Ebonics and the Betrayal of Black Children

A Different Drummer ^ | 17 June 2002 | Nicholas Stix

[mafree]

Not all Blacks have the color prejudice going on, though too many still do. Afrocentrists seem to be especially free from all that, though some of them may go in the other direction.

I seem to recall that Garvey despised light-skinned blacks.

Many of them had more problems with him than he did with them. Garvey admired Booker T. Washington, who was "biracial," though perhaps not that light in color.

[mafree]

"Not all Blacks have the color prejudice going on..."

I apologize if I implied that they did.

Accepted. I suspected you knew better but perhaps didn't clarify the statement.

[supercat]

If the Klu Klux Klan had come up with Ebonics, it would have been labeled as the most hideous/dangerous/racist action ever used on young blacks!

One fact which is conveniently omitted in history teaching is that there have historically been many black slave owners, especially outside the U.S.; indeed, nearly all slaves not born in captivity were bought from black slave traders.

If this fact were taught, people might recognize that many of the "black leaders" are in fact vile slavers. Booker T. Washington recognized this tendency back in the early 20th Century. Too bad so many people have been brainwashed to not see this.

[Grampa Dave]

You have the history correct, and those facts are omitted by Je$$e and $harpton and other black raci$ts whose power comes from having an underclass to pretend to represent and to treat badly.

Arafat does this with the PA's in Palestine and has for decades. The LaRaza creeps are tring to do the same with the illegal aliens and legal Mexican Americans in America.

Non of these parasites want to see the groups they manipulate get good educations and jobs. Because when they do, they don't nee the phoney leaders. Without the groups, the phoney leaders have no power nor money.

[Anamensis]

the myth that blood plasma and blood bank pioneer Charles Drew died because a white hospital refused to treat him, when in fact, white doctors and nurses worked valiantly, if unsuccessfully, to save him.)

They taught us in school that he "died on the steps" because the hospital refused to admit him. Where can I find the real version??

He**, these guys haven't even read many of the people they lionize. Try to talk to one of them about W.E.B. DuBois -- all they know is the endlessly quoted "prediction" from him, that the 20th century would be determined by the color line --

Most of them are certainly unaware of DuBois' remark that black folk are like a bucket of crabs, and if one tries to climb out of the bucket, all the rest pull him down. You should see their reaction to John McWhorter, who wrote Losing the Race (against affirmative action for admission into college.) He's been persona non grata with them ever since.

[Ohioan]

I disagree. Almost all kids can benefit from the liberal arts and sciences. That doesn't mean that everyone should get placed in Calculus, but it also doesn't mean that you decide to relegate large numbers of poor kids to industrial arts, at an early age.

Our positions are not mutually exclusive. I agree that some liberal arts education should be offered to all school children. My point is that the ebonics nonsense is really a cover up for the alienation factor that I discussed. A well designed school would monitor the progress of each child, in a disciplined, structured class environment, and offer realistic hope rather than platitudes followed by alienation, when individual aptitudes deviate from the educationalist theories.

As for the other wrongs that you refer to, we have no disagreement whatever on those. The tragedy of American race relations, today, flows from the fact that White Leftists undermined the benign influence of Booker T. Washington, which pushed personal responsibility, in order to capture his people as cannon fodder for promoting a Socialist America. You have identified scoundrels within the Negro community, who prey on their own. But those scoundrels would never have succeeded, had the people strode forward to a better drummer.

All of this is headed for greater tragedy, with the flood of Mexican immigration, being drawn in by the cupidity of business interests to whom Nationality is no longer any consideration at all, where their bottom line is involved. Many of those children being taught ebonics will find that jobs that might once have been theirs have been filled by others who cannot speak English either.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

[Harrison Bergeron]

"Accepted. I suspected you knew better but perhaps didn't clarify the statement. "

All office cliques have their pecking order... some more petty or prejudiced than others.

[kjenerette]

From a historic perspective, the first English that Black slaves from Africa heard was from sailors on ships - "Aye, Captain, he be swabbing the deck," etc.This "gutteral" English was spoken by the English working class and indentured servants . It's no wonder it rubbed-off on the slaves as they learned to speak English. The slave overseers, indentured servants, and other "lower class" people that slaves came into contact with spoke this type of English.

