ANTHROPOLOGY 281--Ebonics: History, Development --THE BLACK IQ TEST & CONDITIONED RESPONSE

ANTH281-1001  UNIV OF NEVADA/RENO/SPRING 2018 DR. J FERGUSON

Does "Ebony" + "Phonics" =  Language?

(The Lot)-- Recently, a question on the mid term turned an eye toward the subject of Ebonics, which is covered later on in the semester in Ahearn text. Origin of the term "ebonics" is attributed to a professor at  Washington University, St. Louis, but at least one newspaper article (The Pittsburgh Courier, 12 April 1952)  references the word "ebonic" as used by Nat D Williams in 1952:  "according to some ebonic folks.."

Location for Nat D Williams is Memphis, he was a DJ  at WDIA.
https://musicmemphis.wordpress.com/tag/nat-d-williams/

     Wikipedia attributes origin of the word "ebonics" to Robert Lee Williams in 1973.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Williams_(psychologist) Dr. Williams unabashedly takes credit for "coinage" of the word in a newspaper commentary.

     In this same interview-commentary, Dr. Williams elaborates on the 1997 Oakland School Board's plan to allow teachers to integrate Ebonics into the classroom, utilizing "code-switching" to translate the African American English (AAE) vocabulary into Standard American English (SAE).

Reaction to the plan brought about two radically conflicting language ideologies. Syl Jones in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune ( 03 Jan 1997) addresses the issue as to whether those who speak the "language", "dialect", "accent" or whatever, of Ebonics are not socially and genetically inferior but are victims of the culture in which they were brought up. Therefore, it becomes necessary for the school board to adapt to the home-playground dialogue and attempt to translate it into the given language that will assure the kid's place in a bona fide profession.
   The other side of the ideology spectrum is presented by Gregory Kane in a reprinted article from the Baltimore Sun, also in the Star-Tribune. From a Gricean quantitative-qualitative standpoint, he cites that of the 50,000 students in the school district, just over half are black; and they collectively hold a grade point average of 1.8. He argues the reason black students lag far behind whites, Hispanics and Asians is, according to the school board, a linguistic one. The curriculum was not "African-centered enough."

     Then there were those who took both sides, Like Rev. Jesse Jackson,  supporting intent of the school board but not endorsing Ebonics.

  All of the above represents a case of "special relativity" in linguistics, we will now examine the "general relativity" of linguistics.  Returning to the Father of Ebonics, Dr. RL Williams of St. Louis, a radically different approach to understanding the core problem was not whether kids would do better code-switching their street lingo into something they can use as a dental assistant, but whether IQ tests administered in school were ethnically biased. Were they written for Anglo-Saxon squares or for inner-city culturally challenged youth? The result was the Black Intelligence Test of Cultural Homogeneity (BITCH).

      Dr. Williams argues that the standard intelligence quotient test is discriminatory because it "dehumanizes black children and penalizes them." He insists the tests measure acquired or learned behavior and this is a rather remarkable discovery in its own right, which seems to be foreshadowed by the development of the new IQ test. 

"ACQUIRED, LEARNED BEHAVIOR"
    
     Almost as if we were discussing Pavlov's conditioned response experiments with dogs and not school aged kids trying to integrate themselves, not ethnically, into a culture, but by virtue of intelligence. Up until the mid term exam, focus in Anthropology 281 has been primarily on several basic premises of Linguistic Anthropology. First, the Sapir-Whorf theory of relativity; second, Paul Grice and his four maxims; third, code-switching and code-mixing; fourth, Duranti's greetings analysis and adjacency-pairs, just to mention a few.

     For the first, does language affect thought and is it relative to the culture? Do the arrows point both ways between the three components, and which influences the other two the greater? Just about the time we come up with answers to these questions, other linguists will say no, language is universal, it has common roots and evolutionary checkpoints along the cultural path. Now we find ourselves comparing Dr. Williams' assertions that IQ, intelligence, is acquired-learned behavior. Combine that with the universalists theory that language is inherent, we arrive at Pavlov's conditioned response, the salivating dog. Extend that further and we have innate response as described in adjacency-pair analysis, an automatic built mechanism that requires only certain conditioned, universal,  reactions to given stimuli, just as the dogs salivate when they smell food.

     There is a great deal of emphasis on language as something that is "acquired" or "learned" in direct contradiction to experiments with, at least dogs, that certain responses are built in, already inherent in the creature. This has led contemporary linguists to adopt the posture that language may be innate, at least the ability to acquire it, utilizing a convenient device stamped into the brain somewhere. Going against the grain of relative linguists, the generalized grammar process allows the individual to respond accordingly to the cultural surroundings. In the case of inner-city children, the result is ebonics, or spanglish, or whatever other form of dialect, accent, language, offshoot of some tribal import from the early days of slavery and conquest.
    The question now is, what is beyond that? Where do we go next to determine if language is determinate, will we find a ready-made cranial device for code-switching that will translate, overnight, a dialect into the proper ideological format so that someone can succeed? Maybe the dogs have the answer, at least they did for Pavlov.

KEYWORDS: ebonics, black vernacular, code-switching, linguistic relativity, language, dialect, accent,