July 21, 2005

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A Reader Is Cheered By John Podhoretz on Birthright Citizenship

From: Roger Chaillet [winner, VDARE.COM War Against Christmas 2003 Competition]

RE: Two Races Divided By A Common Language

It was Thomas Sowell who pointed out some time ago that Ebonics is not the vernacular of the black underclass, but is in fact a variant of a dialect spoken in 17th century England.  Even some whites in remote areas of the Deep South still say "axe" instead of "ask."

Gee, imagine blacks in the 'hood speaking the language of the cracker.

[Vdare.com note: See Thomas Sowell's latest column on education, in which a white teacher took a risk to help a young black girl who was struggling with English usage. 

"It turned out that the little girl had no problem with the concepts or the facts but had misinterpreted a word because it sounded like another word that she had heard used at home, where a 'black English' dialect was spoken.

"Since the teacher was white, she knew that she was running a risk by getting into this issue. Opening this can of worms could result in anything from being called a 'racist' to an ugly confrontation at school or in court.

"Nevertheless, the teacher told the girl's mother that, unless her daughter learned standard English, her education could suffer and her intelligence might be so under-estimated that she could be falsely labeled subnormal."

Sowell links this to Ron Unz's fight to have children taught in English. The problem here is that some people would rather the children learned bad English, or not learn English at all, than have them assimilated to mainstream American society.]