Some Nitpicking on Ebonics.

In rushing to dismiss the DEA’s call to hire speakers of Ebonics, a lot of people are getting a small but important thing mixed up.

Here’s the Black Snob:

Ebonics, depending on who you ask, is either a real or a completely imagined thing. Proponents argued that some black people were speaking a whole [...]

Reid and Black English.

I think rikyrah over at JJP is off-base in her criticism of Reid:

W-T-F is NEGRO DIALECT?

NEGRO DIALECT?

Do you honestly believe that Black people walk around talking Ebonics? That you aren’t talking about a SUBSET of people?

That the overwhelming majority of BLACK people with BLACK parents IN AMERICA [...]

"Ain't", Plural?

A random query from Alyssa’s spot:

One of the reasons I’m as obsessed with pop culture as I am is that I grew up somewhat isolated from it. My didn’t have a television for much of my childhood, so I missed things like Saved by the Bell and The Simpsons almost entirely (It made [...]

More On 'Talking Black.'

The linguist/conservative pundit John McWhorter and playwright/actress/mimic Sarah Jones did a great segment last year on Studio 360 called ‘Sounding Black’ that dealt with Barack Obama’s strategically deployed ‘blaccent’ — and what it suggested about our perceptions of race and class.

JONES: Just like Barack Obama, I am a person of mixed-race heritage.  But, [...]

You Don't Speak the Dunn Language (Properly).

The Field Negro, on Michelle Obama’s recent comments that she was teased for speaking like a white girl:

First, there is no such thing. Either you speak clearly or you don’t. … people have accents, and we all speak in different ways.The important thing is that we speak well, and in a [...]