Activists Want Kids to Learn Black English in California Preschools
What is going on in this world?
The Black Californians United for Early Care & Education (BlackECE) demanded that California force preschoolers to learn Black English.
What the what?
BlackECE wants to advance “language justice” for black children by challenging “harmful language hierarchies and affirm Black English as a legitimate, rule-governed language rooted in Black history, culture, and community.”
What is Black English? From KQED:
Whether at home or at work as a policy strategist and university lecturer, Ashley Williams said she feels relaxed sliding between Black English and standard English.
She didn’t feel comfortable communicating this way growing up in South Los Angeles.
Williams said that when she was 3 or 4 years old, her grandmother would correct the way she pronounced words like “napkin” whenever she dropped the “p” sound. Her older sister and cousin also told her the way she spoke: “amongst our community wasn’t OK at the schoolhouse.”
Generations of Black children grew up learning that their home language wasn’t acceptable in school or the workplace. Many internalized the belief that Black English — sometimes referred to as African American Vernacular English, or AAVE, African American language or Ebonics — is bad English, loaded with slang and grammatical errors.
“But with that comes a lot of shame and embarrassment because you’re being constantly corrected when you’re still in a moment when you’re just learning language,” she said.
You…you do realize that people of all colors and cultures tend to speak differently at home than they are taught in school, right? The way I still speak at home isn’t acceptable in a school or workplace.
I’m having a hard time writing this post because I’m just flabbergasted.
Williams said, “Black English is full of slangs and grammatical errors so it came with a lot of embarrassment.”
Lady… white people use plenty of slang and make grammatical errors. Maybe get out of your bubble and listen to other people? I saw a commercial for the medicine Skyrizi and thought, “That sounds like something kids say nowadays.”
“We talk about multilinguals, but we don’t include Black children who may be African-American English speakers,” said Xigrid Soto-Boykin, director of the Children’s Equity Project at Arizona State University, told KQED. “We completely miss this subgroup of children that could also benefit from their language backgrounds to be sustained, but also to be leveraged for their own learning.”
Yeah, um, I’d like Williams and the rest of BlackECE to know that when you learn other languages in school, you’re taught the proper way to speak them. The lessons don’t include casual talk or slang.
In other words, it’s no different than learning English grammar and language.
Williams said when she came from a summer camp, “her sister and cousin teasing her for ‘talking white.’”
Teaching a child of any race how to properly pronounce a word or use proper grammar isn’t “white talk.” You’re learning a language everyone knows and can understand, whether you’re white, black, Hispanic, Asian, etc.
Again, when you’re learning Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese, or any other language, you’re taught the proper way to speak and use it.
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Comments
No such thing.
Assimilate and stop butchering the English language.
Or move your “cultural celebration” back to Africa.
Most Africans who speak English speak it better. Many of them better than I do.
And American blacks who try to live in Africa quickly learn they are not wanted there. They don’t belong to any of the local tribes, so they’re eternal outsiders.
I’ve been watching some of those YouTube videos where Europeans visiting for the soccer games are interviewed.
Even the tatted and dredlocked blacks being interviewed speak with the accent of their locales. No “cadence”. No reproductive or excretory words every five seconds.
Yes, you’re either an American or you’re not. If not, GFO. We’ll get by fine without you.
Black English is just a fancy way of saying ebonics. It’s also a good way to sentence your kids to a lifetime of lower earnings.
black english is just a fancy way of saying ghetto english. and people that routinely speak ghetto english usually don’t get far in life.
eot
“I speak jive.”
Comedy is becoming reality.
That’s what I immediately thought.
Jive is NOT ebonics. Jive is existing words used to replace multiple words.
“It’s also a good way to sentence your kids to a lifetime of lower earnings.”
