History

The language of African Americans has always been noted as different then standard English. In 1925 George Philip Krapp published The English Language in America. Krapp believed that Ebonics was the product of centuries of slavery, and that the African Americans who spoke Ebonics had been deprived the opportunity to learn standard English.

Not long after, William Labov wrote a paper called The Logic of Nonstandard English, which defended the home language of the black community as perfectly adequate for logical thought and learning. To visit William Labovís home page visit
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~labov/home.html to see what he has done since The Logic of Nonstandard English or e-mail him with a question.

With Krapp and Labov we have the two main schools of thought on Ebonics that still exist today. Krapp claimed that Ebonics is a slang of English that puts African Americans at a disadvantage. Labov defended Black English as a language and that the racism in our society has caused America to discredit the legitimacy of Black English.

With Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, the integration of the schools brought a tremendous hardship on African American students being in the same classroom as white children. It was thought that in time African American children would eventually attain the same achievement scores as the white children but even today that has failed to happen. To see the Supreme Court decision from 1954 go to:
http://caselaw.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=347&invol=483

In the 1960ís the Civil Rights Movement solidified Labovís position and made Black English a separate language in the minds of many linguists.

In 1996 African American students still failing to achieve up to the standards of white students, the Oakland school board felt compelled to do something in order to help the achievement of African American students. The school board declared the language of African American's ebonics and that furthermore:

As in the case of Asian-American, Latino-American, Native American and all other pupils in this District who come from backgrounds or environments where a language other than English is dominant, African-American pupils shall not, because of their race, be subtly dehumanized, stigmatized, discriminated against or denied. Asian-American, Latino American, Native American and all other language different children are provided general funds for bilingual education, English as Second Language (ESL) and State and Federal (Title VIII) Bilingual education programs to address their limited and non-Englishproficient (LEP/NEP) needs. African-American pupils are equally entitled to be tested and, where appropriate, shall be provided general funds and State and Federal (Title VIII) bilingual education and ESL programs to specifically address their LEP/NEP needs. This decision was made due to the fact that the average G.P.A. (Grade Point Average) of African American students was 1.8 on a scale of 4.0. It was thought that with teachers being able to better understand their students there would be better communication between the parties which would increase the achievement of African American students. To see the complete Oakland school board resolution and the revised resolution go here:

Dec 1996- http://linguistlist.org/issues/8/8-53.html
revised- http://linguistlist.org/issues/8/8-56.html

To see a different perspective on the history of Ebonics visit:
http://www.princeton.edu/~bclewis/blacktalk.html