"Black English"--
It is Nonsense and
Something to be Discarded
by
Victor Edward Swanson,
the Publisher at
The Hologlobe Press
Version One
(April 10, 2024)
In the early 1970s, I was a student at Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, and I was a member of WAYN-AM (the student radio station at the university), and when I was at the university, I regularly saw that black gal walking around on campus, and she was always dressed in African garb (which always included a head-wrap thing), and the woman was Geneva Smitherman, and this woman was always pushing to get "Black English" recognized as useful. I report "Black English" is crap! It was crap in the 1970s, as pushed by Geneva Smitherman, and it is crap today. On Monday, March 25, 2024, I was reminded of Geneva Smitherman and her nonsense through an article published in the Detroit Free Press called "MORE THAN WORDS" (which actually was presented with "WILL AFRICAN AMERICAN ENGLISH BE EMBRACED IN THE CLASSROOM?" as something above the title proper). The article was presented on two pages--page one (1A) and page 11A. Hold it! There are rules that make any industry or art form work well or best. For example, when a guy is working on an car engine, he has to make passages for the flow of oil proper (such as at the bottoms of piston rods), or when the engine is running, it will wear down quickly or sooner. A carpenter and a dress maker have to do things right, or houses will fall apart easily or doors will not close properly, or dress seams will fall apart. Doctors have to do things right. That is enough of that. Writers have to follow rules. Over the decades, the ways of using English properly or best have been adopted, and they were not adopted to push "whiteness" or something related to race. Rules about making verbs agree in form with subjects, for example, have been adopted so that meanings can be passed along clearly, and the rules about pronouns have been adopted so that it is easily to determine to what thing a pronoun is tied. It is usually the people who are regarded as good in their fields who set rules about standards over the years, such as in English. For years, people who have wanted to be good writers of English might work to learn rules set down in a book called Modern American Usage (and in England, people might use Modern English Usage), and I have tried to follow the ways of Modern American Usage so that I can write things that make sense to a reader the first time that the reader sees something that I have written. Every day, a person--even one trying to follow the ways of Modern American Usage--can get corrupted a bit (at least momentarily) because of all the bad speakers and writers who are round today; for example, most of the announcers for football games--and that is especially true of the "commentary" guys who are black and are former players--often push out jackass sentences, such as those with wrong verb forms. "Black English" has illogic that can result in misunderstandings between writers and readers or speakers and listeners. A good writer, for example, tries to write something so that it can be understood the first time seen, or the good writer tries to write something so that a reader will not end up in one of those stall moments in which the reader wonders what the hell was meant. The article in the Detroit Free Press opened with--"Geneva Smitherman ended up in speech therapy in her freshman year at Wayne State University in the 1950s, when she flunked a test to screen incoming teaching students for possible speech problems. * The speech therapy class was largely made up of people of color, including Black students like Smitherman, who spoke in Black English, a language spoken by many Black people across the country. The teaching assistant leading the class quickly realized that neither Smitherman nor most of the other students had speech impairments the test screened for, such as stuttering. They spoke differently, pronouncing words contrary to standard American English and used different phrases. * Being placed in a speech class made Smitherman mad, but she was used to being underestimated...." That is enough of the crap and useless emotional filler, such as about her feelings being hurt. [Note: In the early 1970s, maybe in about 1973, I was sort of pushed into going to a free "writing clinic" at Wayne State University for a while so that I would be able to pass a writing-proficiency exam, and that clinic was in a building that was right south of Old Main.] The opening of the article worked to talk about "different phrases" and different speech pronunciations as the main things of Black English, and I note that "accent" should not be a discussion about "Black English," since "accent" is not related to verb use and proper sentence structure. Really, "Black English" comes down to problems with grammar and verb tense and the like. English is being used as an international language for many reasons, and if a person wishes to deal with people internationally, the person should use proper English so that miscommunications are kept to a minimum. By the way, Chinese is no great thing. Because of the trillions (I exaggerate) of symbols that were used and are used in writing Chinese, a Chinese person was never able to invent the typewriter, which was invented in the 1800s. The world would never have had the typewriter or the typewriter-based computer keyboard today, if it were not for people who had English (and related language styles) as a regular language, which has 26 characters, 10 numbers, and a few other symbols, which could be presented on a typewriter. Chinese will never be the international standard, and it will fade away, so Chinese and others will have to switch to standard English to do well in business, and the Chinese are not going to adopt the crap that "Black English" is. Most of the article in the Detroit Free Press was on page 11A, and well into page 11A, there was this material--"...Smitherman, now a distinguished professor emerita at Michigan State University, was tapped as an expert in the case. 