fluent in standard English. Most of them have good facility with the language, and they pen their academic prose condemning standard English in eloquent English. They know that Black English is incomprehensible and unintelligible in written form—as are all forms of patois.
But why would educated Blacks who write and speak standard English as well as any white person campaign for Blacks to not have the same opportunity to achieve facility with the language? What’s in it for these race hustlers who are paid large sums of money to lecture to white progressives on how they should alter their pedagogical styles and expurgate standard English requirements from their syllabi? It is not care and concern for the well-being of Blacks. It is a struggle for power, a struggle to continue creating a vast underclass of uneducated Blacks who will speak in a manner that will render them incomprehensible and lower their intelligence quotient in the minds of those with whom they speak. The goal is to indoctrinate as many Blacks as possible to see oppression and linguistic terrorism and identity annihilation everywhere—just in case they are tempted to see opportunity and upward mobility through mastery of the English language. For these race hustlers, the contempt they have for uneducated Blacks is reprehensible. In their minds, the options are clear: either the white alt-left will exercise a coercive monopoly as a managerial vanguard over Black victimization and suffering, or they will play second fiddle in the cult of victimization.
Blacks are mere pawns for white progressives who have staked their identity on Black oppression and suffering. Such whites are moral sadists because to continue justifying their existence, they wish to see Black people suffer under racial oppression. When this official oppression ends, as it already has, they cease being the masters of time and human destiny. They are more like conservationists or racial preservationists than anything else, and they are more devoted to preserving Black authenticity, race consciousness, and the very notion of Blackness which they love to pit against and contrast with themselves, since it reinforces an exotic caste system between them and the Other. Their own whiteness is brought into sharper relief, the more authentically Black the victims and their needs appear. Devoid of any such neediness in their own aspirational leanings, they are relieved of any stains of Blackness, and hence, enjoy a sense of racial purity. In assuming responsibility for Blacks, they assume a greater share of humanity and moral agency in themselves than they do for others. They expropriate the agency of racial minorities so they can speak for them, to them, and, in essence, determine who among them is qualified to count as their racial spokesperson. Just so long as he or she plays by the racial script and respects the hierarchical ordering among the designated role of advocate and victim, all will be well. In so doing, they trespass on the autonomy of Blacks and other minorities and eviscerate them of their dignity. Their sense of superiority is unmistakable. People who regard other people as their moral equals either leave them alone to make their own way, or, when they are aggrieved, address the injustice quietly and move on after it is resolved.
The new Black race hustlers will have none of this. A strange atavistic tribalism rears its ugly head. Better for them to keep their own people downtrodden on their terms. Laboring under the aegis of a strange “white envy,” Black race hustlers such as April Baker-Bell become the new slave holders of their own people. They are the most condescending set of prejudicial narcissistic elitists who know that Blacks, if taught standard English—and a basic solid education in general—could learn adequately and prosper. But where would this leave these elitists? They would not be anything special anymore. What they fear is expanding Black excellence, for it shores up their own mediocrity and renders them powerless in the world. They have no leverage over whites unless they have makeshift victims they can parade before them and taunt them into feeling collective guilt. There is no greater hell for a Black race hustler than an empty and meaningless world, meaningless without guilty whites who exist to atone for some ill-defined sins they have committed against Blacks.
Baker-Bell’s Black English and anti-standard English agenda are gaining traction. As she gives seminars around the country on linguistic racism and eliminating white standard English altogether from society, educators take notes and make pledges to alter their teaching styles and requirements. In other words, her top-down approach is making inroads among educators and administrators who create policies. Teachers will be punished for penalizing Black students who turn in essays not written in standard English. Broken English (or Spanish or French) renders one incapable of clearly articulating one’s thought and feelings. Baker-Bell and her cohorts do not want an assembly of proud Black English speakers. Such a situation would see an unassimilable group of marginalized people who would, in a crucial way, be outside the pantheon of legitimate language users.
