Black Ebonics 'N The Queen's English

                                                     

I can think of no clearer evidence of the failure of the American school system to educate our 

Black urban youth than to compare how Blacks in other countries speak the English language.  The other night I was watching the BBC News Hour and they were conducting on the street interviews about the recent British government's hikes of the nation's student tuition.    When they stopped to interview a young Black man in London he spoke eloquently, articulately and you would have thought he was an Oxford scholar.  It turns out he's recently out of high school and works in a flower shop.

That same command of the English language can be seen even among young folks from Africa who've been given the opportunity to finish high school.

Compare that to the Ebonics muttered on the street corners of New York, Detroit, Baltimore, South side Chicago or South Central Los Angeles.  You'll be lucky to pick the meaning from every third word, if at all.  This despite the fact that we spend more than twice the money as Britain to finance a high school education and ten times more than Africa!

                                                   

Perhaps even more frustrating is the difference in attitudes between American Black youth and those in other lands.  Sadly, if you're not "gangsta" you won't survive very long in the urban jungle, a fact that contributes to the mush mouth language spoken there.  And just as sadly, both their language and their attitudes creates a cultural chasm that can't be breached;  a chasm so vast that American Black youth are the last to be hired despite fifty years of government mandated minority employment quotas.

In "Dreams of My Father" Barack Obama boasts that the key to his success in a white world was to simply learn how to speak properly and behave in a manner that was not threatening to White America.

Too bad he could not or would not pass those lessons on to America's Black youth.  He's had more than enough time to serve as role model and spiritual guru to Black youth.

Instead, Obama opts to play the race card whenever he can; he sees it as good politics as he turns one ethnic group against another, all in the name of securing 94% Black voting blocks.  It seems not to matter that as he "wins", America's Black youth continue to live in a gangsta world of 30 percent unemployment, graduate from high school as total illiterates and carry a large fake ethnic chip on their shoulder.

Sad...but that's "wassup".