The Black Californians United for Early Care & Education (BlackECE) demanded that California force preschoolers to learn Black English.
Great idea; have them learn poorly pronounced English so no one in the Western world understands them.
The group wants to “end harmful hierarchies.” They say they’ll make Black English “legitimate” and show it is “rule-governed, rooted” in Black history and culture.
This will only divide us more and put Black children at a disadvantage. Proper English is what the Brits speak, and we should all learn proper English.
What is Black English or Ebonics?
KQED reports that university lecturer Ashley Williams explains. 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 about 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.
Here are some examples of what they want to teach young children:
Grammar
“He be working late.”
“They going to the store.”
“I’m finna grab some food.”
“I ain’t got no time for that.”
“Why they ain’t coming?”
“Sometimes, it do be like that.”
Certain sound changes and phonetic patterns are also characteristic of the dialect.
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- Th-fronting: Pronouncing the “th” sound in words like “those” and “that” as “d” (e.g., “dose”).
- Consonant cluster reduction: Dropping the final sounds in words, such as pronouncing “ask” as “aks” or “hand” as “han.”
- Non-rhoticity: Dropping the “r” sound when it isn’t directly followed by a vowel, such as pronouncing “library” as “library
Frequent use of the “F” word is also popular.
It would be insane to teach young Black children to speak Black English. They are already getting terrible educations in some of these urban schools.
There is a proper way to speak every language, and mispronunciations aren’t, even if they are Black and are offended or hurt.
Teaching a child of any race or nationality to properly pronounce a word or use proper grammar isn’t “white talk.” You’re learning a language everyone knows and can understand. No amount of rationalization or claims of hurt feelings can change that. Dumbing down children is never a good idea.
People who don’t speak proper English or any language properly sound ignorant. Reportedly, if you criticize Ebonics as I am in this essay, you are allegedly a linguistic racist. That is just another way to silence dissent. Ignore it.
What next? This is just too ridiculous.