What the professor wants is to emancipate Blacks from standard adherence to traditional punctuation and basic mechanics of grammar and enunciation. In effect, she wants to relegate Blacks to primitive backwater swamps where they sound like grunting farm animals. She will be their interpreter. On the question of who will speak for whom, she’ll be the appointed delegate. Since she thinks we should all speak Ebonics, she’ll argue that any difficulty in understanding and appreciating Black English stems from a deep-seated proclivity for seeing white standard English as neutral, normative, and objectively superior.
The sins of her agenda go deeper. Since Black English is broken English, any attempt to elevate it to a level of superiority by demonizing standard English is an attempt to mainstream mediocrity and demonize excellence. It is an attempt to reduce everyone to a statistical average, and to the lowest common denominator. Since mastering a language is an amazing achievement that requires skill and discipline, the nihilistic and lazy impulse to dispense with rules ultimately stems from an agency that was never fully civilized. Language is one of the unifying conventions that bind us in a shared identity as a people. All Americans never will speak in Ebonics; Baker-Bell knows this. Her goal is tribal. It is for groups, really, to have their own languages and, like beggars making invidious comparisons among their sores, to vie for supremacy based on an amalgam of suffering, victimization, and iconic innocence. To convince others that the broken language is the most exalted and politically superior and least oppressive among all mainstream standard languages, is to demote excellence to the level of the sub-human and promote mediocrity to a model of artificial perfection. This is manufactured stupidity which, when codified, becomes rank stupidity. Since language is primarily a tool of cognition—one cannot think, form concepts and abstractions without formal language—the attempt to have everyone speak, and therefore think, in Ebonics is a devolutionary move; to take humanity back to the primitive stage of speech and to slide cognitively back into a primordial state of human non-development.
This agenda fits squarely with the trans-human and post human movements which, for all the vagueness surrounding their definitional status, advocates a destruction of the human condition as we know it. It finds pride of place with academic movements pushing for the de-centering and annihilation of whiteness in the universities and in corporations such as Coca-Cola.
When the moral integrity of language is undermined, with full malice aforethought, then the civic virtues that bind us as a nation-state, such as trust, social cohesion, patriotic commitment to a shared understanding of the public good, pride in country, and benevolence and good will towards our fellow compatriots, get destroyed. Factionalism and tribalism assume ascendancy. Mediocrity is enshrined. Excellence and greatness are ridiculed and demonized.
It’s not that Americans will be speaking Ebonics. It is not even the case that the majority of Black Americans will need to speak it. It is only sufficient to ensure that the language in which truth and justice, and the means of proving and protecting them, are destroyed. If the language in which the inalienability of our rights is rejected as oppressive and harmful, then the rights we enjoy will be regarded as mere privileges that were created by a bigoted minority to exclude Blacks and other minorities from the pantheon of the human community. “Rights,” therefore, will be regarded as mere social constructs that will be rearticulated according to the new Ebonics patois that, by its nature and according to its vanguards, has a built-in logic of egalitarian fairness and non-oppressiveness.
Let us not kid ourselves. Professor April Baker-Bell and her ilk are not real scholars, and their fields of studies are illegitimate. Calling for the elimination of standard English cannot be a proper field of any academic discipline. What the Governor of Michigan needs to do is sign a law into effect banning the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies that make it possible for welfare scholars such as Baker-Bell to be employed in higher education. This is not an infringement on academic freedom, since such work is merely hate speech and propaganda masquerading as scholarship.
If we understand that the move to raze Western civilization and make white people extinct comes in many guises, and that Baker-Bell’s demand that all Americans speak Ebonics while canceling standard English is part of a systemic and comprehensive Final Solution by avowed nihilists to genocide an entire civilization—then we won’t feel as if we are fighting lice in a vacuum in this case. We will simply be destroying part of the rot before it fully turns to fertilizer.
Clawhammer says
Brilliant analysis. DEI must be stopped.
