I recently received the following transmissions from two old buddies: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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>> Subject: Ebonics
>> Date: Tuesday, January 21, 1997 9:25 PM
>>
As you probably know there has been quite a problem over the Oakland California school board wanting to teach Ebonics in there school system. They said it was genetic to black people to speak the way they do. They were born to say how you be.
Now that I have made sure you understand they problem. They decided to have a beauty pageant and call it the miss Ebonics pageant, they felt this would be a good way to mainstream the process.
Things went well for most of the states but they were only able to get 49 states to enter the contest because no one wanted to say she was the contestant from I-DA-HO.
Cheerfully yours,
"Joe" {Name changed to protect old buddy}
His buddy, another North Carolina transplant has this to say:
From: {"John"}
To:
Subject: Re: Ebonics
Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 19:18:07 -0500
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
This whole Ebonics BS makes me ashamed to have been born in Oakland.
Next thing you know they will want to pass a law making Ebonics the second,
or is it third, language of the U.S.
Unfortuntely they made the mistake of copying these posts to me:
I would say that dragging these people over here from Africa and selling them like cattle into slavery would be something worth being ashamed of . . .
I would also say that encroaching on and wiping out most of the Native American Indian population would be something worth bowing our heads over. . .
Some goofy school board deciding to grab a little public attention and perhaps increase their language budget is hardly worth breaking a sweat over. In any case, what do you think the Indians thought when we brought over the English language (ever wonder why it's not called "American" now?)
D. Garrison dlg@esslink.com
http://members.esslink.com/~dlg/index.html
Copyright © 1997 by Donald Garrison. All Rights Reserved.
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