Lessons in Ebonics: What's Up?

Image by marcelebrate via Flickr

By: John McWhorter

One of the hardest things for a black linguist is getting across, once and for all, something that the public never quite seems to get: Black English is not bad English.

Over the years, people have tried. But it doesn't help to say Black English is African with English words, as we heard back when Oakland, Calif.'s school board was thinking about using Black English as a teaching tool. For one thing, there's no such language as "African," and besides, we can all tell that Black English is a kind of English, period. The question is what kind.

Others tell us that the slang is "rich." Or that Black English is a people's "home dialect." But none of this ever makes anybody respect Black English more, except those few who already did. A thoroughly reasonable person, black or white, may think, "Yes, Black English is African, rich, homey and wrong."

What does not come across in most defenses of Black English is that it's intricate. This will be the first of a few columns I will be doing, once a month, touching on one of the ways that Black English is not just "warm" but fierce. Today, let's look at what's up. CONTINUE....