'This failure of the teachers to recognize the language as legitimate and the corresponding negative attitudes toward the children's language led to negative expectations of the children which turned into self-fulfilling prophecies,' Smitherman wrote in 1981, reflecting on the case. 'One critical consequence was that the children were not being taught to read.'....". Bullshit! In Detroit, mostly it has been blacks who have been teaching black children for years, or mostly blacks have been working to teach black children to read English (of some type), and it has gone to crap, so the previous quoted material is jackass stuff. Incidentally, on page 11A, there is a photograph of Dr. Geneva Smitherman from 1978. Late in the article, this material was presented--"African American English still isn't fully embraced in the classroom, scholars and advocates said, but Smitherman and others said they're optimistic that educators today are doing a better job of responding to students who speak the language. And research by dozens of linguistics scholars, many of whom are in Michigan, has contributed to understanding the nuances and particulars of the language, including its role in the classroom and reading instruction. Yolanda Holt, a professor in the department of communication sciences and disorders and sociolinguist at East Carolina University, said consciously involving community members in research around reading and language is crucial to understanding how educators can better teach students who speak African American English. 'All languages have value; if the child is able to communicate effectively, that's good,' she said. 'We want to use the language that they bring to school to engage them with literacy practices."...." The previous sentence from me shows the pseudo-intellectual nonsense in Yolanda Holt. For one, "all languages" do not have value. "Black English" does not have value in a country where English is the main language. Really, Dr. Geneva Smitherman and Jamesia Norman (a professor of English at Grand Valley State University who is shown in a photograph on page one) are pushing sloppiness as acceptable. A later part of the article in the Detroit Free Press was--"Jamesia Nordman, a professor of English at Grand Valley State University who has taught English Language Arts and English across different grade levels, said, like Spanish speakers, young African American speakers tend to oscillate between languages, from African American English to standard American English (SAE). Teachers should 'let them vacillate between AAE and SAE, and gradually teach them the SAE rules and mechanics and things like that. ...I think you teach them in conjunction with one another,' Nordman said.". The material from Nordman is nonsense! If the "Black English" crap is not put down in the early years of a child's life, it will get ingrained in the structure of the mind of the child, and the child will be hurt in the long run. It is like rap or gangster rap, which is filled with jackass English, which is being adopted by blacks and whites, especially children, and rap is hurting children. By the way, "texting" (with jackass forms of words and sentences) is a super-big problem. I would never hire a person with "Black English" skills, since the person would put together crap sentences and such that are avoided as best as possible at The Hologlobe Press. For one-hundred years, there has been broadcasting in the country--radio and later television--and that is has helped (at least in the first fifty years, when announcers had high standards of speech, such as to work at radio networks) to help make English communication workable all over the country [Note: I have heard it said over the years and decades that such places as France and China have various forms of French and Chinese that can result in people not understanding each other well all over the lands of the countries.]. Here was a big piece of crap in the article in the Detroit Free Press--"Beyond the mechanics of reading instruction, there's another dimension to understanding African American English in classrooms: embracing it and showing children that they should value their language, Nordman said. 'It is language, it's not slang, she said. 'We need to teach our kids that they're both valid and valuable.'....". If a person values crap, then the person will not dispel the crap or give up the crap, and that is my response to the last quoted material. The next material in the article was--"Nordman didn't always feel like her first language, African American English, was seen as valuable as a student growing up in Detroit, and felt she was often made to feel ashamed for the way she spoke, constantly being corrected. In college at Eastern Michigan University, people always noted her 'accent' even though she was from Detroit, a 40-minute a drive to EMU's campus. 'It should have been really powerful if I had been able to come from a place of understanding,' she said. To foster inclusion and hone a passion for reading, school libraries, classroom bookshelves and required reading should include books that include African American English, Norman and others said.....". That theme from Jamesia Nordman is junk of the highest order, and it is more proof that universities are pushing idiocy and propaganda and emotional nonsense. Yes, it is black feminist crap, too, and the second-to-the-last paragraph was--"'African American English,' it's positive, it's not going anywhere,' she said. 'We want to encourage people to use a language that speaks to their soul.'".
[Altavena, Lily. "MORE THAN WORDS." Detroit Free Press, 25 March 2024, pp. 1A and 11A.]
Note: The first version of this document was posted on: April 10, 2024.
Note: The address name for this document on the Internet is: www.hologlobepress.com/blackeng.htm.
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The Hologlobe Press
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