Jason Hill says
Yes, DEI is pernicious. Thanks for the support!
Alex Bensky says
The idea that you need to instruct black kids in Ebonics is faulty, anyway. Black kids watch tv–apparently they watch a lot of it–and they understand standard English.
My grandparents were refugees from what is now Poland and my mother came here when she was six, with them. When she was about twelve, meaning she and her mother would have been in the US about six years and my grandfather five years longer, my mom was trotted out for the neighbors so my grandmother could brag, “Judith is studying Shakespeare in school.”
My grandparents would have been appalled at the idea that the schools should teach their children in the Yiddish-English patrois they spoke, and they’d have recognized it as such. Their grandchildren became doctors, lawyers, teachers, businesspeople, and so forth. There’s a connection.
Jeff Bargholz says
“Ebonics” is a fake term anyway. It’s not as though American blacks (and some truly bizarre whites) who can’t speak basic English properly use consistent grammar. Syntax, semantics, pragmatics, phonetics, morphology, and phonemes vary from place to place and person to person. “Ebonics” has no real structure, it’s just a euphemism for the way some blacks speak improperly. Speaking improperly ranges from mild to full retard.
My girlfriend has a mild case of “ebonics” but it’s just enough to make her endearing instead of annoying or unbearable. She has some bigoted notions about whites, too, but her son told her I’m right when I point them out and he wants to meet me, LOL.
Faker-Bell is so racist and bigoted she defies parody. If she isn’t quite deranged, she’s definitely deluded, although I seriously doubt her sanity.
Laurence says
If theywant to eliminate “whiteness” they should move back to Africa. Plenty of Black people speaking Swahili there.
Jeff Bargholz says
Swahili is a pidgin language, which is why you suggested it, I suppose.
SPURWING PLOVER says
Do we need anymore reasons to pull out of the United Nations then this? We want no part of the Global Community and the UN/one World Government
Mo de Profit says
They are achieving their goals of division because Marxism needs division.
Right now I am personally sick of black people which the leftist elites will use to justify their dumb theories that all white people are racist.
Back in the 60s when real racism existed what did the blacks do? Start to compete. Tamla Mowtown is one example and they found their feet and grew.
Today they whine and cry about how oppressed they are while sitting on their comfortable sofa eating burgers and getting fatter by the day.
RAM says
Mo de Profit says
Brilliant, thank you.
Jamie Bolden says
exactly, well put.
The Retired Viking says
Something I am noticing more and more. One sees news reports on TV of this or that disaster, and the whites interviewed talk about individual and neighborhood efforts to get things cleaned up and going again. The blacks interviewed talk about the government needs to do more to help them.
Or, it will be some other thing where they are asking for the help (and, presumably, money) of others rather than getting up off their fat behinds and doing for themselves,
This goes all the way back to Katrina. I resided in Nashville at that time. I already knew better than to give money to scams like the Red Cross, Goodwill, or to the United Way. There was a local church with two chartered trucks in their parking lot. They wanted food, paper goods, sanitary goods, batteries, and other useful things. I asked where they were going. “The Mississippi Gulf Coast. Bilox and nearby!”
Had they said New Orleans I’d have gone home. Instead I went to a local store and brought back canned goods, batteries, paper goods, and a half dozen can openers and told them to “have at it”.
New Orleans coverage showed people sitting, doing nothing, and in TV interviews, were waiting for gubmint hep. Some coverage of the Gulf Coast showed folks out with chain saws, come-alongs, and other tools, starting to clean up and dig out. They were not “waitin’ fo hep”.
Jeff Bargholz says
Fatter and whiter by the day.
Snuffy Carter says
Now I understand why VP Ho speaks the way she does – we thought her speech was a word salad – but now we know that she has just been speaking ebonics along.
CK says
That’s because she was Willie Browns Ho…..had her feet in the air too long!
