The fact is that the Oakland Ebonics controversy revealed that there remains a subculture in America whose ideas are unheard. There remains a segment of American society that refuses to adopt the mainstream method of communication and, instead, chooses to adopt an alternative form. These individuals do not necessarily equate success with the adoption of middle class values and the middle class style of life. For these individuals the ability to utilize standard English is not a goal and the learning of such skills is a wasted effort by educators. It is just another example of "busy work" in school that many find boring and frustrating.
The Oakland School Board's action brought into focus how language defines differences between races and classes in the United States. The Board's action diminished the value of standard English and placed Ebonics on an equal footing. This bothered the status quo. The status quo viewed standard English as a symbol of mainstream America and the allowance of another form of English was seen as a threat. To be considered a true American one had to speak and use standard English. To use any form of English was to be less of an American. This same logic is being used today in arguing against the widespread use of Spanish.
The Oakland School Board experiment was seen as being too radical. The American public and media reacted strongly to the actions of the Oakland Board. The Board tried an approach to assist their students and increase their language skills that was highly unconventional but they were never afforded the opportunity to test whether the approach might have worked. Instead, the Board retreated quickly and conformed to the pressures being placed on them from every direction. It will never be known whether allowing Oakland students to use...
(Davis, 2001) That number is sure to have risen dramatically since Davis did her research. The debates surrounding both the efficacy and the morality of racial profiling have created a lot of disagreement from many communities of color. Kabzuag Vaj is an organizer with the Asian Freedom Project in Madison, Wisconsin. The Asian Freedom Project has garnered hundreds of accounts of racial profiling of Southeast Asian youth over the past
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