In this unit, you will learn what ebonics is, what it's features are, and various theories about how it arose, including:

• The Creolist View
• The Eurocentric View
• The Afrocentric View
• The Unified View

We will also read about the socio-political issues surrounding the 1997 Oakland School Board's approval of a proposal recognizing AAE as the primary language of African-American students. Finally, we will explore three different educational approaches to taking AAE into account as a means for helping African-American students do better in school. These approaches include:

• The Linguistically Informed Approach
• Contrastive Analysis
• Starting with the vernacular, then switching to the standard

READINGS:

• The African-American English section of the LSP Website, including:
  • Background
  • Features
  • AAE phonology exercise

• Rickford, John, "Suite for Ebony and Phonics," AAVE: Features, Evolution, and Educational Implications, pp. 320-328.

• Rickford, John, "Using the Vernacular to Teach the Standard," AAVE: Features, Evolution, and Educational Implications, pp. 329-347.

DISCUSSION:

For this discussion, I would like to explore the soci-political issues surrounding dialect differences. Rickford presents the public sentiment against accepting AAE in public schools as a covert form of racism against African-Americans that is perpetuated by the media. He asserts that the media manipulated the Ebonics controversy by presenting only one side of it. "Covert racism" is a phrase coined by Jane Hill in reference to "mock" or "junk" Spanish. Examples of "mock" Spanish include "Casa de PeePee" for a restroom sign, "Hasta La Vista Baby" as precursor to violence in movies, and the Taco Bell dog as a symbol of the stereotypical Mexican-American male. Hill asserts that in our hyper-sensitive politically correct American culture in which overt racism is considered inappropriate among most White, middle-class people (the most frequent users of mock Spanish), mock Spanish serves as a covert form of racism that often goes unnoticed and unquestioned. How do you think that Hill's notion of covert racism through mock Spanish applies to the late 1990's Ebonics debates? Was the public and media outcry against the recognition of Ebonics as a valid dialect of English a form of covert racism?