The Art of the Spoken Word

The artistic use of the spoken word in African American culture today draws on and reflects a rich literary and musical heritage, and the interaction among these genres, as in the past, has produced some of America's best-known art forms. Just as Langston Hughes and writers of the Harlem Renaissance were inspired by the feelings of the blues and the African American spiritual, contemporary hip-hop and slam poetry artists are inspired by poets like Hughes in their use of metaphor, alliteration, rhythm, and wordplay. Similarly, the experimental and often radical statements of the Black Arts Movement developed a synergy with cutting-edge jazz and funk music that would expand the boundaries of African American cultural expression, and thereby provide space for increasingly alternative political ideologies to be raised, discussed, and acknowledged.

Black English: Educators Face Barrier of Language

January 13, 1986 |SANDY BANKS | Times Staff Writer

" The boy, he be goin' to school." " She cain't play till she do her homework." " I ate my toas, den I run to school." " He have a book."

They may sound like mispronunciations and grammatical mistakes, but these sentences are not merely examples of imperfect English. They represent a language of black America--a consistent, predictable language with its own rules of grammar and punctuation.

" The boy is going to school." " She cannot play until after she does her homework." " I ate my toast, then I ran to school." " He has a book."

The phrases are simple enough, but they do not come easily to children who have spent their entire lives speaking a different kind of English.

So, for many of the black students in Los Angeles schools, these textbook-perfect sentences seem as foreign a language as the Spanish spoken by their Latino classmates.

Handicaps Blacks

After years of controversy, linguists and educators have come to agree: A separate black vernacular exists, a language inherently as sound as standard English, but different enough to handicap blacks who speak it.

There is debate about what to call it--black English, black language, black dialect or, the term preferred by Los Angeles school officials, Ebonics, for ebony phonics.

And its origin and history are still argued by experts, though most believe it arose from a common West African " pidgin" that slaves developed to overcome the differences in their tribal languages and communicate with one another and their English-speaking slave masters.

It is the predominant language among many urban blacks and is used at least some of the time by most blacks--not in business or professional settings, but informally at home and among friends.

'Why Johnny Can't Read'

Amid rising concern about the poor academic performance of black children nationwide, many educators are focusing on black English as a possible explanation for " why Johnny can't read."

School districts across the country are trying to improve the standard English skills of black students, and nowhere is that effort more pronounced than in California, where a dozen school districts offer special instruction for black English speakers, a program first tried in Los Angeles.

Using teaching methods borrowed from bilingual education programs, the California program, instead of " correcting" black English, uses it as a springboard for the teaching of standard English.

" California is the only state in the country that has approached it in this way, and it's being watched around the nation, " said Orlando Taylor, who helped design the state program. Acting dean of the Communication Department at Howard University, Taylor is recognized as one of the foremost experts on black speech. " People are looking at California as a trend-setter."

Taylor said there is no debate today about teaching standard English, but only a question of how to approach it.

" We know that many black children do not have sufficient confidence in standard English to be academically successful, " he said.

Two bills that cleared the state Legislature last year would have mandated special programs in all school districts in the state where at least 10% of the students speak non-standard English.

If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?