However, as blacks as well as poor whites have become educated (in the proper sense), they "should" have dropped the "gutteral" English for proper English, but as we can see, this is not the case.

It is a shame that African Americans in power enslave others with such nonsense! Whites are NOT holding African Americans down, they don't have to, African Americans in power are doing it.

[rockfish59]

That part is hilarious. She has the 'bruthas' all jacked up!

[mrustow]

One fact which is conveniently omitted in history teaching is that there have historically been many black slave owners, especially outside the U.S.; indeed, nearly all slaves not born in captivity were bought from black slave traders.

If this fact were taught, people might recognize that many of the "black leaders" are in fact vile slavers. Booker T. Washington recognized this tendency back in the early 20th Century. Too bad so many people have been brainwashed to not see this.

"In South Carolina, free Negro masters were similar to white slaveowners. Both exploited the labor of slaves with the desire for profits. Quite often, the colored artisans bought slaves who were employed in their trades. Others bought slaves to be hired out and then kept the wages of their bondsmen. They also established a master-slave relationship which demanded subservience from their slaves. The documents I have examined showed Negro masters selling rebellious slaves or placing disobedient bondsmen in the local jail or the workhouse.

"Yet black slaveholding had a benevolent side. Black folk labored for years to purchase the freedom of family members who were slaves to white masters. Still others acquired the freedom of beloved friends.

"The survey of the local documents could could not demonstrate the dominance of the benevolent or kinship aspect of black slaveowning. Indeed, the census of 1850 demonstrated that 83.1 percent of the Negro masters were mulattoes, while nearly 90 percent of their slaves were of dark skin. Where was the kinship? Since mulattoes primarily married mulattoes, the black folk owned by light-skinned Afro-Americans were seldom kin and were overwhelmingly held as laborers. By and large, Negro slaveowners were darker copies of their white counterparts."

Larry Koger, Black Slaveowners: Free Black Slave Masters in South Carolina, 1790-1860 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1985, 1995), Foreword, xiii.

"Many black Americans of the antebellum period believed that slavery was a viable economic system and exploited the labor of black people for profit. In Louisiana, Maryland, South Carolina, and Virginia, free blacks owned more than 10,000 slaves, according to the federal census of 1830.

"Many of the black masters in the Lower South were large planters who owned scores of slaves and planted large quantities of cotton, rice, and sugar cane."

Koger, 1.

Koger emphasized the non-benevolent character of black slave ownership, because prior to his research, scholars had always followed the lead of Carter G. Woodson (1875-1950), who insisted that black slave ownership was exclusively benevolent, in buying the freedom of relatives and friends. (And Koger throws the Woodson camp a bone, to cover his flank.) Woodson was dead wrong.

[mrustow]

I go this from the urbanlegends.com

From: twcaps@tennyson.lbl.gov (Terry Chan)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: charles drew: black american, creator of blood plasma
Date: 28 Jan 1994 19:08:59 GMT

In a post fitting of McGill, "BELL,CHRISTOPHER,MR" <BGXF000@MUSICB.MCGILL.CA> writes about the Charles
Drew FAQ and asks:

-> Does anyone have any hard data on this?

Meanwhile, sderby@crick.ssctr.bcm.tmc.edu (Stuart P. Derby) gives some info from Rice University's on-line catalog:

-Author: Wynes, Charles E.

• Title: Charles Richard Drew : the man and the myth /

  Charles E. Wynes.

• Published: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, c1988. - -I'll check and see what it says this weekend.

