Black English : Educators Face Barrier of Language

“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.

Both bills were vetoed by Gov. George Deukmejian, who said current supplementary education programs are adequate for students disadvantaged by their use of black English. A spokesman for state Assemblywoman Teresa P. Hughes (D-Los Angeles) said she plans to reintroduce her “black English” bill this year.

Linguists cite 50 characteristics of black speech that differentiate it from standard English, and many have parallels in the linguistic structure of West African languages.

Common Speech Markers

Among the most common speech markers are what linguists call its invariant “be,” to denote an ongoing action (“he be going to work”); its zero copula (“you crazy”); its non-redundant plural (“twenty cent”); its consonant cluster reduction (“firs” instead of “first” or “des” instead of “desk”), its zero pronoun (“that’s the man got all the money”), and the absence of the “th” sound at a word’s end (“wif” for “with”).

Its use extends across geographical and socioeconomic boundaries, though most blacks who are able to switch to standard English do so in mixed-race social and professional settings.

Consequently, even middle-class black children who have extensive contact with whites are at risk of being hamstrung educationally by their lack of familiarity with standard English, some linguists believe.

“Most black middle-class speakers, when they are together, away from public display, often shift (from standard English) to another form of language,” Taylor said. “This code switching is very natural; it’s no big thing.

“A kid growing up in that environment is exposed to a different mix of language coming into his ears than the white kid. His system has more room for linguistic vulnerability. So, his education must help him identify which vernacular goes with the home setting and which goes with social situations.”

Source of Resistance

Ironically, some of the biggest resistance to the recognition of black English has come from middle-class blacks, who believe it contributes to stereotypical thinking about black people.

“In the media, black English has always been associated with poverty and with ignorance . . . and it hasn’t been shown that there’s a wide spectrum of the black community that uses it,” said Geneva Smitherman, a Wayne State University speech professor who has testified in court cases involving black English.

“Naturally, people shy away from being associated with something that’s thought about in that light,” she said.

It was a 1979 federal court decision that focused national attention on the issue of black English, highlighting a controversy that had been simmering in academic circles for years.

That summer, a Michigan judge ruled that a group of black children in the predominantly white Ann Arbor school district had been denied equal educational opportunity because teachers failed to recognize or accommodate their black dialect.

The use of black English must be considered a barrier to learning standard English but not indicative of a child’s inability to learn, the ruling said. School officials were ordered to hold training sessions to sensitize teachers to students’ use of black English and to develop methods to teach those youngsters.

The case was still unfolding in 1978 when local black students mistakenly took a language test designed for students with a native language other than English and scored so low that many of them ranked in the “limited-English-speaking” category.

Curriculum Developed

Alarmed by the test results, a group of the district’s black educators developed a curriculum that uses English-as-a-second-language techniques to teach standard English to black students. Thus, the Los Angeles Unified School District became one of the first in the nation to offer a special educational program for black English speakers.

Today the Proficiency in English program is under way at 40 schools, encompassing more than 50,000 students in Southwest and South-Central Los Angeles. This fall, it will be doubled to include more schools in predominantly black areas.

Incorporated into the curriculum of each subject, the program focuses on building oral communication skills, using techniques such as pronunciation drills and tape-recorded speaking practice.

“What black students speak is so close to standard English in many ways that many black students don’t hear the difference when they’re in regular classes,” said Thelma Duncan, a former teacher who started the program seven years ago and heads it today. “That makes it tough to teach them standard English.

“We point out the differences to them and give them opportunities to practice (standard English) over and over. The more they practice, the more they hear it. . . . That’s the only way we’ll be able to turn this around.”

‘Cash’ Language

The students are taught that mastery of standard English--the “cash” language, in the lexicon of the program--is necessary for success in school and career.

At the same time, the program aims to avoid stigmatizing blacks who speak non-standard English by emphasizing that black English is fine for use informally and among family and friends.

“We’re very interested in the students’ self-perceptions,” Duncan said. “If they feel their own language is inferior, they end up not saying anything to us.

“So we accept the language the students bring from home, but we teach them that standard English is a tool they must have. They may not use it all the time, but when you need it, you need it.”

The view that black English is an adequate mode of communication and should be used as a springboard for teaching standard English has been slow to gain acceptance in academic circles.

