Almost everyone is terrified of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Most people will not grasp the concept that the ways that African Americans speak are systematic. AAVE is grammatical. It has its own morphology. It has its own syntax. It has its own phonetics. It has its own semantics. For ready reference, please read the work of Geneva Smitherman, William Labov, John Baugh, and/or Walt Wolfram. These scholars are all sociolinguists (sometimes called variationists). They have done decades of scholarship dedicated to quantifying and analyzing linguistic features of AAVE. Please do the research before forming an opinion. I am amazed at how many politicians, activists, and other pundits speak out against the advocacy of a Black American Language without any knowledge of the scholarship that has been done on this topic. Of course, even all of the scholars do not agree, but I think that the ways that we have been socialized linguisitically do not allow us to accept another vernacular as valid.

I say another because standard English, the god of all languages, is merely a variation of another language. As I have mentioned before, the standard is maintained as such because of political and ideological props. These props do not tolerate many challenges to the status quo. The challenge of federal support of an African American cultural resource has exploded into a national discourse that is heavy in opinion, but light in facts. No one will be teaching public school students to speak Ebonics. The legislation advocates monetary provisions for implementing AAVE in pedagogy and teacher-training. Not that teaching linguistics and language is a horrible idea to me. It isn't. That's just not the issue here. Oakland (not the first school system and not the last) acknowledges the fact that African American students speak in their own language (or dialect if language is too strong a word for you). We all know that in order to make it in America you have to speak the standard. This does not mean, however, that you have to abandon your culture to be successful.

We can teach our children to be linguistically fluid. We just shouldn't tell them that the way that they speak is ignorant when in fact, it is not. We shouldn't tell them that the way that they write is ignorant, when in fact, they are only using features from their language in assignments that require the use of standard English. To track a student because s/he speaks Ebonics is linguistic ignorance on our part, not intellectual ignorance on theirs.

To track a student because s/he speaks Ebonics is linguistic ignorance on our part, not intellectual ignorance on theirs.

I have been using several terms interchangeably thus far: AAVE and Ebonics, language and dialect, standard and vernacular. Our standard was a vernacular. It acquired the status of language. Many scholars and various other cultures consider dialects to be languages in their own right. The AAVE/Ebonics interface is more problametic. Not unlike the historical process of our ethnic self-determination (Negro to colored to Black to Afro-American to African American) , American linguists (white and black) have deliberated and debated about the term to describe the ways that African Americans speak. From Nonstandard English to Black English Vernacular to Ebonics to African American Vernacular English, we have grappled with how to label a language. The politics surrounding the discourse are the same politics that surround ethnic self-determination. These are the politics of identity. Who you are. How you or anyone else identifies you. And why you identify as such.

Please note that I listed the terms for linguistic self determination chronologically. Ebonics was coined before AAVE. I think this might explain some of the resistance to Ebonics from African Americans. (Most of the resistance comes from the inability to challenge the negative stigmas that have been perpetuated about Black people and how we speak). Even though many people are not familiar with the phrase, AAVE, the term Ebonics, because of where it places its semantic emphasis is more akin to calling African Americans colored rather than African American. Ebonics uses phonics and Ebony as its morpho-semantic basis. If people are connecting the discourse concerning Ebonics with the politics and policies concerning self determination then the term Ebonics smacks of social regression. I should note though, that Ebonics was coined by black linguists in a self-determining attempt to move away from the negative connotations of the term, vernacular.

In short, I think that most Americans are afraid of a Black nation language. Summer Payne, a student in one of my classes broke it down mathematically. "Language = Power. Black Language = Black Power. Black Power = fear in America." In my mind, language is the best indication of who we are. The way we speak and write exemplify the ways that we think and feel. Language constitutes our realities. If , in America, there is only one correct way of speaking ourselves then this diverse melting pot is a shameless facade. If we truly respect cultural diversity then there should be no such thing as speaking or writing correctly. Correctness is the death of style and variation in speech and writing. And until we disempower the arbitrarily-deemed standard, we will all be mindless, no-style-havin' slaves to random, standard monuments of blandness.

James Peterson
University of Pennsyvania