Use of Ebonics

This is just a philosophical question. I’m not trying to offend anyone.
In light of recent quest to remove everything racist past or present from the society, there are two remarkable “survivors” - the Democratic Party, and the language of the slaves, Ebonics.
While it’s understandable that many on the left struggle to make a connection between the Dems and slavery, I’m curious why the woke crowd is not speaking out about another symbol of racism in plain sight - Ebonics. The dialect exists because the masters never invested themselves into teaching their slaves proper language. Shouldn’t the dialect be condemned and all its users encouraged to speak proper English like everyone else?

 

Ebonics is kinda like Tbonics... Trump slang.. like sad, bigly, covfefe ,ect...

 

LMAO...And just what is proper English? Hillbilly slang? Redneck palaver? Boston snobbery? California surf drawl? trump gibberish?
I suspect that you'd like them to all adopt a Stepin Fetchit stutter around white folk.

 

Being able to speak proper English is part of the white privilege culture and is racissst.

 

Proper English. The one they teach in school.

 

What is "proper English"? Why is your English more proper than anybody else's? Do you think your English is superior to a black person's English? If you do, in what other aspects are you superior to black people?

 

There are lots of black people that speak proper English. They certainly sound more intelligent than the ones that don’t. Ask any English teacher how proper Ebonics is. When you write a business report or an essay, are you going to use Ebonics? No. Because it is not proper English.

 

So we should talk Proper white English like this...

 

Did I say that? I just said that there is proper English, and Ebonics isn’t it. You asked what “proper english” was, so I was telling you. It sounds dumb as ****, just as bad as some redneck hillbilly drawl.

 

And here I thought that everyone who made it through 7th grade had at least one teacher who taught them what proper English was.

 

Proper English is the sort both you and I use learned by extensive reading. It is superior to Ebonics as it is more expressive and can convey subtler thoughts.

I am superior also in logical thinking, politeness, time management and delaying gratification.

 

They sound more intelligent to you. Who gets to decide what "proper English" is?

No. Because the other person might not understand it. But there is no objective criteria that makes it more "proper" than any other form of English. If the majority of people spoke Ebonics, you would probably be saying that that's "proper English".

English is a live language. Which means it evolves. Dead languages (like Latin or Sanskrit) don't evolve. English evolves because different ethnic groups use different dialects. Sometimes a word or expression in a dialect expresses something better than anything, and the majority of people adopt it. Like "Keeping it real" an expression that originated in Ebonics. And expresses succinctly and perfectly the idea of approaching a problem using a perspective that is consistent with reality. And the expression does so in a far better way than all those words I just used.

So if you try to kill a dialect, any dialect, you are killing English. Because it's where most new words and expressions come from.

 

Weird, if I tried to write a college paper in Ebonics, I’d probably get an F. I guess they just are not “woke” enough to realize that we can just write whatever we want, and it’s just fine!

 

NEVER believe anybody who tells you that there is such thing as "proper English".

They don't know what they're talking about.

 

Proper English is the currency of the realm if you hope to participate in the international economy. I have worked with Germans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Poles, Czechs, Brazilians, French, Swedes, and a myriad of other people in foreign countries, they all spoke and understood proper English. The entire purpose of proper English is to facilitate communication and it is absolutely critical when working in an international market.

"She BIN had dat han’-made dress" is a statement with no grammatical rules and is therefor inferior for communication on the international scale. Its perfectly fine for people who have no intention of participating in the economy. If you are white and make excuses for ebonics in the black community, you are explicitly trying to harm them and remove them from the economy. I would characterize tolerance for ebonics as a particularly vicious form of bigotry.

PS. The above meant "she’s had that hand-made dress for a long time, and still does".

 

That is not correct. Speakers of ebonics have no problem whatsoever communicating subtle thoughts and expressing anything they have in mind.

And I just showed you an example. You are free to ignore it, of course.

Because you're white?

 

Speakers of Ebonics can only have thoughts that can be expressed in Ebonics. Which is a small subset of what English speakers may have.

Yes, thank you for the example. I never know what that phrase was supposed to mean. Seems like a clumsy was of saying "be realistic."

That is what the Smithsonian said "whiteness" is, so yes.

 

The one Morgan Freeman uses.

 

Do you have a job?
Do you write your emails to your boss in Ebonics or proper English?

 

@Golem
I think you get a bit too carried away. The discussion isn’t about the definition of what proper English is. The discussion is about preservation of the very symbol of slavery Ebonics - this dialect has a relatively low vocabulary, which always gives impressions of low intellect. Anyone possessing limited vocabulary in any language (and I speak 3) sounds stupid.
So, why is everything that symbolizes slavery gets destroyed but the dialect that immediately identifies former slaves is being preserved? I’m trying to see the reasoning here.

 

A college paper is not a relevant example. It is written in a certain form because of the limitations of written language.

A language is what you do with your "lingua" (latin for "tongue"). And writing is a crude approximation on paper (or a computer) of what you would do with your tongue. When you speak you can express emphasis, emotion, body language, you gesticulate, ... many things that are very difficult (sometimes impossible) to express in writing. It's why emoticons were created. But you can't use them in a college paper.

It would be very rare for somebody to talk the way they write (unless they are writing a dialogue). Even less the way they write a college paper. They are completely different dialects.

Language is used to communicate something. The most relevant part of this sentence is "something". Second is "communicate". And dead last is how you communicate it. But "something" is the key. What you communicate must have some substance. Otherwise you get an F no matter how you write it (or say it). You might get an F if you don't communicate it. But you might get a redo. On the other hand, if you have something important to communicate, and the reader understands it, then you might get a D because you used slang, or emoticons or... something like that. But at least you pass.

 

Pass what? 1st grade?

 

Hell, I thought that meant do you wants fries with your order.

 

Well, that didn't take long, the liberals of PF have broken some sort of record tonight in their defense of ebonics, WOW!!!! " I say, just what is proper english anyway?" brought to you by the same people who deny that english is the language of America. English has been the only language of America for over 230 years but the diversity crowd doesn't want us to make it official. They'd prefer that we scroll through endless language options at ATMs and the like until we get to "Would you like to conduct this transaction in English?" How about unboxing a product and finding that none of the instructions are in English. On the matter of ebonics, slavery ended in 1865 and public education for blacks has been available since then so why does dees, dats and dose still exist, why is the slave language still a dialect? We're not talking about regional accents but the bastardizing of the language itself. This insanity that is coming out of academia is affirmative action for pidgin English. It's a small thing really but where do we draw the line with whoever suggests these wacked out accommodations? In these times of worthless college degrees we see some colleges and universities waiving the SATs, this is effing crazy and in no way, shape or form helpful to the black community.

 

Start getting your children to learn Mandarin. To get started "do you wants fries with your order" is yàodiǎn shǔ tiáo ma