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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Jan. 23, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Schools should recognize the importance of Black English

By Robert Lapides

Reprinted from a 1973 article in Workers World. The writer is a professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York.

It may be that the most serious injury done to Black schoolchildren has been the total failure until recently of even the most progressive white teachers to recognize the legitimacy of Black English as a language.

Other, more obviously contemptuous forms of racism are easier to resist and at times surmount. But the ignorance that holds Black English to be merely a "style," at best, or a pattern of mistakes, at worst, has often made learning to read and write-and much in school that comes after that-into an insidious trauma for many Black youngsters.

In the last few years, serious research by a number of widely respected linguists has shown that, far from being the careless speech it may seem to uninformed ears, Black English actually possesses its own highly systematic grammar-as well as a sound system distinctly its own. Arising from the influence of African languages on an English the early slaves were prohibited from reading and writing, Black English is as consistent, as capable of precision, as elegant, and as demanding of correct usage as any language.

It is no more an inferior form of "standard" English spoken by whites than Dutch is an inferior form of German.

The different languages of the world did not drop full-grown from the Tower of Babel, but grew organically from the soil of historical circumstance. English, for example, was born in the dialects of Germanic tribes, the Angles and Saxons, that colonized England (Angle-land) 1,500 years ago.

Then: After the Viking invasion, the language combined with Danish. Later, following the Norman Conquest, it combined with French.

Had it not been the language of a politically sovereign nation, English might have been considered extremely corrupt German-just as Yiddish, a mixture of German, Polish, Russian and Hebrew, has often been mislabeled an illegitimate language because it was the language of no state.

Similarly, the language of the Puerto Rican people, influenced by 75 years of English-speaking imperialism, is denied linguistic legitimacy by those who see it as "bad Spanish" instead of good Puerto Rican. Obviously, linguistic legitimacy is entirely a political matter.

Good teaching and good politics

Although most Black Americans are bilingual, some speak only "standard" English and some (those most separated from whites) speak only Black English. Many, to suit circumstances, find gradations in between. Also, other people- Southern whites and the Latinos who share the inner cities with Blacks-are thought to have been influenced by Black English.

One obvious grammatical difference with "standard" English is the avoidance of many inflections-the endings on words that indicate plural or possession or verb tense. "John brother walk to school yesterday" is not only perfectly clear but grammatically correct. Those who associate the simpler form with simple-mindedness should be reminded that English uses by far the fewest inflections of any European language-a result of development rather than retardation.

Without ever having the process acknowledged, let alone admired, Black students must continually translate back and forth between the "standard" English of the page and the Black English of their lives.

Because the two share much of the same vocabulary and basic differences are not as distinct as with languages completely foreign to one another, youngsters often develop under hostile conditions a lasting uncertainty about reading and writing. The problem is badly compounded by the ignorance of teachers who, noting the obvious fact that so many Black children have the same difficulty, respond with either bewilderment or contempt.

All good teaching begins with a delicate but full recognition of who one's students are and what they bring to a moment. Nothing less can encourage their self-respect. This is the basic political fact of teaching.

But the politics of society also intervene. And teachers with Black students can fuse good teaching with good politics by acknowledging the political oppression but linguistic legitimacy of Black English.

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