And if from birth they have a name like,
– LaShay’Shawndra, Sha’quandra, Shaquandree, Pinyata, Damika, Lashundra, Demarius, Demarae, LaQuasha, LaQuinna, LaQualla, Chontiera, Chrysta-Shanda-Leer, Chontarria, Ravon, Chontele, Rayquan, Layshell, Kinyarda, Kinyarna, Dayqyuia, Dayqyan, Angharad, Anquanette, Biahnca, Carlandra, Coushatta, Johnecia, Jajuan, Jamaurice, Oatshawn, Shaneedra, TeShounda, Tierra, Valandra, Zakkiyya, Daryl, Q’Antity, Uhlleejsha, Cray-Ig, Fellisittee, Tay’Sh’awn, Placenta, Day’Shawndra, Uneeqqi, Armani-Chanel, Quo’Tatashia, Quanesha, Quanesia, Quansha, Queen-Queisha, Vontae, Devonterray, Mopreshia, Telaphonia-Sheeray, Shinaqua, A’Quariur, Dasunia, Shaquedra, Omarion, Tayshaun, Deron, Rau’shee, Raynell, Quatrelle, Quontrellis, Deontay, Taraje, Jozy, Kerron, Hyleas, Chaunte, Bershawn, They-Quill, Neigh-Quill, Twerkeesha, Felontavious, Lashawn, Sanya, Trevell, Sheena, Ogonna, Dremiel, Chlamydia-B-Me, Velveeta, Vontay, Ladasha, Daahh-Sheik-Eee, Treniece, Starlene, Tarnetta, Latrell, Synorvia, Tradavious, Zarlinda, Quantavius, Trayvon, Shalaska, Dionta Davon, Jamarion Fredrae, Hayden, Aqua-Netta, Treniece, Starlene, Tarnetta, Latrell, Synorvia, Tradavious, Zarlinda, Keisha, Alfonzo, Marcus, Damarcus, Jamarcus, Dontavious, Octavious, Jamaal and the always popular, never-out-of style Lah’Treen –
they be in a rut from which they is no escape.
Add some tats and it’s taps for them.
Some words directly translate… like “Coupe deVille”. Or the great black restaurant… “Chez What”
Not teaching proper grammar at all would have the same result as teaching “black” English. You’ll have kids that speak and write like retards either way.
In the Ninth Grade I had a VERY GOOD English Teacher. She was a “spinster” probably in her sixties or early seventies. She was talked about as a “scatter brain” but I found out she was very smart and organized (had a WALL of File cabinets with tests and book reports from probably the Truman Administration). On the FIRST day she called Roll and when I answered “Here” she asked if Gary S. was my brother and I said “yes ma’am”. She didn’t even look up and said “Well, I hope you’re smarter than he was”! He’s ELEVEN YEARS older than I am! One day she asked “How many languages do you speak FLUENTLY”? Of course we all said “ONE – English”! She said “no you don’t because FLUENTLY means without grammatical errors and I grade all your papers”! She and millions of Teachers are spinning in their graves given the “education” pushed on kids today. And now CA seeks a NEW LOW! Blacks feel OPPRESSED – they should look at the DEMOcrats and their OWN MIRRORS for the sources of their “oppression”!
Not sure I would approve of open negative comments for any ethnicity but content wise, this is a real world message. I had ones of those spinsters for Spanish – she corrected students in class and, gee, we lived ok.
I also had a young (under 25) black English teacher in 11th grade – she demanded proper English all the time (this was 1960’s in a public school). She was excellent.
She said she was teased for talking white. Would that be a form of racism? A common language with common rules are a critical requirement for a united nation. Introduce variations and you have a balkanized country.
Not teaching kids to read and write wasn’t enough? Now they’re going to teach them to speak ghetto patois, so they can’t help but sound ignorant?
Anything to keep them dependent, I guess.
Yes. Then they will complain they can’t get jobs because of racism.
Cash me ou’ sigh! How bow dat?
“What did you do with the pencil I loaned you?”
“Ah poo’ righ’ duh.”
“You mean you put it right there?”
“Yuh. Ah poo’ righ’ duh. Aight?”
Seems like Xigrid Soto-Boykin’s parents misspelled her (or his) own name.
The parents are mathematicians. Xigrid has a sibling named Yigrid.
Their cartes were full.
Don’t talk about Descartes before de-courses.
She’s an Incan Viking — right?
Xigrid is a world class moonbat. Another malcontent on the public payroll.
My Southern English delighted friends from other areas while in the Air Force, especially when I exaggerated for effect, but sometimes they were surprised to hear me slip into an almost neutral style when I didn’t want to be amusing. If I could do it, these ghetto rats can do it, too. But they have to want to first.
I’ll never forget the night one of my AF buddies told me, “Y’know, we all know you’re from Alabama but you sound really intelligent.” Ass.
.
One of my shipmates who happened to be black caught a lot of flack from most of the other blacks about his clear, non-cadenced and non-crude English. And this included flack from a CPO (E-7) who made his life hell.
