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From: deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: Ebonics/Spanish (Revisited)
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Date: Sun, 12 Jan 1997 18:29:02 GMT
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In article <5b9lpt$6od@vixen.cso.uiuc.edu>,
Jonathan Badger <badger@aquarius.scs.uiuc.edu> wrote:
>deb5@midway.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff) writes:
> 
>>[...] Of the two main vectors--a minority community's
>>willingness to assimilate and a majority community's willingness to accept
>>them--which is more important in determining the minority's acceptance by
>>the majority?  It's no wonder that a lot of ghetto kids have given up on
>>"assimilation" and cultivated BEV as a source of community pride.
>
>Yes, I agree that a large part of the Black community's failure to
>assimilate historically was (and in part still is) due to racism on
>the part of the American majority. It is just that I don't think the
>correct response to this problem is to withdraw into a culture of
>their own. 

	I don't agree with that response either, but as someone who's
never going to encountre the racial and class prejudice the most ghetto
Blacks do, it seems presumptuous for me to decide for them what the
"correct response" is.  The Oakland teachers may have a good idea:
Instead of trying to "correct" this attitude by confronting it head-on
(i.e. by trying to stamp out BEV, a primary marker of this particular
cultural ideology)--which hasn't worked--they're trying to work with it or
around it (by making the kids aware that they possess two "codes", one
for in-group communication and one for out-group).

	Now, of course, what it's *really* going to take to change the
situation is a way of directly linking mastery of SAE and economic success
in the students' minds.  Plenty of people have posted to these
(and many other) newsgroups that they believe this link to be present in
the real world, but if the kids don't see it, nothing about their
education will change.  IMHO, this is the weak point in the plan, because
there are serious limits to what a school can do alone to provide
convincing economic models to adolescents.

>And I also happen to doubt that very many Blacks really
>speak this "BEV" -- sure the Black kids in my high school (mid 1980's)
>used some odd slang occasionally, but they certainly didn't sound like
>some of the examples of BEV I read in a newspaper. Perhaps the press
>slightly exaggerated the problem? Mightn't it be similar to the way
>the press presents Internet users as generally being deviants of one
>form or another?

	I don't see your point about media bias.  Like any dialect in a
subordinate position vis-a-vis a standard language, BEV has many
subvarieties.  Those closer to SAE (what creolists would call "acrolectal
varieties" have, by definition, fewer distinct features than other
("mesolectal" and "basilectal") varieties.  Now, for some reason, the
Oakland SD decided to declare BEV a "separate language"--probably because
the only other term they thought available was "dialect" and that seemed
too weak for their purposes.  (I've yet to see convincing evidence that 
they thought they would seriously qualify for federal bilingual
education monies.)  Now they have to justify this decision to the public
(who have their own deeply-held subjective views of what divides
"dialects" from "languages") and the only way to do that is to present
examples of "basilectal" varieties, those most distinct from SAE, even if
these are not the ones in most common use.

	IMHO, some of the most distinct features of BEV cannot be
reproduced in a one-line example in the newspaper because they are not
grammatical at all, rather pragmatic, proximic, and otherwise para-
linguistic.  For example, there seems to be a more formalised system of
greetings in BEV (where anything less than answers to general queries
about one's health and activities may be considered rude) than in the SAE
I grew up with (where a simple acknowledgement like "hey" or a nod is
sufficient).  Also, BEV speakers tend to talk at a higher volume than
speakers of SAE--a very rude behaviour, according to the linguistic rules
I was taught.  
	
	Furthermore, experts in the field assure me that there are
differences in turn-taking, affirmation, and other important discourse
features.  Now, the fact that many of these features may be carried
over into other linguistic systems (such as SAE) does not mean they are
not distinctly characteristic of BEV.  (I.e. You can be considered a
fluent SAE speaker is you don't use them, but not a fluent BEV one.) 
Unfortunately, I *don't* think the teachers are going to be addressing
them when they teach SAE, which I find a real shame.  These are precisely
the kind of cultural differences which can lead to the most confusion and
misunderstanding because everyone takes them for granted.

>>Okay, if that's your view, then the problem is that people are assuming
>>we're *entirely* the same rather than just *basically*.  How many times
>>have I heard an Easterner complain that Midwesterners are hypocritically
>>cheerful and dishonestly nice?
[snip]
>
>Well, I certainly *hear* these complaints often. Growing up in the
>Midwest I always heard that New Yorkers were unfriendly. When I
>actually went to NYC though, I found that there wasn't any perceptable
>difference between people there and in the Midwest. But I never was
>from the Hollywood idealized Midwest of farms and small towns, so
>maybe I was already used to brusqueness.

