Black Language

     AAVE This is a new thing that I heard last night. "African American Vernacular English".

    I just had a look at this WIKI page on the phenomenon that is the AAVE. The way I saw it yesterday I thought it was just a word substitution thing. Holleeee Shiiiiiit was I Wrong. It is literally a whole other 'side' language, I guess is how I would say it. This AAVE uses many of the words from the English language but its not English. In the same way that English 'appropriates words from other languages. There are entire sections devoted to new ways to treat both Vowels and Consonants and accent. Its like English but not English. Its like English for Dummies. Its lazy English. And it seems that that black culture and the black community have laid claim to this new bastardized form of English. When I first learned of this new phenomenon [I say new as I understand it it is not too terribly new] I know that I am sounding like I am coming down harshly on this new language, because I am. The Black community has been making these same excuses for the laziness of black students in schools for quite literally DECADES. I am old enough to recall when the first go-round of this was 'popular' Back in the early 70's came along an English 'language equivalent' called Ebonics.  And I doubt that is the first occurrence of this sort of thing.  It was basically the same thing. It is prison speak that was taught at home and was being used in school by recalcitrant black students who Actively Refused to learn ENGLISH. I resist using the phrase Proper English. English is a slippery language. It morphs and evolve over time. Some times for the good and sometimes NOT. And the Oakland school district was considering or maybe even did pass some sort of ordinance that would allow black students to speak and write in this Ebonics language so that the teachers could pass these same lazy recalcitrant students up through the grades and eventually matriculate them out of school with 'actual' diplomas. High school diploma's that are supposed to be a short form employment application qualifier. The 'diploma' is supposed to certify to a potential employer that the student bearing this would be diploma has passed with some level of proficiency the general course load for a high school student. That being that this student should be able to read English, speak and understand English, be able to add, subtract, multiply and divide. And at some level under some little bit about American history and hopefully some little bit about world history. At a Bare Minimum. Minimum! But the school board felt that it was somehow more important that the students be able to "articulate" their thoughts and ideas by using this new language of ebonics. And while I agree that the students should be able to "articulate" their thoughts and ideas must at least some weight must be measured in how well this student can articulate their thought and ideas to through the use of actual English not a criminalized version of English. Employers that may not be the least bit familiar with the the 'language' that is Ebonics. A high school diploma is supposed to be at some level like a drivers license. You should be able to take you diploma to any state in  the Union and have this diploma be understood to mean the same in Oakland California as it does in Des Moines Iowa. While I don't actually know about the demographics of Des Moines Iowa I do not think they will have any Ebonics/Jive Translators readily available. I surely do not even know what 'June Cleaver' was saying there. Maybe Jive is some sort of dialect of Ebonics or maybe Jive is a 'language' unto its self or maybe AAVE is just some downstream codified umbrella under which both Jive and Ebonics hide. Ebonics must be a real thing because my spell checker knows it.

    It has been decades since graduated from high school and I do agree that English is tough to learn. I couldn't "Diagram" a sentence to save my life. And I sure as fuck do not know what the pluperfect tense of the verb go is. Or even what that means. But I do believe that I can string together a fairly coherent sentence and cogent and argument. On the list of the most difficult languages to learn it didn't even make the top ten.

    There are So many rules and So many exceptions to all of those rules. And it seems that many of the rules that they beat into you along with their accompanying exceptions are not as hard and fast as was taught. For instance the use of the words And and But to start a sentence. As I recall that was a big no no. But as it turns out maybe not as rigid as they would have has us believe. I hated my English classes. There was one point where my teacher was asking the class why the writer of the "Great Gatsby" might have been using the word and I shit you not the word "it" in this sentence whatever that sentence might have been and how it might have changed the entire passage had he chosen to use a different word. I about silently shit myself. As I read that passage there was NO other word that could have been used there in that sentence in that context. But who am I to crab. I don't have a Masters in English Literature. I couldn't understand how that book and others like it had become 'American Classics' and that they must be studied in perpetuity for their scathing insights into the American psyche. "The Great Gatsby" and "A catcher in the Rye" and "Grapes of Wrath" and "To Kill a Mockingbird". To be fair something clicked for me with "to Kill a Mockingbird" I did enjoy reading it. But that didn't mean that I understood any of the underlying subtle subtext being 'taught' to us about race relations in the south in the Year of Our Lord 1936. But somehow I found it to be a good story. I really hate it when 'professors' get all high and mighty about what the story is 'Really' about. Cant a story just be a story? [Spin this video out to about 4 minutes to see the message] But does there have to be a 'Message' in everything? Cant an Orange just be an orange?

     So, yes English is tough. But so is life. And in order to get along in the world and in life there some basic tools that one needs to have. In America Good and Proper and English is an important tool. And teachers who are letting students slide by in English by teaching Not English but what ever AAVE represents as a language are doing their students an incredible dis-service.

    It seems odd to me now though that the 4B Movement is getting so much airtime these days. It is nothing new. There is literally  nothing new under the sun. Lysistrata was written millennia ago and told the same basic story. Only now that the entire global population is on the verge of collapse we really cant afford this sort of disruption. South Korea, where 4B originated is experiencing population collapse that make the Black Death, Great Plague look like a summer allergy season. Apparently women who were already upset with the state of relations between men and women were "triggered" by the election results and are now shaving their heads stopping wearing makeup and what ever else they can think of to make themselves repellent to men. Given the state of the Mano-sphere that really isn't going to accomplish much. Lots of men have 'quit' women or moved overseas.   I don't know what bit of chaos in my brain thought this was a salient point to make with regard to AAVE, but there it is and I digress, again.