Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice (review)

John Baugh begins this book by reminiscing about his youth in Philadelphia. He grew up codeswitching between the ‘proper speech’ insisted on by his parents, teachers, and church elders and the rejection of white speech by the hippest and coolest of his role models. B became an expert codeswitcher and even developed skills as a mimic, which as a youth led him to make fun of the accents of some of his classmates. As a result, B came to appreciate at an early age the notions of linguistic pride and shame and the ways in which racial prejudice connects with linguistic devaluation. In Beyond Ebonics, B draws on this perspective and on his professional work in linguistics and education to put the Oakland School Board episode into historical perspective.

Beyond Ebonics consists of nine relatively short chapters dealing with the history of the notion of Ebonics, the Oakland School Board resolutions of December 1996 and January 1997, various legislative reactions, the legal implications and policy concerns raised by the Ebonics resolutions, and the media and public reactions (including attempts at satire). B also teases apart the various theoretical perspectives that researchers bring to the study of African American speech and culture, and he includes three appendices: the LSA’s January 1997 resolution on Ebonics and bills passed in 1997 by the Texas 75^th Legislature and the California Senate.

B emphasizes a number of important facts that have gone unnoticed in the press commentary and other folklore that has arisen from the Ebonics discussion—he notes for example that the 1973 coining of the term ‘Ebonics’ by Robert Williams was intended to reflect a grouping of language varieties with African roots broader than just African American Vernacular English but that this sense of Ebonics was soon morphed into synonymy with Black English. B also reminds us that the Oakland School Board revised its resolution in January of 1997, clarifying its intent. Especially valuable also is B’s description of the political reactions to the Ebonics discussions, from Education Secretary Richard Riley’s position on Title VII funding to the comments of African-American political leaders such as Jesse Jackson and Kweisi Mfume and legislators such as Arlen Specter, Lauch Faircloth, Maxine Waters, and Peter King. And B discusses the media and public reactions—describing the positions of African-American opinion makers such as Brent Staples, Bill Cosby, and Oprah Winfrey as well as the reactions of editorial cartoonists and late-night comedians and some of the more openly racist material on the internet.

Of special interest to linguists are the chapters on ‘Ebonics genesis’ and ‘Disparate theoretical foundations’. The first provides background on the origins of the term ‘Ebonics’ and its ‘definitional derailment’ (74); the second explicates the various theoretical traditions involved in discussions of Ebonics and African American English. B has done linguists and the public a service by providing a lucid, readable, and engaging overview of the issues surrounding Ebonics and public policy.