Neither Ebonics Nor Swissbonics -- If You Want Children To Succeed At More Than Being Sociopolitical Icons
I love Suzanne Lucas, aka the Evil HR Lady, who is not actually evil but smart and insightful -- she always takes that extra step to think out things many people take for granted.
I blogged a piece a few days ago, "Dooming Black Children And Pretending It's Progress," about an article by a guy (apparently white!) named Michael Hobbes, "Why America Needs Ebonics Now."
An excerpt from my post:
[I think] black kids should have a shot at joining our economy and making something of themselves using the tools that this requires -- including an ability to write and speak standard American English.What he's calling for -- and really, I had to check a few times to try to make sure the site was for realz -- is segregating blacks from opportunity and positioning it as a fair and benevolent and culture-respecting thing to do.
A woman whose photo (beside her name) reveals her to be black gets it -- writing in the comments on Hobbes' piece:
Stella Wilson · University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
I attended a segregated School in Birmingham Alabama in the 1950s. We spoke regular English, had all Black teachers who graduated from Black colleges, most had Master's degrees. We spoke regular English, were expected to excel and did. What is the point of normalizing poor grammar?
Suzanne is an American who lives in Switzerland, where there are a salad bar of dialects, and she blogged about this from that vantage point:
Where I live, the dialect is called Baseldeutsch (in high or standard German) or Baseldytsch (in dialect). Being that we live right on the French border, there are a lot of French influences in this language. When we greet people we don't know on the street we say "Grüezi." People we do know we greet with "salli!"Contrast that to other areas of Switzerland where they may say "Grüess Gott, Grüessech, or Grüezi wohl." Is one better than the other? Are people from Bern more intelligent than people from Basel? Are people who are raised in rural mountain areas and who have such a distinct dialect that my native Swiss friends can't even understand them somehow less intelligent than people whose dialect is closer to standard German? It's a ridiculous question.
But, the Swiss (and the Germans, and the Austrians) all recognized that if they want to be successful outside their villages they needed a common language. So, while very few Swiss speak high German (or standard German, or sometimes referred to as written German), at home, they all learn it at school. Textbooks, newspapers, romance novels, and legal documents are written in high German. This allows the person from the Berner Oberland and the person from Basel to understand what a person from Berlin says.
...Dialects and Creoles deserve respect. But, standard languages must be taught in schools if we want children to succeed outside their own villages-whether that be a Swiss mountain village, a few blocks of American inner city, or a town in Appalachia.
Read the whole thing at the link, as Instapundit would say.
This is a wonderful blog post. As a kid from a town in Appalachia who now teaches English in an American inner city, I've seen this issue from both sides. Suzanne is entirely correct.
Jay Hall at September 30, 2017 6:46 AM
And English.
Because what she says is true of German-speaking Switzerland, but I can guarantee here in Romandie there are not a lot of people reading novels or watching movies in German. Sure, people learn German in school. They also learn English. We're more likely to speak English to someone from Basel than German, though. I know lots of Romands who married across the Rosti barrier, and they tend to speak English with their Germanic spouses.
So even in Switzerland people learn proper English. And German. And either French or Italian depending where they live.
NicoleK at September 30, 2017 7:19 AM
That's racist!
Man. That GIF works for everything.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at September 30, 2017 11:46 AM
Suzanne is exactly right. Even as an immigrant to Switzerland I have learned both the local dialect and high German. In business, you speak high German. Out with friends, you speak dialect.
That's the same with Ebonics, or Texan Drawl, or Georgia Peach. They're fine in their environment, but if people want to succeed in the broader world, they have to be able to communicate effectively. That means dropping the dialect and speaking neutral English.
If they cannot do this, that is their problem, and no one else's.
People battling for black culture, ebonics, and other crap? They are fundamentally battling to keep Blacks poor and uneducated. They are accomplishing the precise opposite of what they claim to want.
bradley13 at September 30, 2017 11:49 AM
They are accomplishing the precise opposite of what they claim to want.
But exactly what they really do want.
dee nile at September 30, 2017 12:01 PM
Speaking properly and dressing nicely are proxies for being educated and cultured, both qualities that a business wants. It is clear that blacks are capable of both, but blacks in some neighborhoods likely are never exposed to either nor encouraged to get educated/cultured. For those who claim this need to be educated/cultured is oppression, note that it applies to whites as well. Many whites who reject society lose out on opportunities. While rejecting society makes one feel righteous and like a revolutionary, this is a cheap thrill not connected to reality. Yeah, wearing a suit is a pain but necessary for many jobs (even bank teller). Rich white kids can "rebel" and "reject" but when their trust fund runs out it turns out that in the mean time they got a degree from Yale and can in fact get a job. Black kids who reject "whiteness" can end up in jail and have no way to get back in to society. Speaking badly gives out the impression (probably correct) that you cannot write, do not think clearly, and are lazy.
cc at September 30, 2017 2:47 PM
From the other thread.
Richard Aubrey said:
"Being top of your class in a MS black high school in the Sixties didn't mean you'd been, you know, educated."
______________________________________________
Not that teachers didn't really try, sometimes.
From pages 31-32 of Sunny Decker's book "An Empty Spoon" (about her two years - 1966-1968 - as a white teacher in an all-black high school in North Philadelphia):
"The night we went to see 'Streetcar Named Desire,' we had our only tense moment. We filled the first several rows of the theater. None of the kids had ever been to a play before. And they did love it. The problem was that they thought it was a comedy. That ridiculous broad in the white dress guzzling booze and the big dummy in the bowling shirt were the funniest things they'd ever seen. They roared. Through the whole first act. The actors seemed tense. I shrank down in my seat. But how can you be mad? They were beautifully behaved—they just saw the play differently than the rest of the world— which was certainly their privilege. At intermission, I decided something had to be done. In my quietest lecture voice, I talked for fifteen minutes about Tennessee Williams and his pathetic Southern heroines, who, like the slaves, had been devastated by the Civil War and clung to the security of the past. I painted poor Stanley as an animal, reacting only on instinct, trying to survive in an artificial society. They nodded their heads. Poor Blanche. Poor Stella. Poor Stanley. Then the second act began. They roared."
lenona at October 1, 2017 10:41 AM
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