Sir Peter says
On her knees too long
Jeff Bargholz says
I heard she uses the knee pads Bareback Hasbeen Obama left in the White House.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Just be honest about it, which neither of them are. It’s 2023, after all.
Jeff Bargholz says
Heels Up Harris fakes it. Her phony “ebonics” accent is atrocious and inconsistent. She only uses it for public appearances. She’s a phony as Bareback Hasbeen Osama and the unnatural fake accent and speech cadence he uses in public. Neither of them live in the “hood” or eat fried chicken and collared greens. They’re both complete frauds. Hell, Khlamydia is married to a white guy.
Algorithmic Analyst says
Thanks Jason!!!
Jason Hill says
Thanks for your support.
Intrepid says
Great get rid of standard English and create yet another generation of angry black people who will complain about “de white man keeping me down. Sheeeit!”
“Hey, you know what they say – see a broad to get dat booty yak ‘em.
Leg ‘er down and smack ‘em yak ‘em!
Cold got to be! Sheeeit!”
Jeff Bargholz says
I didn’t understand that sentence at all! I wonder if Faker-Bell would? I seriously doubt it. She’s a fraud on top of being anti-white.
My girlfriend pronounces “shit” as “shyit” when she’s mocking something. I imitate hert to make her laugh. If she pronounced it “sheeit'” I would seriously reconsider our relationship.
Chief Mac says
Can’t tell you the number of time I have “axed” something. My response is always the same- “No you cannot axe me, I am not a tree. You can ask me anything”
Poetcomic1 says
That’s innerresting.
Jeff Bargholz says
I always say something like that when somebody says that. Good naturedly, of course.
Noah Andeark says
There were 49 contestants in the Miss Ebonics pageant. Nobody wanted to be Miss Idaho. At least until Kamala came on the scene, and Willie Brown came on Kamala.
Jeff Bargholz says
I like the way you added to the old joke, there. 🙂
Sword of The Spirit says
More AA bulls__t. All of us, except the useful idiots like Biden, are getting sick of it. At some point white people MUST begin to stick together.
Jeff Bargholz says
By “stick together,” I’m sure you mean defensively and not as an identity faction.
RAM says
This radical crowd attributes to whiteness every human quality or behavior that builds or maintains civilization. How is this different from the old, discredited argument for white supremacy? I see that these radicals oppose civilization, and their favorite pejorative term is “white”..
Cajun says
Whiteness has brought them every advance in science and technology. They would be living in huts and building fires without whiteness. Kind of like their ancestors did before they blamed whiteness for bringing them here.
internalexile says
What de f__k gwine on here? It must break Jason Hill’s heart to watch this, after all his uplifting work and effort.
roberta says
I dont remember who authored an article here on FP/The Point a few months ago, but it went deeply into explaining the importance having the ability to explain and think in detail, with a thorough vocabulary.
For example, if a problem arises in your life that you must think through (most of us think the problem through silently in our minds using english) If we are using a poor mental vocabulary, we will get bad results.
Animals use instinct, we should use clear detailed thought. Ive always found it difficult, but I do understand the importance of unobstructed thought.
Anyhow, at the time the article was published, I was finishing up my bi-yearly reading of Orwell’s 1984. I was reading about Newspeak. This was the first time that the idea of Newspeak really hit me. The article broke through a barrier in my mind, it explained the idea of Newspeak (to dumb down), and the genius of Orwell. The man was on another level. He was a gift to mankind.
Ill quit with this now. Ebonics is Newspeak.
Curious says
I tremble to think what human life in this world would be like if Mr. Orwell had not written that book.
Tom Kelly says
You rarely hear of spelling bee champions It used to be reported on all news networks. But most of the winners are either Asians, or whites,. So throw out the report and celebration of this event.
They might even eliminate the spelling bee contest for good..
Laurence says
Net Geo has eliminated its georaphy contest because smart Asian students kept winning.
Jeff Bargholz says
And of course, a movie was made about a black girl who won a spelling bee.
