Quotes About Ebonics

Ebonics is not a separate language. It is ghetto speech and substandard English. To claim that ebonics is a positive way of communicating for blacks is to condemn blacks to menial jobs and economic inferiority. A person who fails to learn correct language skills is forever handicapped in seeking employment.

Ebonics - or black English, as I prefer to call it - is one of a great many dialects of English. And so English comes in a great many varieties, and black English is one of them.

The contribution of West African languages to Ebonics is absolutely infinitesimal. What it actually is is a very interesting hybrid of regional dialects of Great Britain that slaves in America were exposed to because they often worked alongside the indentured servants who spoke those dialects that we often learn about in school.

Without the continued existence of the democratic system and of publicly funded education and research, however, most current teachers and intellectuals would be unemployed or their income would fall to a small fraction of its present level. Instead of researching the syntax of Ebonics, the love life of mosquitoes, or the relationship between poverty and crime for $100 grand a year, they would research the science of potato growing or the technology of gas pump operation for $20 grand.

I have to be perfectly honest: You should have an anniversary to acknowledge the way I work the ebonics.