Sunday, September 23, 2018

Back to Ebonics?

Standard English is racist.  It doesn't matter that non-American blacks can and do speak proper English, it's racist nonetheless.  And now we're extending this ebonics-like argument to university students as well:
Sounding dim and uneducated is now, it seems, something to aspire to and encourage, especially at universities:
A sociolinguist from Stanford University claims the way African-Americans speak leads to discrimination across the board — in the court system, interactions with police, education, and employment. Professor John Rickford says, “Black Vernacular English” is viewed as less “trustworthy, intelligent and well-educated” than so-called standard “white” English, and that “dismantling this construction is part of the fight for racial justice.” Rickford, who is the current president of the Linguistic Society of America, said the “modern-day racialisation of language” — which mandates that African-Americans conform to the white norm — has its roots in slavery.
In other words, bad whitey. Because judging people by what falls from their mouths – its comprehensibility, precision and so forth – is racist and oppressive. And if someone sounds barely literate, and uninterested in being understood by anyone outside of their immediate circle, then you should pretend that this is somehow your fault. It’s the way of the woke...

In the comments, Mike in Seattle notes,
50 years ago, this bigotry would have been expressed as “well, it’s just not fair to expect them to do better”… The only difference is now we’re supposed to celebrate these “woke” bigots.
Indeed. It’s perverse, almost grimly comical. The students are encouraged to be hyper-critical, indeed delusional, regarding the motives of all white people, even to the point of dismissing the correction of spelling and grammar as some egregious, racially motivated act of oppression. And yet the motives of their educators, the ones who tell them these things, and whose status and careers depend on cultivating tribalism and paranoid resentment, and a kind of pernicious flattery, are spared any similar questioning - or, so far as I can see, any questioning at all.

So much for “critical thinking.”
I notice that the professors promoting this kind of idiocy do so in standard English.

The comments at the above link are logical, as you might expect.  Here's one of my favorites:
So, in summary;
1. A minority group chooses to speak in a certain way which is deemed imprecise and unintelligent by the majority.

2. This results in negativity be outcomes for the minority group.
3. Rather than the minority group choosing an alternative way of speaking, the solution is for the entire population of the majority group to change their perception.
Is there an historical precedent or example we could examine to determine how feasible this solution is?
*sigh*

5 comments:

Pseudotsuga said...

Clearly these academidiots have never heard how poor, uneducated white people speak.
They also have apparently never run across the idea of code switching.
I ran across these same kinds of "woke" faculty at a meeting just last week, when we were told we had to make sure that we weren't grading papers to the standards of "whiteness." Does the perfesser mean the whiteness of my hillbilly forebears, or the guilty whiteness of his high-falutin', educated class privilege?
And then they brought up the controversial professor up in University of Washington, Tacoma, who apparently runs his writing center while denouncing grammar as racist. Apparently, this fellow (who apparently is leaving to another job, somewhere else) has claimed over 90% success rate in...in...something. Job placement? Literacy? Clear expression? Or just graduation thanks to non-"white" standards of achievement?
Dolt...

Mike Thiac said...

I've been asked about my career in law enforcement, and one point I make is the last thing to major in is "Criminal Justice." Whatever you need to know, the academy/department will teach you. Major in something you can give them (Accounting, computers, etc).

But one thing I stress is being able to speak, write, and read the English language. I've dealt with too many 20 something college graduates who cannot write a coherent paragraph, and need remedial education on how to do a letter. Earlier this year I had to write a response letter for an Internal Affairs investigation on another officer. The investigator, after reading my response, said "Thank you...you know how to answer simple questions in an easy to read method..."

The sisters at St Joseph's Elementary are up there smiling :<)

sick of it all said...

I really, really hate how the far left has hijacked education (among everything else.) How did we, as a society, get to this point where English grammar, science, math, homework, and learning in general is racist?!
I read somewhere that hotel shampoo is also racist....
We are the new Roman Empire at the end of its greatness.

Darren said...

I agree. Perhaps some people are too comfortable and need to make crap up to feel important. I can't come up with a better reason. Damn Occam's Razor.

Ellen K said...

Standard English is racist.
Reading to your kids at night is racist.
The SAT is racist.
Manners are racist.
Devil's Food Cake is racist.
I guess everything is racist.
I think the most racist people find the most "racist" things to complain about.