Ehrlich on Washington column, January 12, 1997

NEWS FROM Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. Second Congressional District of Maryland 1 407 York Road, Suite 304 Lutherville, Maryland 21093 ON WASHINGTON By Congressman Robert L. Ehrlich, Jr. 3 1 5 Cannon House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Week of January 12, 1997 NO ON “EBONICS” Last month, the Oakland, California school board touched off a national debate when it unanimously voted to recognize black English (also called “Ebonics”) as the “primary” language of the city’s black students. The board’s decision clears the way for the school district’s 28,000 black students to be taught standard English as a secondary language — the same way that Spanish-speaking students are taught English. The Oakland school board’s decision has drawn a sharp, generally negative response from educators and opinion leaders nationwide. Indeed, some of the most potent criticism of the Ebonics plan has come from within the black community. Kweisi Mfume, my former congressional colleague and current national president of the NAACP, dubbed the plan, “ a cruel joke being played on a number of students who really need educational excellence, not educational excuses.” Maya,Angelou, the award-winning poet who spoke at President Clinton’s 1993 inauguration, was “incensed” by the board’s decision. Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said of the Ebonics plan: “It is not the right signal for our children, and I would be strongly opposed to doing something like it in Baltimore.” After much thought, I agree wholeheartedly with all of these comments. For me, the whole idea of treating Ebonics as a primary language fails on two levels. First, Ebonics is an offshoot of the English language, but it is clearly not a separate language. There are many areas of the United States in which distinct variations of standard English are spoken —