The notion was first advanced in the 1960s, “but the public had such negative attitudes toward black speech, it was difficult to sell the idea of preserving it,” Taylor of Howard University recalled.

The Ann Arbor case moved to center stage the question that had divided educators for years: Is black English more than just “bad” English, and what should be done with children who speak it?

Few Answers Offered

But the Ann Arbor experiment--providing teachers with 40 hours of “sensitivity” training to heighten their awareness of black English and destroy negative connotations--offered few answers. Although the program seemed to improve student attendance and attitudes toward school, there was little data to demonstrate more than marginal improvement in student performance.

A similar approach is being tested on a larger scale among black children in the statewide standard English program offered in 11 California school districts, including Oakland, Sacramento, Stockton, Pomona and San Bernardino.

The bilingual teaching techniques used in the program have been previously shown to improve the academic performance of students who speak foreign languages, Taylor said.

The reaction from teachers has been mixed. In both the Los Angeles and the state programs, teachers receive special training in the history and use of black English and learn strategies to teach standard English.

“Some of them--both black and white--think it’s a waste of time,” said Pam Jones, principal of Loren Miller Elementary School, one of the participating schools in Southwest Los Angeles. “But most of them are very excited about the program. Many of them know from their own experiences that this can work.”

‘Jury Is Still Out’

Taylor said “the jury is still out” on the bilingual teaching approach with blacks: “It’s just too new to track results. There’s just not been enough evaluation data presented to be persuasive.”

It is difficult to assess the effect of the California program because it has not been used universally, he said, and because a standard measure of success has not been developed. Should higher test scores, better jobs or continuing education be the only criteria?

“We know that one problem is that the traditional approach hasn’t worked--the one that says certain forms of English are right and others are wrong and the function of the teacher is . . . to correct ‘wrong’ speech,” Taylor said.

Instead of reinforcing standard English, the traditional method only serves to alienate students and make them reticent in class, Taylor and others say.

“Being told that the way one speaks is incorrect can be a powerful disincentive to speak, because language is so closely associated with one’s identity,” said Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, director of UCLA’s Center for Afro-American Studies.

“You can have children reject the system of values and the institutions that convey that message to them,” she said.

But the inconsistency that has characterized educators’ treatment of black English has also left its scar.

‘60s Attitude Questioned

“Back in the ‘60s, advocates were saying, ‘Translate the books into black English,’ ” said Yvonne Strozier, who coordinates the state Department of Education’s standard English program. “That’s why we’re in the predicament we’re in now.

“Teachers were told to accept the language the child brings to school, so they didn’t do anything about it. Now, we say respect the language the child brings, but he must be able to speak standard English.”

And some say things really have not changed that much from the days when teachers belittled students who left the “s” off plural words or said “dat” for “that.”

“There’s a certain level of ambivalence; people are not quite sure what they’re doing,” UCLA’s Mitchell-Kernan said. “Instead of saying to the child, ‘Speak correctly; you made a mistake,’ rather they’re saying, ‘If you speak this way, there are going to be these kinds of rewards.’ But the goal is still pretty much the same.

“I’m not sure that’s wise. The link between changing the way that child speaks and the rewards that are supposed to be derived from that isn’t all that clear.”

A recent study of black English by University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor William Labov has provoked a new furor in the academic community.

His widely publicized study suggests that the English of urban blacks is becoming more divergent from standard English as society becomes more racially divided and urban blacks more isolated.

Gap Seen as Widening

Based on a three-year study of the language of several hundred blacks and whites in Philadelphia, Labov’s report predicts that ordinary communication between whites and blacks will become increasingly more difficult and that the problems of many black schoolchildren may be worsening.

But his report has drawn heavy fire from linguists who have criticized his methodology, his interpretation and his conclusions.

“His implication is that because blacks are not coming in contact with whites, their learning of standard English is impaired,” Taylor said. “One needs to be very careful about making that claim.

“It implies that the only way to learn standard English is from white speakers, that standard English is ‘white English.’ That is not so. One can learn it in an all-black environment, from black speakers. It is the language of education, not the language of whites.”

BLACK ENGLISH

STANDARD ENGLISH

He goes to work. You’re crazy. Six million dollars. She will be first in line. My mama’s name is Mary. There are two of my friends who have just come.

BLACK ENGLISH

He be goin to work. You crazy. Six million dollar. She-uh be firs in line. My mama name Mary. It’s two of my friend, they just come.