He however was keeping his eye on the prize. Bought a Tandy TRS-80, added memory, got Fortran and COBOL compilers for it, and learned programming in his off times.
Didn’t expect to ever again think about the Trash-80. I think we finally took the Kaypro suitcase to the dump right before Covid.
Had a customer come in and talk to me about some items. Suddenly, he asked me, “Where ya from originally?”
Told him, “Louisianian, born and raised.”
He said. “You don’t sound like you’re from there. You sound like you’re from a far, exotic place like MICHIGAN.”
37 years on, and that conversation still makes me chuckle.
I grew up in Lafayette, LA. (Acadiana, heavy old French accents). I went through middle school and high school in Grand Isle (old Creole accents) {It’s on the coast below New Orleans if you look on a map.}
But most people do not hear ANY Cajun/French and ask me why. They usually assume I’m from the midwest or occasionally parts of the northeast (not Boston or New York) because I have very little accent. I CAN however slip back into some of the frenchy stuff if I hang around old high school classmates and TRY to pick it up ~ I don’t choose to very often.
I tell them I have TWO reasons:
First: My mother taught me to read and by 2nd grade I could read 3 levels above with ease. She also taught me to LOOK UP WORDS that I didn’t know. She also taught me to use the pronunciation guide in the dictionary to speak those words ~~ it had NO accent.
Second: We had a marina and I was servicing boats for customers … adults who spoke like adults and tipped well according to service and respect. I learned that speaking “their language” garnered better tips than speaking like my teenage classmates. I made good money, they stayed broke.
Maybe my experience is the exception, but I think not.
I usually take on the accent of those around me. But when I do it around the negroes, it’s more out of derision rather than being a more interesting way to speak than I normally sound.
“Black English as a legitimate, rule-governed language rooted in Black history, culture, and community.”
Sure… sure…
Right after black English class, they can go straight to manual cotton cultivation for Black folk.
You couldn’t harm little black kids more if you hit them freely about the head with baseball bats.
Me? I’d school them in the manner of 19th century one room school houses. McGuffey readers and so forth.
They’d be far better off.
Followed by Obsolete Farm Machinery 101
Ouch ! !
PS: ALL kids would benefit from the one room school house days. Kids with “tsechl” (smarts) could move along faster. And YES! McGuffey!
I have a video about some college student abandoning today’s texts and learning from century-old books. Should be an interesting view.
In college, I got an elementary education degree. At the time, we had to take standard English, History, biological science, geography and other generally required subjects. We also had to have a physical science class but geared to basics. I got half a semester of: Astronomy, Geology, Chemistry and Physics. It was the best class I had.
I taught my 4th, 5th and 6th graders basic chemistry, geology, astronomy and human anatomy – at all levels of schools: Wealthily, standard middle class and the last school with 25% child immigrant, 33-35% American born black and the rest, caucasian from welfare to upper middle class. They all got the same curriculum. It worked – they loved the lessons.
To this day, I still smile recalling their comments. Enough. Oh, I used different science books.
If you’re going to teach black English in school, you’re going to need black English books. All the great literature should be available in black English. Naturally whites should be required to learn it too, unless you’re going to go back to segregated classrooms.
Driver’s license exams should be available in black English, especially for CDLs..
Products advertised on tv would see greater sales if the commercials were in black English seeing how the majority of people in them are black anyway.
No, no, no. Literature read in black English classes should be the great works originally authored in black English. There’s a rich history of such literature, yes?
I recall reading Uncle Remus’ “Br’er Rabbit” and Mark Twain’s “Huck Finn” … and found it very difficult because of the dialect writing in those.
A few years later they were removed from the “acceptable reading lists” because they were RASCIST!
Both had great growing and learning lessons for anyone not too myopic to understand the messages.
This seems like the perfect candidate for an after school program.
Nobody aksed for this nonsense.
Even those wearing ASK body spray?
I have an absolutely wild suggestion: How about teaching kids actual English?
Or is that too radical?
I thought Ebonics was dead.
What goes around comes around. And we’re right back to ghetto english.
I was a beat cop in Hawaii, on the west side of Oahu, a very, very local area. Lucky I had lived in Hawaii for some years so that I could understand many of the people there. Not saying everyone could only speak pidgin, but there were plenty who did and never ventured into standard English.
A lot of these folks were functionally illiterate. A host of times, I had to get written statements from mostly young folks. Their writing was barely comprehensible. One guy actually asked me to write his statement, cause, “You know, officer, I go school Hawaii.”
