Rachel Steindel is the “Language Columnist” for the Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina. In a recent column she argues that some students admitted under affirmative action are “at a disadvantage” because “they speak a different language.”
That language? “African-American English, or AAE, has many names, but you’ve probably heard it referred to in hushed whispers as Ebonics.”
Not only does Ms. Steindel defend Ebonics, or AAE — “Contrary to popular belief, AAE is not just a bunch of jumbled-up bad English that hip-hoppers and wannabes use to sound cool” — she actually argues that it provides a justification for continuing affirmative action.
What does this have to do with affirmative action? Imagine coming to school and learning how to read. Except instead of being given Dick and Jane, you are given a primer written in Middle English.
It kind of looks like the English you speak. But things are just different, in ways you can’t quite figure out. And when you ask your teacher for help, she just corrects what you say (“Now Susy, you forgot to use the genitive case again!”) and tells you to get back to work. The next day, you find yourself in a class for people with language deficits.
The thing you really need, then, is explicit instruction in Middle English, like I got on my first day of Chaucer here at UNC. Professor Wittig didn’t teach me either to erase my own English or expect me to speak Middle English all the time, but rather to learn a skill set that I needed to know to succeed. And the same should be true for children who speak AAE.
But they are not getting this explicit instruction. And until educators and the general population wake up and hear the Ebonics, children who speak AAE are going to be drastically behind and stay behind no matter how many other educational reforms are passed and new schools built. And I think that’s a good a reason as any to keep affirmative action around.
Oddly, but revealingly, Ms. Steindel may well be right. Ebonics may well provide as “good a reason as any to keep affirmative action around” — at least as good, that is, as most that have been offered by affirmative action’s other defenders.