Poetcomic1 says
“Black English” is originally 19th century white low class Southern English with a lot of slang and such mixed in. This has been well proven.
Angel Jacob says
There is something seriously wrong with people who have been born and raised in America for generations and can’t even speak the language.
Forcing everybody else to stop speaking their language to appease this group is not the correct answer.
Stan says
What’s really funny and sad is that if you’ve ever met an African immigrant to the United States, you realize that they speak better English than native born blacks. I guess they paid more attention in school!
Joe says
They probably learned from British teachers.
Jeff Bargholz says
A lot of them speak better English than native born whites. They may have accents but many of them use excellent grammar.
Jeff Bargholz says
It’s just more racist BS from the usual suspects. Why be like Ben Carson or Condoleeza Rice when you can be like a rapper from some gutter? And of course, force whitey to go along.
Steven Howe says
Thanks Jason for exposing those that seek to do good by doing evil. There are so many opportunities to gain your 30 pieces of silver. Folly to those that achieve gain by using the weaknesses of men.
Jason Hill says
Thanks, Steven. The battle continues. I appreciate your support.
Jeff Bargholz says
I seriously doubt an anti-white bigot like Faker-Bell proposes this evil idiocy with good intentions, but Hill’s work is good.
Ugly Sid says
Entropy.
Noble movements degrade into rackets.
Reverend Ike mounted upon a high horse.
James says
Her contact. Blast her!!!
https://marsal.umich.edu/directory/faculty-staff/april-baker-bell
RobL says
I wonder if anyone informs the ‘students’ that they will most likely never be hired by reputable companies if their best foot forward is ‘ebonics’. It just isn’t going to fly.
Cajun says
Right…they may as well wear their pants below their ass.
Jeff Bargholz says
I wouldn’t be too sure. People have built highly successful careers on less.
Larry Andrew Singleton says
Why is Jason D. Hill into the “black people are special” BS by using upper case “B” for black and lower case “w” for white that I see in all these woke leftist “anti-racist” and “racial equity” screeds?
Jason Hill says
Do you know who I am? Are you identifying me as a woke leftist? Did I read correctly? Do I have to put you in the category of village idiot, or are you juts a nefarious individual? How do you know whether it’s an editorial decision to capitalize black or not? Where in all the millions of words I have written over the last 35 years of my life have I ever advocated that black people are special? I, who have denounced race pride and identity politics. Educate yourself on my ideas and work before spouting such nonsense.
Larry Andrew Singleton says
Yeah, I get that ass/u/me thing. I’m just going by what I was READING.
Are you telling me you’re not aware of that upper case “B” and lower case “w” issue or that you didn’t read this article before it was published?
And FYI; Like Daniel Greenfield and others you’re one of my go-to guys when I read FrontPage Magazine.
Also, I could literally write a book about racism based on my own “lived experience” back in the 70s. I keep throwing that out there but none of these race hustlers ever respond.
Feel free to look up my Fakebook page.. I’ll be more than happy to have a conversation with you.
FatherGuido says
Yet these same people will call me stupid and backward becuase i speak with a hillbilly drawl and know where yonder is.
Jeff Bargholz says
Does it annoy you when Yankees say “ya’ll?” It bugs the Hell out of me and I AM a Yankee. It’s an asinine affectation, in my opinion. It’s even worse when they write it. Every Yankee who says it should be forced to watch every speech Pedo Joe has ever given one after the other with their eyelids held open like that Roddy McDowell character in “A Clockwork Orange.” Either that or sprayed in the face by a skunk.
Seekers says
Any teacher who uses Ebonics is daily lessons should be fired immediately. Are we approaching the point at which bowing before blacks becomes a legal white obligation? This is some serious outbreak of crazy.
Jeff Bargholz says
Not bows, genuflection like Nasty Pelousy and Schmuck Schemer, get it right. Although I wouldn’t recommend wearing one of those retarded, psuedo-African scarves.