I remember this crap with ebonics in the 80s. The stupidity endures. Teach yourself mushmouth…
This seems to be a West Coast thing. Oakland was big on Ebonics.
It’s trash. Want to make a good first impression then speak proper English that everyone can understand. I don’t care what you speak at home.
I used to recruit prospective professional employees at Florida A&M. Every student I met was dressed impeccably, had good posture, looked me in the eyes while shaking my hand, and introduced themselves with flawless grammar and diction without accent. These students competed for positions at major financial and legal concerns. It can be done, and is done well at that HBCU.
It’s all about what expectations you set.
100%.
There have been several excellent comments here.
Ebonics is a scam. I do not have the exact reference ready, but circa 1995 there was a very large push in Oakland to teach Ebonics in public schools. This got lots of discussion, and eventually there was a peeling of the onion for the reasoning. The proponents eventually claimed that Ebonics had to be taught because black students were too stupid to learn English. This caused quite a stir. Further investigation showed that the real reason for the Ebonics push was a teachers’ union scam: more need for teachers, and those teachers needed to be certified in Ebonics. All that was going to cost money and take time. Meanwhile, no black student was going to be taught anything, some group of professional educators was going to be paid to develop the courseware.
Now 30 years later, it is time to re-run the scam. More teachers… more courseware… more delay… no closure criteria! Certainly no students can be taught English … rinse and repeat.
Harsh, but true: in a just world, the people running this scam would be run through a wood chipper and left to rot along the fence line of MacAurther Bvd behind Oakland High School.
Black English is as rule-governed and complex as standard English. It’s not random. A native black English speaker can detect a fraud as easily as a standard English speaker. There are many more rules than are written down that give you away if you’re not a native speaker.
Nevertheless speaking black English marks you as uneducated and illiterate, whether justly or not.
You think you’re speaking intelligibly.
You are not.
So is Klingon and Oregon want to embrace that. The first three letters give this demand by those blacks… assimilate. If foreign born families strove to learn English, why to local yokels?
“Finna”
It’s a patois and indicative of low-education and hostility towards the majority. Justice Thomas grew up speaking Gullah, but you won’t hear him giving speeches in it.
It’s not patois. It’s pure laziness. Finna -> fixinta -> fixing to, which is an obamanation in itself, yet being from the south, I use ‘fixinta’ myself.
Finna is mushmouth negroese.
Dems want to keep black people down. This proves it.
I grew up in NC and I heard black dialect which is not English. In some of the small coastal towns the local elderly blacks would speak dialect that was very hard to catch without practice. I wondered what I kept hearing and my first grade teacher explained to me that these dialects were remnants form the slave years. This was 1952 so slavery was long over, just not Jim Crow. Dialects, accents and other grammar short cuts were common then even among whites.
That was likely Gullah you heard.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah_language
Yes — the most famous native Gullah speaker is Justice Thomas.
A friend of mine had a black friend who owned a second hand shot. Once, he overheard a conversation between a black man and a black lady.
She said to the black man “Dit you weigh um?”
He replied with something intelligible and Bill asked Scotty after they’d left,
“What do you do, Scotty, sell shoes by the pound?”
Scotty wasn’t understanding his question so Bill related the conversation he’d overheard. Scotty’s reply?
“Oh, she was asking if he tried them on!”
Dit you weigh um? -> Did you WEAR them? (Did you try them on).
They need to play preschoolers videos of Barbara Jordan speaking.
Paging Barbara Billingsley…
Does black English employ the Oxford comma?
Yes — famously, it’s the only comma known that begins with M.
Years ago one of the flight attendants on my flight was a very nice black woman who spoke beautiful English with a slight Southern accent. While talking to her on a layover, she told me that she had two sisters who were educated as she was and also spoke well but refused to and criticized her for not speaking in black slang. She said in black culture speaking correctly was a sign of not being black and was frowned upon. That was in the ’80s so it’s been around a long time.
This is called the ebonics and it meant that you couldn’t communicate
And two decades earlier, the dialect was called “jive.” However, linguists used to call it Black English Vernacular, but of course, it’s now African-American English Vernacular. We aren’t the only country with such diverse dialects that some people can’t understand some of them.
