African-American language

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Mother Tongue: Black English Revisited
By Mumia Abu-Jamal, 8 January 1997. Oakland’s School Board was savaged in ways that were eerily similar to the insults leveled at the Black jurors who acquitted O.J. Simpson. If the white majoritarian media was more concerned with informing people than stirring up controversy, the slant, research and presentation of the story would have been far different.
A Linguist Looks at the Ebonics Debate
By Charles J. Fillmore, 11 January 1997. The pedagogically relevant assumptions behind the ‘Ebonics’ resolution. Continuing chaos in the ways newspaper commentators choose to describe and classify the manner of speaking that is the target of the Ebonics resolution.
Why the uproar on Ebonics? Don’t dis ‘Black English’
By Monica Moorehead, Workers World, 11 January 1997. Black English has played an instrumental role in distinguishing African American culture for many generations.
Oakland Ebonics proposal
By Mike Gerber, 14 January 1997. The failure to recognize and utilize existing cultural forms obtaining within the lower-class black community in order to teach new skills constitutes a form of institutional racism and dooms programs to inevitable failure.
‘Ebonics’ and the fight for education
By Nick Sands, The Militant, 27 January 1997. On December 18, the Oakland Unified School Board (OUSD) unanimously voted, based on the recommendations of a special task force, to recognize ‘the existence and the cultural and historic bases of West and Niger-Congo African Language Systems...as the predominately primary language of African-American students.’