V-Gram 34

December 30, 1996

Much ado about nothing

The universal outcry surrounding their decision to recognize "Ebonics" as a required second language does the Oakland school board injustice. Already during the 1970s, a daytime radio talk show in England asserted that "Cockney," the street slang of the uneducated in London's East End, was in fact "The Queen's English" wherever it happened to be practiced.

In any event, focus on the merits - or otherwise - of the decision itself misses the point. The real questions to ask would be these: What on earth would induce a local school board to presume competence in the scholarly classification of a language? How did they come to confuse freedom of expression with the license to judge?

They take their cue from the world around them, that's how. About thirty years ago we broke with the tradition of centuries past whereby people spoke when, having studied and contemplated a subject, they developed an informed opinion. In the 1960s, making pronouncements on a subject - any subject - became contingent on a purely anatomical, as opposed to an intellectual, requirement: a pair of vocal cords.