I once had a job where I had two black coworkers. The one with only an associates degree was a good worker and a good communicator. He spoke so that he could be understood. The one with a bachelor’s degree had a chip on his shoulder and spoke ebonics to everyone, white Americans, Chinese engineers, Indian Engineers, Arabic Engineers. He had to repeat himself a lot. I hope that chip on his shoulder held him back.
CA public school system has gone to rot over last 25 years. Ranks bottom 10 in country. Sanctuary state with 3 million illegal aliens residents, and no citizenship verification for public schools. Classrooms have 1/3 students who cant understand instruction. The black student achievement gap is different issue common to other states.
It’s pretty common in some European countries with many regional dialects or variations for schools to teach a “standard” uniform version of the language. Germany and Italy are two examples of countries with distinct regional language dialects.
My undergrad professor of German was raised in Hamburg. He got his Ph.D. in Marburg. He said once that he couldn’t understand the local women in the market when they were conversing in the local dialect. The need for a standardized national language was clear.
And people still spoke the local dialect at home and in any other conversation involving only locals. By then – 1950s – it wasn’t controversial.
And if you doubt this affects employability… despite being a native Austrian, Arnold Schwarzenegger was not allowed to dub his own movies into his own native language because his distinct regional accent would have undercut his image as an action hero to his moviegoers.
Talk about harsh.
This is true. Germans consider the Austrian accent as ‘Hick’.
There is no such thing as “black English” because it isn’t English. Period.
And who has ever heard of “white English”?
Linguists have been writing about Black English Vernacular (BEV) for many decades. Of course, it has been renamed to African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). It is a dialect with surprising features. I was reading a paper published by linguists from a university in Singapore. It was published in English, and it was about the lack of copula verbs in the Indonesian Language. The authors pointed out that lacking copula verbs was rare, and named AAVE as another example.
what a blatant / racist waste of resources–ca seeks to force preschoolers to communicate / comprehend the language extant in a subset of what, 13% of the population of our country ?–a language used / employed by products of the most spectacular social-engineering failure (aa/dei/crt, etc) of the 20th century ?–no–our national language is english–it should be the fundamental task of schools to assure students are taught to speak/read/write our national language that they may function in our culture but, more importantly, so they can eventually think for themselves
Insane. IF ONLY Founders or Congress had required standard English as our national language. This is SO sad.
In the ’60’s I had a friend in the very wealthy suburb of Cleveland. The high school had a number of American born blacks (I hate that term – they are NOT black). They were teased/made fun of by other blacks for “speaking white, acting white” etc. Then, possibly but today, all this will do is hurt and isolate them. Speak it at home or with your friends, but….in general public, no.
I’ve been to or taught or camped with people from at least 62 nations (Yes, I tracked them). In every communication, they wanted to “practice” their English in stead of me “practicing” whatever I could. However, most did appreciate American attempts at their language. The stories I have are many. – Americans who want to speak Ebonics, fine but it is isolating.
U actin’ WHITE, dawg!
Remember when the Euros complained about all airline pilots having to speak English and asked “Why?” And our SOS, Colin Powell supposedly replied, “Because we won the …………. war.”
“Word up — wassup, my niggas? Imma pick us up some fine-assed hos, ’cause I’m the mack-daddy, pick up some blunts from mah nigga, Tyrone, then pour one for my homies.” Then, I gotta buy some gats and nines, so I can be strapped for the next beef.”
It’s Ebonics and the left has been trying to do that in California schools since the mid-1970s. It started small scale in places like Oakland CA which had been trying to bring ‘ghetto’ language into the school. By the mid-1990s they’d succeeded.
Oakland has some of the worst schools CA which, once great, is now in the bottom-half of public schools in America.
‘Lecturer’. You know who was a guest lecturer and not a Constitutional lawyer? Yep. Borrock obama.
Isn’t that really segregation version 2.0? Not segregated by school, but segregated by class.
Kids already graduate unable to speak correct english. Now they want them to be taught how to mutilate it on purpose?
I would have no problem with having African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) as an elective in middle school. The kids from preschool to fifth grade ought to be concentrating on mastering standard American English, though.
Cunning linguists refer to this shuck and jive-ass palaver as AAVE (African American Vernacular English).
“… because you’re being constantly corrected when you’re still in a moment when you’re just learning language,”
Yes, that happens when you learn a language. Or anything, really. Nobody gets everything perfect right out of the gate. Everybody gets corrected. Get over yourself.
Keeping them noncompetitive in the market, anchored in the hood. Err, Plantation, since this is probably being pushed by Leftist White Women.