Date: Thu, 2 Jan 1997 15:02:34 +0100 (MET)
Subject: M-G: COCKROACH! extra...( In defense of Ebonics!)


COCKROACH! extra...( In defense of Ebonics!)

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1.  In defense of Ebonics!

2. Anthony replies.

3. Rakesh replies:

4. Daniel

5. Malecki

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 In defense of Ebonics!

I see that a big debate is raging (on Usenet) over the subject of children 
being taught a language which they appear to understand. In fact more then a 
debate it appears that a lot of things are coming because of this stuff.

I think that any of the major groups of peoples who recide in the
United States should be able to have the right to a language and the
language can be determined by just those people. Whether the language
is "Jive", Spanish, or whatever is irrevelant.

The point being that children should be able to communicate and be
involved in the learning process despite which language is used.

Hats off to the teachers and school district who were bold enough to
take the bull by the horns and get involved withis stuff!

When it comes to the black minority who historically has been
oppressed in the United States "freedom of speech" in any language
should be garanteed and free!

Not only that. There are not stupid children. Just poor, racist and
unjust envionments created over ages of oppression of blacks in the
United States. And if Ebonics is one way of reaching these children
and communicate knowledge to them Great! Think in ten years we could
have newspapers in Jive, school books in Jive, TV and Radio in Jive. 

Finally, no wonder the right wing is going nuts. To have to face
perhapps in the future blacks running for political power on a program
of social social revolution and not even being able to understand what
they were saying. I think the right wiong should take a crash course
in "Jive" before its to late! 

I mean if you are going to get thrown out of office you should at
least know why...

Warm Regards
Bob Malecki
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Anthony replies;

Just to play Devil's Advocate here and to try to incite some debate, I
want to pose the following question to the list:
Does Ebonics, instead of breaking down walls and like barriers, instead
erect new ones?

Any thoughts?
--------------------------------------------------------
Rakesh replies

>Yes. For two years, I taught one period of either composition or history at
>a local high school. One morning I brought in an essay in defense of "Black
>English" after we had in weeks previous discussed and written about Richard
>Wright's "Black Boy" and  the music of Billie Holiday. The essay was a
>favorite of undergrad minority students at UC Berkeley; the high school
>students however were insulted by the glorification of incorrect English
>and argued they had no desire to be taught this language in the classroom:
>the world of books had been opened to them by Wright and the metaphoric
>power of language demonstrated to them by Holiday. I was exhilirated by
>their response.
>
>In other words, I think it is possible to distinguish the blues from Black
>English or Ebonics for that matter. Though the blues has been at the center
>of American cultural life-- see Mary Ellison's fine survey Extensions of
>the Blues (NY: Riverrun Press, 1989)--I think that  Jennifer Jordan is
>correct to argue that even in the case of blues there is a reactionary
>tendency to  "hold on to the soul feeling, the ironic combination of
>anguish and joy that grew out of our Africanness, and the degradation of
>slavery, that serves...more as a palliative than as a force of liberation."
>(In Adolph Reed, Jr., ed., Race, Politics and Culture. Greenwood Press,
>1986.)
>
>More to the point: I was never convinced that the syntax of "Black English"
>derives from a West African language (which one?), and I have felt myself
>partial to Oliver Cox's assessment that Black English developed in the
>unreconstructed South as a demonstration of the peon's physical and mental
>subordination, backed by terror and lynching in particular.   This would be
>to suggest that the function of language is not only denotative.
>
>So no argument from me....
>
>Rakesh
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Daniel replies;

so far so good but maybe we should look further and not be so "logical
rational pragmatic and realistic (or so we think or pride ourselves in
being)" and think about meditate on ponder on the ironic (organically
poetic) richness of language in general no matter where we find it....isn't 
there enough room for all lagnuages? what language would we truly want to 
castigate? and lets not get piddling about what is and what isn't a language 
(someone said that a language is a dialect with an army to back it up). why 
should it be so exclusively the realm of linguists philologists 
anthropologists ethnographers psychologists psychiatrists philosophers 
advertisers business men military planners city planners lawyers diplomats 
scientists engineers scriptwriters IMFers WORLD BANKERS sociologists poets 
novelists sociologists news anchor women and men newspaper journalists and
editors professional educators (yuh really gotta watch out for them not that 
they are innately evil or anyhing; they'er as basically good as anyone (and 
I do believe that most people on the planet are basically good but they'er 
doing too many wrong things and gittin' ripped off t' boot.) educators it 
seems too often forget or never knew that folks are truly self-starters and 
self-educators; professional educators are usually paid to through an 
official block against a human beings' natural (meaning from birth) tendency 
to spontaneously self-educate etc. etc.? ...i.e. specialists or experts of 
one kind or another get the license to get into all kinds of esoteric stuff 
in and about the use of the generation of and the policing of language but 
the plain ol' student of stuff in general don't get t' be treated to such 
high fallootin'(sp?) things as being respected for who and what they are and 
for the language they naturally speak (every relatively exterior takes 
priority over the nourishment of the
human soul and heart; heart and soul ain't practical enough; ain't real 
enough)...I say take a human being as you find her/him...and by the way 
(instead of buy the way) Oakland Schools did not propose to *teach* Ebonics 
(let's not distort from the git). the Oakland Schools did not (did not, do 
not) propose to **teach** Ebonics or whatever it should truly be called (try 
language of a particular people); Oakland Schools wanted its teachers to be 
acquainted with the language their students spoke so as to better 
communicate with them better understand them respect them empathize with 
them vibe with them (what better word than vibe? a low-life word? come on 
now folks lets really get real 'n' come down off o' all this playing 
ourselves against one another; allowin' ourselves t' get played in the name 
of some kind o' raging unconscious bottom-line-istic positivism.). what's 
really wrong with that folks? and don't forget Finnegans Wake! there seems
to have been a general retreat from accepting the challenge of the
endlessly creative power of language wherever it is spoken and by whomever 
it is spoken...language always bursts beyond our attempts to corral or 
hierarchialize it. often folks who have been oppressed and that's most of us 
on the planet truth be told tend to be ashamed of their most amazing powers 
flowers and intuitions * especially when confronted by one bottom line 
requirement (state corporate economic terrorism etc. even the so-called need 
to get a degree or the so-called need to get a high-school diploma...care to 
get radical?) or another...

