We're studying the 1996-97 Ebonics controversy in RHE 310 right now. I asked students to read, initially, articles from the Washington Times and New York Times reporting the Oakland School Board's adoption of the Ebonics resolution and, then, the original resolution itself (as well as the amended resolution and the Linguistics Society of America's Resolution on the Oakland "Ebonics" Issue).
I asked my students to rhetorically analyze and respond to the reports in both Timeses. Many of their posts on our blog argued that, while we may justifiably concede that Ebonics is linguistically legitimate, we need to recognize that Standard English is required for success—and for circulating in middle-class America. Of course, I would suggest that this conclusion skips a step—and hence, misses the most crucial point. We should instead ask another question: should Standard English be required for success?
Of course, the other question we should ask—have asked, and answered—is what "the standard" looks like; and yet, even after concluding that we can't really say, except that it looks much like the language I use, whoever I am, students—and others—can't abandon the idea of the standard. I say others because in my dissertation writing group yesterday, readers of a conference paper I'm presenting in a few weeks asked whether my critique of a standard meant I wouldn't correct students' "mis-use." (While I wouldn't "correct" them for unconventional usage, I would make a rhetorical point about how they might expect their audiences to respond to a violation of convention.) Why is this always the reaction people have to challenges to the standard? I would suggest it has everything to do with imagining the standard as unchangeable, as too powerfully entrenched to be modified. Isn't this defeatist thinking at its worst? The equivalent to thinking one's vote in the presidential election doesn't matter? Of course, it doesn't, in either case, except that the aggregation of such attitudes does--and doing nothing effectively reproduces the status quo (in both cases).
(Incidentally, spell-check highlights Ebonics as a misspelling: apparently, it's not a word. What should we conclude from that??)