Funny.  I didn't grow up beyond the black stump either (St. Louis isn't
Chicago, but neither is it Des Moines), but I found appreciable
differences between myself and the New Yorkers I've known in attitudes
toward the arts and entertainment, personal interaction, urbanism,
transportation--almost every aspect of modern life.  To take one small
example:  How many Midwesterners you know can *conceive* of it what it
would be like to not have driver's license, let alone not have access to a
vehicle?  (Even in the city of Chicago, my lover and I are considered
rather odd for our heavy reliance on pub trans; he had a car until
recently, but deemed it more trouble than it was worth.)  There is a whole
car-based culture out there, which arguably reaches its most elabourated
form in LA, that many if not most Manhattanites have no experience with.

>>>And every tragedy of history that I can think of, from slavery to
>>>the Holocaust to the "ethnic cleansing" in former Yugoslavia was caused
>>>by the assumption that people from other cultures aren't like oneself,
>>>and perhaps aren't even true people. Would any of these tragedies have
>>>occurred if the people involved considered all people to be more or less
>>>the same?
> 
>>Every tragedy?  The slaughter of the Kurds because they won't stop
>>demanding autonomy and speaking Kurdish and instead settle down and behave
>>as "mountain Turks"?  The forced conversion of millions of people--
>>Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Animist, etc.--because we're all the same
>>people and should all worship the same G-d?  Or, speaking about forced
>>conversions, how about the "liberation" of the proletariate?  Looking over
>>the crumbling carcass of world Communism, it could be agrued that some of
>>the worst atrocities in history were committed in the name of
>>"egalitarianism".
>
>Let's take the Kurds first. As far as I can tell, the Turks are
>slaughtering them not because they want to wipe out Kurdish culture as
>such, but because a few of the Kurdish leaders have dreams of an
>independent Kurdistan and are willing to resort to anything, including
>terrorism, to reach this goal. 

	You have misunderstood the situation tremendously.  Officially
speaking, there are no non-religious minorities in Turkey.  All Turkish
citizens--regardless of their backgrounds--are "Turks" and have Turkish as
their native language.  Anyone assertion to the contrary--such as a
request for minority language instruction in public education--is
treason, because it threatens the integrity of the Turkish state.

	In other words, the Turkish authorities dream of a homogenous
Turkey and are willing to resort to anything, even terrorism against their
own citizens, to reach this goal.  The reason for favouring the Kurdish
terrorists against the Turkish ones in this dispute is the belief that
self-determination and/or cultural freedoms is/are /a fundamental human
right/s.

>While Turkey is certainly no great
>defender of human rights themselves, and could certainly show some
>more sincerity in attempting to resolve the Kurdish situation
>peacefully, one can hardly blame them for attempting to keep their
>country together. Just like the Russians in Checneya. 

	One certainly can.  Who says its "their country"?  A right of
conquest going back less than two-hundred years (in the Chechen case)?
Was Soviet use of force in Azerbaijan (several thousand dead) justified
because the Soviets were just keeping "their country" together (in spite
of the desires of the vast majority of Azeris?).

>While it is
>tempting in both cases to root for the underdog, in both cases these
>underdogs are filled with (in my opinion) silly nationalistic
>pride. Nationalism always leads to xenophobia and war in my book. It
>isn't an "-ism" I have much respect for.

	But you seem to have a lot of respect for "centrism".  Again, this
is a case where I prefer to position myself between the extremes.

>And for most forced conversions, both religious and Marxist, I find
>that in general there is a monetary gain by the conquerer that's the
>*real* cause of the conquest. The ideology is just there as an
>excuse. The Crusaders weren't really out to convert the Arabs -- they
>just wanted their gold. And I suspect Stalin wanted Eastern Germany's
>industry and resources and couldn't case less about German workers.

	And Russia could care less about Chechen workers--they just want
to make sure they don't lose control of Checehn oil reserves.  I think 
one can find economic motivations for much of what is attributed to
ideology.  (Would the German Jews have made such inviting targets if they
had been *poor*?)  That doesn't mean the ideology is irrelevant.

>>There's a balance between the two extremes.  Giving into either one of
>>them--radical egalitarianism or radical hiaerarchialism--leads to
>>repression and suffering.  We can't put and end to prejudice and
>>discrimination simply by pretending real cultural differences don't exist.
>
>True. I just dislike "cultural differences" being used as excuses for
>atrocities. When Chinese leaders claim that concepts like free speech
>are "too Western", I just don't buy it. Nobody enjoys being thrown
>into jail for their beliefs, no matter where they were born.

So do I.  In addition, I dislike "egalitarianism" being used as an excuse.
There *is* such a thing as universal human rights.  One of them is a right
to equality, but others include freedom of religion and freedom of speech.
The latter covers linguistic rights, IMHO.  I dislike seeing any of thse
rights abrogated, the motivations or intentions of the abrogators
notwithstanding.

-- 
	 Daniel "Da" von Brighoff    /\          Dilettanten
	(deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /__\         erhebt Euch
				   /____\      gegen die Kunst!
