Talk:African-American Vernacular English and social context

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"Genetic"

I'd like to see the reference for Ebonics being "genetic." Languages are not genetically derived, they are learned. African Americans can learn to produce perfect English just like any other racial group. The person who wrote that statement needs to back it up or we need to remove it as unsupported (and racist). ... added at 21:03, 13 September 2007 by 207.62.190.18

The original resolution itself used this term. (There's a link in the article itself to the original resolution; I'll save you a few seconds by pointing to it here.)

The original resolution is written in legalese. Even beyond the grotesque style that's typical of legalese, most people agree that this resolution is poorly written. (The people who wrote it seem to agree, as they soon rewrote it.) Further, most linguists agree that some of the linguistic component of what it says is farfetched at best and nonsense at worst.

However, the writers' use of genetic was deliberate and not racist at all. They're not talking about the genetic relationships among ethnic groups but instead the genetic relationships among languages (according to which English is closely related to German but more distantly related to Russian). It's true that the former use of genetic is much commoner, but, the OED tells us, the latter (linguistic) use is very well established and indeed dates back to 1860, just one year after Darwin had first used it in what's now its commonest sense and 29 years after Carlyle had first used it in the race-irrelevant remark that Our theories and genetic Histories of Poetry should henceforth cease.

And yes of course African Americans routinely produce perfect English, Standard English, and perfect Standard English. -- Hoary 23:39, 13 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

see Genetic (linguistics). --86.137.156.17 (talk) 14:13, 1 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"However, the writers' use of genetic was deliberate and not racist at all. They're not talking about the genetic relationships among ethnic groups but instead the genetic relationships among languages" How do we know this? The phrasing in the resolution ("...these studies have also demonstrated that African Language Systems are genetically-based and not a dialect of English") doesn't seem to convey that. Lnguists don't talk about a language or dialect being "genetically based", do they? It seems at least as likely to me that the authors of the resolution heard the linguistic term "genetic" being used to describe some aspect of African-American dialect, and the authors misconstrued this as talking about human genetics. (Cf. Reverend Wright's musings on how blacks are genetically predisposed to different, "right-brain" learning habits. Just because it's nonsense, doesn't mean people won't believe it...)

Absent some supporting information about what the original authors thought the term meant, I think we should rewrite this section, simply noting that the first draft used the controversial term "genetically-based" and this term was removed from the final draft. -- Narsil (talk) 01:02, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The rewrite of the resolution is how we know what the board members meant by "genetic." As the article states, in their rewrite the board rephrased the clause in question to read "have origins in West and Niger-Congo languages and are not merely dialects of English." — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 03:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have my doubts. As I see it, there are two possible scenarios. (1) The authors said something innocuous but said it poorly, critics misunderstood them, and the authors rewrote the resolution to clarify what they meant; (2) the authors said something bizarre and stupid (that blacks have a genetic disposition to learn language a particular way), critics called attention to this, and the authors tried to cover for themselves by changing the resolution. Absent some evidence one way or the other, it strikes me as a violation of NPOV for us to just assume that it's case (1). -- Narsil (talk) 17:39, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think the burden of proof has been met. I'd rather not twist the wording of the article around to leave it open as to whether the board memebers were factually incorrect and bad writers or if they were racists covering up what they quickly realized was an offensive opinion. We go with the evidence that we have and there's no evidence of the latter. — Æµ§œš¹ _{[aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]} 20:14, 14 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Jokes spawned

There's no mention of the zillions of jokes this resolution spawned on the Internet and late-night comedy shows. Anybody have some sources? --Piledhigheranddeeper (talk) 15:21, 18 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Weird wording?

In the paragraph about "controversial issues in the resolution," the clause "that African Americans particular language and their dialects" doesn't make grammatical sense. Sadiemonster (talk) 13:42, 25 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:African-American gospel which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 23:19, 18 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Adding to Oakland resolution section

I am thinking that there should be added to the Oakland school section of the article mentions and sources on the backlash to the backlash. Possibly in the "popular response" section. Sources listed below. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ebonics-controversy/id1380008439?i=1000465289876

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cancel-culture-harpers-jk-rowling-scam_n_5f0887b4c5b67a80bc06c95e MarvelAge91 (talk) 17:32, 12 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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