Effects on Education

Many educational policies and services are determined based on a child’s native language. Students who speak languages other than English may be eligible for special programs to help advance their English fluency. Oakland educators realized correctly that many of their African-American students were at a severe educational disadvantage because they lacked adequate proficiency in standard English. Rather than argue that AAVE speakers were in greater need of standard English fluency, however, Oakland educators argued that black students were linguistically akin to others for whom English is not native.

Depending upon which definition of Ebonics one chooses, ensuing policy and economic decisions can have profound social, educational, legal and political consequences. Imagine the budgetary impact of expanding bilingual education programs to include African Americans; clearly, neither educators nor politicians had ever pondered or planned for such a prospect. Moreover, the highly articulate speech of African Americans who are in the public eye, such as Bryant Gumble, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Oprah Winfrey serve as constant reminders that many blacks have mastered standard English without any benefit of (or apparent need for) special educational programs.

And so, we still do not have one single definition of Ebonics. Few Americans who use the term know the care with which Robert Williams painstakingly described the linguistic plight of enslaved Africans. Of more immediate educational importance, efforts to increase standard English proficiency among American slave descendants of African origin have never been fully addressed. Yet, I know of no fair-minded U.S. citizen who would claim that black students are any different from other American students who are far more likely to succeed if they can be helped to obtain greater standard English fluency.

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African American English Index

Suggested Reading/Additional Resources

Coalition on Language Diversity in Education
Proceedings of the Coalition’s 1998 conference: Language Diversity and Academic Achievement in the Education of African American Students.

Stanford University Ebonics Page
Links to writings by scholar John Rickford, as well as many useful links

Ebonics and Linguistic Science: Clarifying the Issues
Walt Wolframlays out some of the arguments surrounding the controversy

Ebonics, Math Scores, and the Way Children Learn
by Richard " Doc" Rioux - “No matter how I've tried to understand the logic of declaring Ebonics a language, I can't escape the view that the effort is demeaning to American children of African descent”

Double Standards
Geoffrey Nunberg discusses press coverage of the Oakland controversy and linguists' reactions.

Baugh, John. Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice. Oxford University Press, 2000.

Blackshire-Belay, Carol. “The Location of Ebonics within the Framework of the Africological Paradigm.” Journal of Black Studies, 27 (no. 1) (1996): 5-23.

Linguistic Society of America. “Resolution on the Oakland ‘Ebonics’ Issue.” Washington, D.C.: Linguistic Society of America, 1997.

Smith, Ernie. “What Is Black English, What is Ebonics? ” The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language and the Education of African American Children. Eds.Theresa Perry and Lisa Delpit. Boston: Beacon Press, 1997. 49-58

Toliver-Weddington, Gloria. “Ebonics (Black English): Implications for Education.” Journal of Black Studies 9 (no. 4) [special issue] (1979).

Williams, Robert. Ebonics: The True Language of Black Folks. St. Louis: Robert Williams and Associates, 1975.

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John Baugh joined Stanford University as Professor of Education and Linguistics in 1990. Prior to his tenure at Stanford, Dr. Baugh served as Associate Professor of Linguistics and Foreign Language Education at the University of Texas at Austin and as Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Black Studies, Sociology, and Anthropology at Swarthmore College. Dr. Baugh has published extensively in the fields of Anthropology, Education, Legal Affairs, Linguistics, Sociology and Urban Studies. His work bridges theoretical and applied linguistics, with particular attention to matters of policy and social equity in the fields of education, medicine, and the law. He has conducted extensive research regarding the social stratification of linguistic diversity within the U.S., Austria, Brazil, Hungary, South Africa, and the UK, and is actively engaged in ongoing research that examines the evolution and dissemination of English and other European languages in post-colonial contexts throughout the world. Dr. Baugh is a past president of the American Dialect Society and a member of the usage advisory committee for the American Heritage English Dictionary. He has also served as consultant on several documentary films related to American language and as an expert witness in court cases where matters of voice recognition and language attitudes have been central. Dr. Baugh received his B.A. in Speech and Rhetoric at Temple University and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. He currently sits on the Boards of the Consortiuum of Social Science Associations, Eastside Prep, Raising a Reader, and Project Pericles.

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