I cannot recall feeling so unqualified to write a college essay as I have on the topic of Ebonics. What do I know? I'm a middle-aged white guy, an engineer, at that! I work at a predominantly white firm, I live in a predominantly white neighborhood, my kids go to predominantly white schools, and my family goes to a predominantly white, upper-middle class church. In my day-to-day life, I only rarely come into contact with people with whom I cannot converse in English. In most of those instances, I'm able to communicate in Spanish (I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Latin America). The smattering of French that I picked up when I worked in Paris doesn't seem to be of much use in the American Southwest.

From my international experiences, including a fair amount of time spent in the Pacific Rim while serving in the Navy, I've come to appreciate what it can mean to live and work in a place where you don't speak the language very well, if at all. I have been the stranger in a strange land. There are social and economic consequences for not being proficient in the dominant language of the area in which you live.

What I don't have much experience with is being in a place where the English that was spoken was so different from mine that it was useless to me (although I do recall a Sunday afternoon visit to the Eiffel Tower where I rode in an elevator with some soccer players from East London whose Cockney was so thick that I didn't have a clue what they were talking about). I was brought up speaking the kind of standard, middle-of-the-road American English that you heard from Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley. It was the same English that everyone around me spoke. I was taught to speak clearly, and not to mumble. Clearly-spoken English was a sign of intelligence while mumbling and slang implied just the opposite.

I knew a little bit about accents and dialects. Texans said "y'all" and the Kennedys got their education at "Hahvad." Some accents were respected, others were mocked. Though occasionally the target of jokes, a Boston accent was accepted without any associated negative stereotypes. But nobody really wanted to speak like Gomer Pyle or Jed Clampett. Those television characters spoke with accents that were meant to stereotype them as uneducated rural folk. Gomer and Jed were good people with a certain country wisdom, but they were not educated.

When I first heard of the Ebonics issue through the news media, I think my first reaction was something along the lines of "That's stupid." While it only made sense that children of first-generation immigrants from Asia or Latin America would need some special help with English, it was difficult to accept that black children born in Oakland might need that same help. My thinking was probably along the lines of Rachel L. Jones, a professional writer and president of the Journalism and Women Symposium. Ms. Jones is black. Writing in Newsweek (1997), Ms. Jones argued that clearly-spoken English is a ticket to economic and professional success and that her "proper speech" is a testament to that. She maintains that hard work and clear speech are the elements of success.

But what, exactly, is "clear speech"? If I am talking to you and you can't understand me, is it because I am not speaking your language clearly, or is it because I am not speaking a language which you understand? In either case, there is a language barrier that must be overcome if we are to communicate. If this failure to communicate occurs in a business setting, then there are clear and immediate business implications. Sales and customers are lost. Motivated by economic concerns, the natural forces of commerce will find a way to correct the problem. On the other hand, if this failure occurs in an educational environment, students and futures are lost. A heavy price is paid, but there is no natural force to correct the problem.

Education is communication. It is only through communication that teachers are able to help learners solve problems that the students would not otherwise have been able to do on their own (Tiffin & Rajasingham, 1995). This kind of scaffolding eventually leads a child to become a successful adult who can function in a particular community (Gage & Berliner, 1992). The Oakland School Board Resolution on Ebonics (Linguist List, 1997) was an attempt to recognize and correct a problem of educational communications in an effort to enable the success of their students.

In its simplest form, what the Oakland school board said was that an identifiable group of students was not succeeding, they thought they knew why, and they were taking steps to fix it. What could possibly be wrong with that? There are those who would argue that the resolution was not well written and had many flaws (e.g., Dorsett, 1997). But we shouldn't let mistakes in the way that something is said prevent us from hearing what is said, especially when it involves the education of our nation's children. That would truly be a failure to communicate.

Dorsett, C. (1997, February 22). Black English, Looking to the Future: 21st Century Racism? [On-line]. Available: http://members.tripod.com/~cdorsett/ebonics.htm

Gage, N. L., & Berliner, D. C. (1992). Educational Psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Jones, R. L. (1997, February 10). My Turn: Not White, Just Right. Newsweek, 12 - 13.

Linguist List (1997, January 19), A. R. Aristar (Ed.). Revised Oakland resolution [On-line]. Available: http://www.emich.edu/~linguist/issues/html/8-56.html

Tiffin, J. and Rajasingham, L. (1995). In Search of the Virtual Class. London: Routledge.

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