* self-illuminating and self-organizing potential (goes with anarchism in 
its essence also goes with what some very advanced "scientific" and other 
"thinkers" (musicians artists writers painters...certain remarkable ones, 
much too often,  very marginalized) "think" muse and act upon these days.).

Daniel
--------------------------------------------------------
Malecki replies;

Very Nice Daniel! I agree with you on this. But there is a political aspect 
to this stuff. Rakesh when he replied was talking as some uppity professor 
who strickly is translating some unwritten or written rule about how English 
is suppose to be. Who made the rules? and Why did they make the rules? one 
of the central political reasons in America for the use of the English 
language was to break any group coming in from its former culteral and 
language heritage into the anglo saxon white  protestant rule. But for 
blacks who came over as slaves have been around almost as long as the first 
settlers it is for entirely different reasons that the language question 
developed and looks like it does today. 

And in fact the question of ebonics is not just a question of having a 
"open" attitute towards dialects or street languge which for anybody with 
and english major would claim to be wrong. But a pedogogical question of how 
to reach a large group of children who have been put outside the boundaries 
of a normal learning process in rascist America! To deny this is to deny any 
kind of reality and coming from any socialist a scandal. As if slang is not 
class biased-some excepted as normal like the west coast "dude" shit or the 
gutter slang "Fuck you" world and all of a sudden people start getting 
principles about how english is to be spoken when it comes down to Ebonics!

This is and outrage. Who sets up just what type of language is acceptable. 
Naturally it is the ruling class. Certain deviations from the norm are 
completely acceptable-even certain elements of ghetto street language as 
long as it turns a buck. "Rap" for example. But children who have no 
language but the one they developed outside of the system and because the 
system put them in the situation. Now that appears even for some of our 
Socialists here at MI to have stepped over the line. I personally condemn 
anybody claiming to be Socialist who doesn.t defend the "right" to Ebonics 
for these kids for at best being unconcious rascists. And second best are 
trying to find all kinds of excuses to justify not defending these children 
in having street language as their first language. I futhermore say that 
learning this street language which is both *real* and quite widespread in 
certain ghetto areas is far more important in the learning process then 
trying to stuff any english-english down their throats. 

Because the learning process does not work that way. It works much like how 
Daniel in a partiell way describes it. I say even more that these children 
are not stupid nor backward. The envirionment that was forced on them by 
society over a long historical period of slavery, racist, unequal and injust 
society are responsible for the development of a group of kids who have most 
incredibly found a way to communicate amongst themselves just because 
society put them in the situation they find themselves.

I say once again I stand upon my first statement as the only principlty 
correct position to have on this subject. And anybody who thinks that it is 
wrong should try and prove it. Not try some sort of slick side stepping the 
issue as Rakesh does.

In fact Rakesk if i rember correctly you have and Indian (India) in your 
background and i am quite sure that this question is vital in India also. I 
would not doubt that it is directly connected to a lot of stuff like the 
caste system. And your friend Zeynep in a certain sense this language 
question on Ebonics is connected to the language question for the Kurds. So 
it is really going to be interesting to see how Rakesk gets out of his first 
what i feel in the bones "hauty" ,Tupp, Tupp", and all that reply!

And Finally this question is a very serious question not only for Americans 
but the entire International workers movement. Because in the final analisis 
it is only the working class movement Internationally taking political power 
that can solve the language question in a simple and democratic way. Simply 
by saying speak what ever you want. Because we will not use language to 
oppress any of our poor and working class brothers and sisters.

Bob Malecki
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http://www.kmf.org/malecki/

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--------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------

http://www.kmf.org/malecki/

Read the book! Ha Ha Ha McNamara,
Vietnam-My Bellybutton is my Crystalball!

COCKROACH, a zine for poor and workingclass people
NOW ON LINE
--------------------------------------------------------





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