Luz Maria Rodriguez says
Anyone who pushes non-rigorous, non-precise language whether written or spoken, or who pushes vagueness or slovenliness in written or spoken expression moves backward toward the grunt communication of prehistoric caves.
Cajun says
Let blacks see how far ebonics get them in career and life.
Kasandra says
Well, when they don’t perform well in a society that recognizes and uses rule-based language, they can complain that they’re being discriminated against and need “programs” to artificially increase their income and “achievement.” Oh, wait.
Jeff Bargholz says
Outside of Hollwood and the world of rap/hip hop, not far. Not that I know what the difference between rap and hip hop is supposed to be.
Alec Rawls says
The only reason Black English exists at all is because of the government monopoly on education. If black parents had school choice they would never choose to send their children to schools that didn’t require them to use standard English, just as they would never send their children to schools that tolerate violent aggressors.
But Democrats want blacks to remain a people apart, marked by a dialect born of the deprivation of education that Democrats for so long forced upon blacks, and marked also by an ever growing stigma a black criminality.
That keeps most blacks dependent on welfare for their continued survival, so that blacks as a group remain a bought voting block for America’s party of welfare, the Democrats.
And yes, public education in America absolutely is a monopoly. Monopoly power is defined by barriers to entry and the barrier to private schooling is that parents must pay double tuition.
They still have to pay for the public schools through their property taxes (whether they rent or on their own home), then have to pay the full private tuition on top of that.
Double tuition is one of the highest barriers to entry anywhere in the economy. The monopoly power of the public schools is extreme.
Subsidization does not require socialization. That some parents may need public assistance to afford a sound basic education for their children is no excuse for stripping parents of their right to choose how their children should be educated.
Kynarion Hellenis says
Why can’t black English remain a dialect? it springs from the culture created by blacks in America and is one of the things that binds them. When they speak it amongst themselves, when strangers use it in their midst, it communicates something about the speaker that says “I understand you.”
The purpose of language is communication. Everything Dr. Hill says about its connection to thought is spot on; but even so, let standard English remain the lingua franca for the United States.
Dale McNamee says
Isn’t it both interesting and hypocritical of these “college professors/scholars” benefitted from speaking proper English and are employed by a white created college/university system?
Chris Shugart says
I’ll start taking ebonics seriously when they start publishing ebonic dictionsaries, encyclopedias, literature, magazines and newpapers in this wonderful new language. Let’s all start holding our breaths for that now.
Tailspin Tommy says
Doesn’t D.I.E. mean diversity, inclusion,and equity.
It will be every persons demise.
Snuffy Carter says
So, when is the black affirmative action Harvard President Gay going to start an Ebonics major for her university?
She could take the budget money from the English department, so funding for ebonics classes will not be a problem for her.
Picture this: a future Harvard grad walking down the street, speaking ebonics, wearing his pants below his butt, and waving a Palestinian flag – then President Gay can declare: “my mission is accomplished here at Harvard!”
Jeff Bargholz says
Now that’s funny.
Verneoz says
“Few in academia, or in mainstream society for that matter, took the Ebonics movement very seriously.” The Ebonics Movement was an outgrowth of the Black Panther Separatists of the 1970s. These Black activists told young Black students that trying to make good grades in school classified you as “trying to be White” and assimilating & good grades were unacceptable and took you away from your “roots.” This thought process also transitioned into the immigration processes to what we see today with immigrants…illegal & legal. None of them are required to assimilate and adopt American customs and ideals. So all the hate and division we are seeing more of today is a direct result of these social justice reforms that were set up to create this division in our society.
Jeff Bargholz says
The left actively encourages immigrants to refuse to integrate with American society and often to even to self segregate. Just one more reason in an endless list to hate leftism.
