What do people think of Ebonics?
That depends on whom you ask. Black writers from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Zora Neale Hurston to August Wilson have made extensive use of it in their work, and some, like James Baldwin (“this passion, this skill, … this incredible music.”), Toni Morrison, and June Jordan have praised it explicitly. Black preachers and comedians and singers, especially rappers, also use it for dramatic or realistic effect. But many other people, black and white, regard it as a sign of limited education or sophistication, as a legacy of slavery or an impediment to socioeconomic mobility. Some deny its existence (like the black Chicagoan whose words “Ain’t nobody here talkin’ no Ebonics” belied his claim). Others deprecate it (like Maya Angelou, who found the Oakland School Board’s 1996 Ebonics resolutions “very threatening” although she uses Ebonics herself in her poems, e.g. “The Pusher”). It should be said, incidentally, that at least SOME of the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the Oakland resoluti
