Bashing Black English: the pundits got Oakland wrong.

Twenty-five years ago I published in this magazine an article on Black English explaining that the dialect, although socially stigmatized, is not merely careless speech; it has a definite structure, probably influenced by the languages that West Africans brought with them. The article ("Black Children, Black Speech," November 19, 1971) recommended that teachers recognize Black English as a nonstandard style of speech, learn the differences between the dialect and the standard, and teach the children the standard speech style without trying to denigrate the dialect.

The immediate response to my article was the same kind of furor caused by the Oakland School District's announcement in the fall of 1996 that its teachers planned to do this very thing. Critics ridiculed the Oakland plan, making unwarranted assumptions about it, and disparaged the teachers and the school system. Why? Because they seemed determined to misread the purpose and intent of the proposal, as well as the actual details of Oakland's curriculum requirements.

Newspaper columnists were the worst offenders. Despite vehement denials on Oakland's part, writers like Leonard Larsen of the Scripps Howard Syndicate (see the Massilion, Ohio, Independent, December 28, 1996) portrayed the school system as planning to teach the standard subjects - such as math and science - to Oakland's students by using the dialect instead of Standard English and to secure federal money to do it. In a syndicated column, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post ridiculed the notion that teachers need to learn anything about Black English in order to teach the standard to the children. Bill Maxwell of the Saint Petersburg Times decried "the foolish acceptance of Black English...as a distinct language," characterized the dialect as "a bastardization" with "few redeeming qualities," and concluded that the only way to combat its use was to do what his own teacher had done: embarrass those students who use the dialect. According to Maxwell, his teacher had informed students that dialect speakers were "murdering the English language"; her use of confrontation and sarcasm, Maxwell reported, "scared us to death." Cornelius "Pat" Cacho, who volunteers as a school advisor and grew up speaking the dialect, wrote that although he understood the "noble objective" behind Oakland's proposals, the latter had to be rejected because the program "recognizes Black English as a distinct language" (Naples, Florida, Daily News, January 19, 1997).

Armstrong Williams, a syndicated columnist and talk-show host, declared that "teachers should not learn slang or bad English, just like [sic] doctors should treat the patients and not contract the illness." Other columnists wrote that the Oakland schools were using the issue of black children's speech merely to get attention and money. Thomas Sowell decried "the self-serving fairy tales coming out of Oakland," and Mike Royko parodied Black English by writing an entire column in what he believed to be the dialect, ridiculing Oakland's program as a ploy for obtaining government money. Roger Hernandez of King Features Syndicate asserted that "teaching black kids proper English is secondary for proponents" of the Oakland plan and claimed that for the teachers "the actual teaching of proper English to kids who need to learn it seems not to matter much."

All these commentators might have avoided their mistakes by simply finding out what Oakland actually proposed. Securing and reading the plan is as simple as typing "Oakland" into a computer and getting a search engine to display it on-screen. It took me about a minute, even though I didn't know the title of the document, to locate a copy of the Oakland Unified School Districts "Synopsis of the Adopted Policy on Standard American English Language Development." I found Oakland's web site at http://www.ousd.k12.ca.us/oakland.standard.html, and I printed the six pages of the synopsis in about two minutes. The site, I discovered, even provided an opportunity to respond with my own comments via e-mail at this address: [e-mail]. So I typed in my remarks and several days later received a courteous e-mail reply.

Oakland's plan is so far from what the commentators claim that the contrast is startling. First, it's clear from the plan that Oakland's goal is to bring African-American children's Standard English proficiency up to the same level as that enjoyed by children who come to school speaking the standard, so that black children can achieve academically at the same level. Second, Oakland understands that teachers need to know how the dialect differs from the standard so that they can better teach the standard. Third, Oakland plans to avoid insulting black children and their families. By avoiding ridicule of the dialect as "bad" or "sloppy" or "slang," the plan aims at inspiring students to reach a high degree of excellence in the standard. But you would never know any of this if you had read only the commentators cited above.

Oakland's e-mail statement also attempts to demolish the most common misperceptions about the plan: "The district is not teaching Ebonics," it states. What could be clearer? (After all, why teach kids what they already know?) As for the accusation that Oakland is using the issue in order to pilfer state and federal funds, the statement says that "nothing could be further from the truth." "All resources of the district," including "all categorical and general program funding," will be used to ensure mastery of the core curriculum by all students.

The commentators who criticized the Oakland plan were talking through their hats. They had not bothered to read the plan, just as they probably never bothered to consider the proposals I made twenty-five years ago about teaching Standard English to inner-city children. Maybe they're the ones who are using the issue to make money!

In mid-January, the Oakland school board, reacting to the criticisms, did clarify its original resolution. It had never intended, it said, to give the impression that black children's speech was a separate language, as Spanish and English are separate languages. If the original resolution had led the public to believe that the Oakland schools would require that core subjects be taught in Black English, that was never the plan's intention. Furthermore, the original resolution's description of black children's speech as "genetically based" had not meant to imply that there was a biological basis to such speech. Rather, the term had been intended to connote that Black English had its origins in long generations of shared speech patterns. And as reported in the New York Times (January 14, 1997), instead of referring to "black children's language," the new resolution uses the phrase "the language patterns they [black children] bring to school." The new statement also describes the program as pointing out the differences between Standard English and the dialect by noting "African Language Systems' principles" such as the omission of certain sounds and other grammatical features. In other words, children will be made aware of the particular differences between their speech and the standard, and they'll be required to learn to use the standard. Proficiency in English is still and always has been the goal.

Ironically, the headline on the Times story read not "Oakland Rewords Its Resolution on Black English" but "Oakland Scratches Plan to Teach Black English." As if Oakland had ever planned to teach Black English in the first place! Apparently, even those with a firm grasp of Standard English can get the story wrong.

RELATED ARTICLE: Poor pedagogy

Teachers sometimes make the situation worse with their attitudes toward Black English. Typically, they view the children's speech as "bad English" characterized by "lazy pronunciation," "poor grammar," and "short, jagged words." One result of this attitude is poor mental health on the part of the pupils. A child is quick to grasp the feeling that while school speech is "good," his own speech is "bad," and that by extension he himself is somehow inadequate and without value. Some children react to this feeling by withdrawing; they stop talking entirely. Others develop the attitude of "F' get you, honky." In either case, the psychological results are devastating and lead straight to the dropout route.

It is hard for most teachers and middle-class Negro parents to accept the idea that Black English is not just "sloppy talk" but a dialect with a form and structure of its own. Even some eminent black educators think of it as "bad English grammar" with "slurred consonants" (Professor Nick Aaron Ford of Morgan State College in Baltimore) and "ghettoese" (Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, the prominent educational psychologist).

From "Black Children, Black Speech" Commonweal, November 19, 1971

Dorothy Jane Mills (also known as Dorothy Z. Seymour) is a writer, book editor, and manuscript consultant. Linguistics is one of her specialties. Her 1971 Commonweal article has been reprinted and anthologized more frequently than any other article in the magazine.