Lightbringer says
My father grew up in a little coal town outside of Pittsburgh in the 1910’s and ’20’s. He and most of the children he grew up with did not speak English; their parents came from a number of different countries. The international children learned a little bit of a sort of English patois from their playmates whose parents were Appalachian-American, from the played-out coalfields of Kentucky primarily. When they started school, anyone who used “hillbilly English” got whacked on the knuckles with a ruler, wielded by and implacable teacher with unswerving standards when it came to the English language. They all grew up to speak perfect American Standard English without an accent or recourse to the word “yinz” as the plural of “you” (which is already the plural for the second person). None of them seemed to be brutalized. And all of them were, by the way, white.
William A Henslee says
As a PH.D candidate at a large Texas university I taught English 101 from 2000-2003. The department head was a big supporter of Ebonics and required the department staff to allow Black students to use Ebonics in their papers. Of course the students knew they could get away with using Ebonics. What was I to do?
I had no basis with which to grade the excellence of any paper in its use of Ebonics nor to compare one paper to another. Mindful of my own career as a beginning academic, I took the coward’s way out and gave every paper an “A”. It has bothered me to this day that I didn’t do more for those students to teach them standard English.
Jeff Bargholz says
Let me guess. The department head was white.
Mark Sochor says
“What we have here is failure to communicate”. Our country is divided enough. Now we have millions of non-English speaking illiterate illegal foreigners invading our sovereignty, and these Afrocentric professors want to further complicate our interactions. Based on some of the writings of our so called elites struggling with English. They think we can all drop off to Ebonics and clear up inequality of outcomes? Misguided? Absolutely! Never going to happen. We can’t get the kids to pay attention in school as it is.
BONNIE says
Jason D Hill, I admire your writing style. After 60+ years, I am profoundly disappointed that the same racial divisions are emerging as a second coming similar to what some refer to a Second Coming of Christ. I’ve already been through this once already. It is as if we learned nothing. Some of the hustlers do not wish to assimilate. I am of a different minority (but Caucasian), and have never blamed anyone for my shortcomings except myself. We have had the Reconstruction Amendments, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in addition to our beautiful Constitution in which it is enshrined that all are created equal, so go live your lives, everyone.
George says
I would like to see Jason Hill’s analysis of the racial psychology of Hussein Obama as pertains to being half white, half black.. He has a deep seated hatred of white Christian Americans, so does that mean he has a deep seated hatred of half of himself?
Jeff Bargholz says
It means he’s deranged.
Jeff Bargholz says
“Conservationists or racial preservationists.”
That’s exactly how I viewed whites in Indonesia when I lived there, especially the tourists. They felt like they were on a safari among little brown people who should never adopt any Western ways, even though the Indos are avid practitioners of most Western culture, conveniences and customs. They love shopping malls, that’s for sure. The safari b’wanas were usually European rather than Australian, American or Canadian, and they would defend any Indonesian custom or law no matter how bad. “It’s their country, so it doesn’t matter what you think” was a typical refrain. I paid taxes so what I thought did matter and they were so politically correct they weren’t even aware of their condescension. They thought they were protecting their precious safari wildlife from a great white hunter or colonialist. Many of them were visibly annoyed when they walked past me in remote areas or backwater cities. Obviously they felt I had intruded on their safaris. It didn’t enter their thick skulls to notice I was always with Indonesian companions and they weren’t.
They actually held Indos in low esteem and were oblivious to that fact. They were just like white leftists in America in regard to black Americans. As if Indos or American blacks can’t care for themselves and need b’wana whites to do it for them.
And Faker-Bell is definitely encouraging tribalism. Lefties are all about identity politics nowadays, especially racial, with sexual in second place. As if demographics are groups or identities. “Hetero normative” whitey is the oppressor and everybody else is oppressed. It’s obviously based on communism with class replaced by “identity.” Whitey is the “bourgeoisie class” and everybody else are the “worker class.”
It’s a load of crap now as then. It demeans and harms the very people the white leftists and blacks like Faker-Bell purport to help. They’re all racists and make American life worse.
You’re completely right about this “ebonics” nonsense, Hill.