Ebonics history lesson

So there’s some discussion as to what constitutes street slang, ebonics, and just straight out American-English dialect.

Here’s a good article at Wikipedia. 

Some slave owners preferred slaves from a particular tribe. For
consigned cargoes, language mixing aboard ship was sometimes minimal.
There is evidence that many enslaved Africans continued to use fairly
intact native languages until almost 1700, when Wolof

became one of the bases of a sort of intermediary pidgin among
Africans. It is Wolof that comes to the fore in tracing the African
roots of AAVE. By 1715, this African pidgin had made its way into novels by Daniel Defoe, in particular, The Life of Colonel Jacque. Cotton Mather claimed to have been very familiar with his slaves’ speech, knowing enough to affirm that one of his slaves was from the Coromantee tribe. Mather’s imitative writing shows features present in many creoles and even in modern day AAVE.

By the time of the American Revolution,
slave creoles had not quite established themselves to the point of
mutual intelligibility among varieties. Dillard (1972) quotes a
recollection of “slave language” toward the latter part of the 18th century:

“Kay, massa, you just leave me, me sit here, great fish jump up into
da canoe, here he be, massa, fine fish, massa; me den very grad; den me
sit very still, until another great fish jump into de canoe; but me

fall asleep, massa, and no wake ’til you come…”

Some folks think that if someone writes “sistah” in place of “sister” then it is somehow not only unAmerican but ignorant reverse racism.  They claim that ebonics is holding black folks down, disallowing them the opportunity to gain footing in this country.  However, history tells us that

1. African American ancestors were in this country far before the ancestors of most white Americans.  Yes, they were brought here as slaves, but that didn’t negate (in my eyes) their valid citizenship.  So this cry of “They want to be American” is bullshit. 
2. The African American dialect (vernacular, whatever) is a direct by-product of their enslavement.  They aren’t making up a language to speak amongst themselves.  That language was made up by their ancestors in an effort to communicate with slaves that had come from different tribes and languages.  Thus the argument that “blacks make up their own language” and are therefore “illiterate and ghetto” shows ignorance and stupidity.  Ignorance because the speaker doesn’t know the history and stupidity because the speaker refuses to learn the history.

Now I’ve already addressed my feelings regarding racism. If you’ve never experienced and holler that it no longer exists, or only exists because blacks “ask for it” by speaking, dressing, or acting a certain way, then you should just shut up because you obviously don’t know about what you’re talking.

Having said that, I do know that some minorities take it to the extreme.  They look for and find racism at every corner.  They take history and wallow in it and look at every opportunity in life with suspicion.  These are the types of people that don’t associate with whites, or even anyone outside of their own race, and are indeed practicing reverse racism.  However, it’s also a by-product of the history of blacks in America.  Only time will heal those wounds.  Like white racists, black racists are raised by someone that believes they’ve been hurt - though more than likely has-in someway by another race.  Putting all blacks into this catagory also demonstrates ignorance.  

Language, though, is different from region to region and even between groups of people.  Telling someone they are “illiterate” for their use of cultural dialect is just stupid.  Of course, I do think these are the same kind of people that wouldn’t be offended by a Jews use of Yiddish- though it would arguably fall into the same catagory.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Related Posts