Black English in Children's Literature

Since the late 1960's, a new linguistic phenomenon has appeared in books, particularly children's books, about black* people. I am speaking of the introduction into some of these books of what linguists refer to as Black English. Black English is not to be confused with the reported speech of southern and working class blacks found, for example, in Carolyn Keene's racist Nancy Drew mystery series (the housekeeper's speech), or even in the decidedly anti-racist stories of Richard Wright in Uncle Tom's Children. A good sample of this speech is found in the first story of that book, "Big Boy Leaves Home," in which four young boys are out in the woods, playing hooky from school.

They fell silent, smiling, dropping the lids of their eyes against the sunlight.

"Man don the groun feel warm?"

"Jus lika bed."

"Jeeeses, Ah could stay here ferever."

"Me too."

"Ah kin feel tha ol sun goin all thu me."

"Feels like mah bones is warm."

In the distance a train whistled mournfully.¹

Clearly, it is the pronunciation of the syllables rather than a different pattern of inflection and the complete re-creation of a different syntax and grammar that Wright attempts to reproduce. Black English is, by comparison, a dialect radically different from Standard English, having "a strikingly different grammar and sound system,"² and being "as consistent and elegant as whites consider their Standard English to be."³ An example of Black English is the narration of the eight year old Johnetta in Lucille Clifton's My Brother Fine With Me.

Me and Baggy the only children. I was the only child till he come being born. Everything was all right, me and Mama and Daddy doing fine till Mama come spreading out like a pancake and Aunt Winnie who don't even like children come to watch me for a while and Mama go off and come back here with Baggy. I was mad for a long time and I ain't really all that glad now, but I don't let on. I'm eight years old and he five.⁴

Aside from pronunciation, some major differences between Black English and Standard are found in the verb patterns and tenses —the omission of the verb "to be" in certain constructions, or the use of modals ("he done been gone") where there are none or others in Standard —and the omission of the apostrophe "s" in signifying the possessive.

Although most people, blacks included, certainly recognize Black English when they hear or see it, they do not understand it to be a different dialect, with properties as I have described them. Rather, they regard it as an inferior or incorrect version of Standard English. Thus, working class blacks who speak and write this dialect are stigmatized and "punished" for using it (by failing in school, or the inability to get and keep jobs dependent on a command of Standard English). Except for the importation of some Black English words into Standard English (e.g., "rap," "cool," "the Man," "rip off"), the majority culture has no use for Black English at all. In fact, it is fair to say, with one exception I shall discuss presently, that the political and cultural reality is that Black English, without a history as a written language, does not have a function which serves the speaker positively outside the black working class community (where, I should add, it is as useful as any other dialect in communication between members).

A number of questions occur. Why, then, has Black English surfaced, in the last ten or twelve years, in books published by major houses? And what are the implications of its presence? Perhaps the answer to the first question is easier than the answer to the second and goes back to the history of the black working class community of our cities in the mid to late sixties. These, of course, were the years of black rebellions in the inner cities, and of the ideology of black nationalism that replaced the integrationist ideology of the civil rights movement of...