only a fool

[Abdiel OAbdiel]

Why you so angry? 
Ain't nobody angry. 
You're full of resentment. 
You full of shit. 

Why you trying to teach me how to talk...Every time I
say something the way I say it, you correct me until I
say it some other way. Pretty soon it feel like I
can't think. My mind run up on a thought, git confuse,
run back and sort of lay down...You bring me a bunch
of books. Whitefolks all over them, talking bout
apples and dogs. What I care bout dogs? ... But I let
you worry on. Sometimes I think bout the apples and
the dogs, sometimes I don't. Look like to me only a
fool would want to talk in a way that feel peculiar to
your mind. 

     --Alice Walker



Standards and Par

Every state in the United States teaches grammatical
and mechanical conventions of standard English and
tests competence in  standards. Louisiana, like every
other state, has  English Language Arts Content
Standards. In Louisiana there has been considerable
progress (the learning curve was steep) and Black
students and Latino students  are performing better
than they were 20 years ago.  Moreover, their progress
has been greater than that of White students. However,
Black students  and Latino students  are not on par
with White students. There are standards in every
state in the United States. 

Behaviorist conceptions of language anger and
resentment

Why are Black students and Latino students doing
better? Well, there are lots of reasons, but one
reason is that the Black Power era of the 1960s and
1970s focused attention on the contemporary
characteristics of speech and the social, educational,
political implications of language. But, time was
needed to come round to where we are today and more
time is needed to get to where we need to go. 

In the 1940s and 1950s, the focus was on the origins
of African American language. This research is quite
painful to read. It often attributes the language of
Black Americans to the baby talk between master and
slave, to biological determinism, and the like. It is
obviously biased and full of linguistic chauvinism,
White Anglo speech being the ideal from which Black
talk degenerated because of the inferiority of Blacks
and their lack of virtue, so on. Amid the social and
political upheavals of the 60s and 70s, a shift from
historical to synchronic research began. Behaviorism
was in the winds. A decidedly more subtle form of
racist ideology premised assumptions about
environmental and social conditioning. If language
were a consequence of response conditioning to
environmental stimuli, and if there were no basis for
American provenience in Black Language, than the
difference between Black and White speech must result
from the depressed social and environmental conditions
of Blacks. In fact, it was argued that Black English
is just as linguistically and functionally as White
English. However, the PROBLEM is the social and
economic inadequacies of Black English. While Blacks
took to the streets, the White establishment turned to
the intellectual Elite to assemble research and data
that could be used to co-opt America's street
protests, marching, fist raising, in your face
loud-talking, Molotov-cocktail-tossing black minority
into the majority ideology
(Americanism--Capitalist-Consumerism). In this
context, academic discourse about Black Language
shifted from a biological racial focus to an
environmental social force. The reason was that the
difference between Black speakers and White middle
class speakers was a matter of socioeconomic,
educational status. Blacks could thus be "brought UP
from the ghetto" as they had been "brought up from
slavery" with language modeled on that of the middle
class, and America's streets would become safe again.
There was a split in the academic establishment over
the question of whether language differences were
social or cognitive. The cognitive school became known
as "deficit theorists." A deficit be a deficit and ain
nobody gonna change that by calling it a theory. At
bottom, there was little difference in the racism
inherent in the discourse of social and cognitive
theories. 



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