Fourteen years later, watching the increasingly heated debate over the use of black English in struggling minority urban school districts, I can’t help but offer my own experience as proof that the premise is greatly flawed. My skill with standard English propelled me from a life of poverty and dead ends to a future I could have scarcely imagined. It has opened doors for me that might never have budged an inch for a poor black girl from Cairo, Ill. It has empowered me in ways I can’t begin to explain.
That empowerment still amazes me. The column, one that Ralph Waldo Emerson might have described as “a frank and hearty expression of what force and meaning is in me,” has assumed an identity of its own, far beyond what I envisioned. It has been reprinted in at least 50 college English texts, anthologies and writing course books. I still have a scrapbook of some of the letters that poured in from around the country, from blacks and whites, overwhelmingly applauding my opinion. An editor in Detroit said he recognized my name on a job-application letter because he’d clipped the column and used it in a class he’d taught.
Recently, a professor from Brigham Young University requested permission to record the material on a tape used for blind students. But perhaps the most humbling experience of all occurred in 1991, when I was on fellowship in Chicago and received a phone call from a 20-year-old college student. He had just read the essay in one of his textbooks and, on impulse, dialed directory assistance, seeking my name. Because the column was written in 1982, when I’d been a student in Carbondale–and Chicago wasn’t my hometown–there was no reason for him to have found me; I could have been anywhere in the world.
We talked for about an hour that night. He thanked me profusely for writing that column. He was biracial, and said that all his life his peers had teased him for “talking proper, for wishing [he] was all white.” He said he was frustrated that so many black kids believed that speaking articulately was a white characteristic.
He thanked me so often it was almost unnerving. I hung up the phone in a sort of daze. Something I had written, communicated from my heart, had touched him so deeply he had to reach out to me. It brings tears to my eyes remembering it; I related to him so well.
I, too, had been ridiculed as a youth for my proper speech. But I had lots of support at home, and many poor urban black youths today may not share my advantages. Every afternoon my eight older brothers and sisters left their schoolbooks piled on every available surface, so I was poking through “The Canterbury Tales” by age 8. My sister Julie corrected me every time I used “ain’t” or “nope.” My brother Peter was a star on the high-school debate team. And my mother, Eloise, has one of the clearest, most resonant speaking voices I’ve ever known. Though she was a poor housekeeper when I was growing up, she was articulate and plain-spoken.
Knowing the price that was paid for me to develop my abilities, it’s infuriating to hear that some young blacks still perceive clear speech as a Caucasian trait. Whether they know it or not, they’re succumbing to a dangerous form of self-abnegation that rejects success as a “white thing.” In an age of backlash against affirmative action, that’s a truly frightening thought.
To me, this “whitewashing” is the crux of the problem. Don’t tell me that calling Ebonics a “bridge” or an “attempt to reach children where they are” will not deepen this perception in the minds of disadvantaged young blacks. And though Oakland, Calif., school administrators have amended their original position on Ebonics, it still feels like a very pointed political statement to me, one rooted in the ongoing discussions about socioeconomic justice and educational equity for blacks. As much as I respect the cultural foundations of Ebonics, I think Oakland trivializes these discussions and stokes the fires of racial misunderstanding. Sen. Lauch Faircloth may have been too hasty in calling the Oakland school board’s plan to introduce Ebonics “political correctness gone out of control,” but he’s hardly to be condemned for raising the flag of concern.
When immigrants worldwide fight to come to the United States, many seeking to gain even the most basic English skills, claiming a subset of language for black Americans is a damning commentary on our history of inequity and lack of access to equal educational opportunities in this country. Frankly, I’m still longing for a day when more young blacks born in poverty will subscribe to my personal philosophy. After a lifetime of hard work to achieve my goal of being a writer, of battling racism and forging my own path, I’ve decided that I really don’t care if people like me or not. But I demand that they understand me, clearly, on my own terms. My mastery of standard English gave me a power that no one can take away from me, and it is important for any group of people hoping to succeed in America. As a great-granddaughter of slaves, I believe success is my birthright.
As I said back in December of 1982, I don’t think I “talk white, I think I talk right.” That’s not quite grammatically correct, but it’s a blessing to know the difference.
