Blacks can't speak English - Bill Cosby

by closer2fine 129 Replies latest jw friends

  • flower
    flower

    Leolaia,

    I dont think we are talking about black english v white english. Everyone may drop their speech to a more casual level when they are at home as opposed to in the professional world however I think what Bill Cosby was talking about people who are so uneducated that they do not even know the proper pronounciation of words so as to use them in the world. Its surprising the number of people who use phrases like 'where you at?' 'dat aint mine' ' dem's his kids' ect ect. That is NOT black english or any kind of black dialect. Its simply poor grammar as a result of lack of education or lack of desire.

    That is not to say that there isnt a 'black' version of the english language. As a professional I spend 90 percent of my day speaking to clients on the phone and 90 percent of the time I know when I am speaking with a black person and they know that I am black. I have a very professional phone manner as do they and thus it has nothing to do with poor pronounciation and misuse of words that gives our speech its cultural distinction.

    It is a mistake for people to keep trying year after year to give people who speak poorly an excuse for their lack of education. Ebonics, Black Vanecular English,.....whatever. Its all just laziness. Those people, black, white, hispanic or whatever, would just rather spend their energy complaining rather than opening a book and learning something. They are taught from infancy to sit around and watch tv instead of reading books or to worry about what kind of clothes they have on rather than what kind of grades they make. Their brains are so unused that it becomes hard work to learn the simplest thing.

  • Cassiline
    Cassiline
    He added: "They're standing on the corner and they can't speak English. I can't even talk the way these people talk: 'Why you ain't,' 'Where you is' ... And I blamed the kid until I heard the mother talk. And then I heard the father talk. ... Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!" ~~Cosby
    And, yes, Blacks and Hispanics alike have commited atrocities against the English language and too bad this type of lingo has been accepted by celebrities and others!!!! ~~DY
    Where are we, 1935? I didn't realise people still spoke like this. Doubtfully Yours, whether you're a minority yourself or not, you're undoubtedly racist. ~~ Scotsman

    Does that make Cosby a racist as well, considering his above comments? If I said white people rape the 'Kings' english does this make me a racist?

    Cassi

  • Leolaia
  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    Hi Flower,

    Bill Cosby is certainly including Black Vernacular (if not mostly talking about it) if we go by the examples he cites. It is a real dialect, as real as Cockney English or Australian English, and it is not just what happens when an ignorant person tries to speak without knowing real language (as English teachers commonly thought in the '60s according to the erroneous "deprivation model"). It has a set of grammatical and phonological rules that can be historically traced back into time to specific dialects in Britain. Many of the same features also typify southern white English, and it is thought to come from the kind of English spoken by the indentured servants who were used as nannies in raising white children as well as serving as middle management on Southern plantations, from whom the black slaves learned their English. What you call "laziness" there certainly is a lot of, on all sides.....a lack of motivation of blacks to learn and use the Standard, but as I pointed out it isn't just laziness but comprises many other social factors that covertly discourage some youth from learning the Standard. And the education system has been very lazy in underfunding poor school districts where the need is the greatest. There is also a "reverse stigmatization" of the Standard among many black youths who regard it as the "cracker language" and this is most unfortunate for real socioeconomic reasons. Language literally is power, and such attitudes need to change, and I'm not just talking about attitudes towards the Standard but the attitudes that lead to a reverse stigmatization of the Standard in the first place.

  • Cassiline
    Cassiline
    And the education system has been very lazy in underfunding poor school districts where the need is the greatest.

    Leolia

    I would like to comment on this if you don?t mind out of context. It really irritates me when I see blame laid at the school systems fault. Why not place blame with the parent? I know my part in my children?s education has been enormous.

    We can look at different cultures as well. I see an Asian child (this may sound horrible) and I know that child will be at the top of their class. Why? Do we say this is due to the school or parent? I vote parent not school.

    I believe an education is everything one is willing to make of it. You can have a school, force kids to go, but forcing one to learn is a different story. Those children who are undereducated (any race) in my opinion lays with the parent not the school system in most cases.

    Cassi

  • minimus
    minimus

    'fo shizzle my nizzle And if youze no what dat meansis den you guts the point!.

  • Leolaia
    Leolaia

    It's a complex situation. You are right that good, strong parenting plays a central role in this. I didn't mean to neglect that aspect. It is especially critical in the early years, when kids are most apt to obey and follow their parents, and adopt their attitudes. My criticism of the school system is not based so much on individual teachers who work hard, or even with individual schools, but with how the government underfunds school districts especially in areas with low property values (Title I funds). In the absence of enough Title I funds, certain schools were forced to categorize black children who are monolingual Vernacular speakers as learning disabled in order to apply for Special Education funds. This increase in funding helps the schools at an institutional level, but it is TERRIBLE for individual children who instead of receiving quality eduation receive remedial education on the basis of an faulty classification. That is what I was mainly criticizing. Because of this trap, the Oakland School District tried to go another route in 1996 and instead apply for Bilingual Education funds (Title VII), but then you know what all happened because of that! It's a bad system and I was criticizing the laziness of those in Washington who haven't fixed this trap.

  • amac
    amac

    Unfortunately, this is a very complicated problem and nowhere near as simple as Bill Cosby makes it. There is no simple solution to this, otherwise I'm sure it would have been pushed and succeeded. Throughout American history, the couple steps in the right direction (the civil war and the civil rights movement of the 60s) have always been followed by a recession back to racism.

    People like to think that we live in a country where ANYONE can succeed if they try hard enough. That is simply not true.

    Most of the problems roots back to education...poor areas get poor schools. Poor areas are mostly made up of minorities. This problem is perpetuated by elementary and high school history curriculums that are still white and euro-centric.

    As we get further and further away from the civil rights movement, I fear people's feelings on racism will become more and more polarized, even by minorities.

  • amac
    amac

    Yay for Leolaia's last post! Good post...

  • got my forty homey?
    got my forty homey?

    Just imagine if a Rush Limbaugh or a white republican said these things? He would have been stripped naked and whipped right on the stage. It was like Dusty Bakers comments on Hispanics being able to play in the heat and white's can't. Nothing happened.

    But you can count all the times white sports commentators have made naive comments or things they felt were the truth and it was and instant career killer.

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