For those who have checked the FAQ, Bruce Tindall, occasional poster and author of that most august of cheap tomes, _Did Mohawks Wear Mohawks?_ debunks this UL and also made reference to the above book. His old post on the topic:

---

From: Bruce.Tindall@launchpad.unc.edu (Bruce Tindall) Subject: Re: The Dr. Charles Drew story is back! Message-ID: <1993Feb14.150414.23829@samba.oit.unc.edu> Sender: usenet@samba.oit.unc.edu
Nntp-Posting-Host: lambada.oit.unc.edu Organization: University of North Carolina Extended Bulletin Board Service References: <28705@dog.ee.lbl.gov> <pschleck.729662628@cwis> Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 15:04:14 GMT
Lines: 13

An excellent reference to refute the "Drew bled to death because of racism" story is Charles Wyners's biography, _Charles Richard Drew_ (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1988). He quotes the other doctors who were in the automobile accident with Drew, as well as a former student who happened to be at the hospital that night -- all of whom are black, if that matters -- as saying that the "turned away, bled to death" story is completely false. They said that the treatment Drew received was perfectly adequate.

---

Terry "Bloodless" Chan
--
Energy and Environment Division | Internet: TWChan@lbl.gov Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory | Talk is cheap and I have Berkeley, California USA 94720 | a big line of credit.

From vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!avdms8.msfc.nasa.gov!bcm!usenet Mon Jan 31 09:06:54 GMT-0600 1994 Article: 112169 of alt.folklore.urban
Path: vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!avdms8.msfc.nasa.gov!bcm!usenet From: sderby@crick.ssctr.bcm.tmc.edu (Stuart P. Derby)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: charles drew: black american, creator of blood plasma
Date: 30 Jan 1994 23:04:04 GMT
Organization: Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Tx Lines: 72
Message-ID: <2ihed4$ajr@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> References: <27JAN94.14992888.0126@VM1.MCGILL.CA> <2iblcr$qnh@gazette.bcm.tmc.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: crick.ssctr.bcm.tmc.edu

I wrote:
> "BELL,CHRISTOPHER,MR" <BGXF000@MUSICB.MCGILL.CA> writes:
>>In a recent article in McGill University's student newspaper,
>>titled: MCGILL ACCUSED OF RACISM FOR NOT REMEMBERING BLACK GRADUATE",
>>the writer states:
>>'Drew's life ended tragically in the forties after a car accident in
>>the southern United States. He died of blood loss at the doors of a
>>hospital which would not admit him because of the color of his skin.
>>Ironically, his own invention could have saved his life.'
> [trimmed]
>> Does anyone have any hard data on this?
>
>Rice U.'s library's on-line card-catalogue has:
>
>Author: Wynes, Charles E.
>

> Title:          Charles Richard Drew : the man and the myth / Charles E.

>                   Wynes.

>

> Published:      Urbana : University of Illinois Press, c1988.

>
>I'll check and see what it says this weekend.

It's this weekend and I checked, the book thoroughly refutes the myth. Dr. Drew suffered fatal injuries in the wreck. Despite the immediate attentions of the three other physicians who were with him (two of whom were substantially uninjured), and prompt attention at a nearby mixed-race (segregated) hospital, where he was attended by three other physicians, one of whom was the co-owner of the hospital, Dr. Drew died from the massive injuries. Included in the treatment was the administration of "at least one blood transfusion" - the hospital stocked both whole blood and plasma.

The myth has been widely circulated, including _Time_ magazine. It also mentions:

"But the story lives on. A McGill University publication, the _McGill Reporter_, repeated it in its December 1981 issue. Fortunately, it brought a vigorous denial from Dr. Edward Bensley, professor emeritus of medicine at McGill, [...]. Part of the evidence that Dr. Bensley had was a copy of a letter written by Dr. Ford [another black physician who was with Dr. Drew in the accident], in which Ford tried to lay the 'bled to death' canard to rest."

And later, quoting Dr. Ford:

"Doctor Drew's cause of death was that of a broken neck and complete blockage of the blood flow back to the heart. Immediately following the accident in which he was half thrown out of the car, and actually crushed to death by the car as it turned over the second time, the doctors who were were able to, got out of the car quickly and came to Doctor Drew's rescue, but it was of no avail because even at that time, it was quite obvious that his chances of surviving were nil."

It also notes that the myth was circulating shortly after Dr. Drew's death, and speculates that it may be a mutation of a myth concerning Bessie Smith's death in 1937. She also died in a car crash in the South, and the myth circulated that she had died outside a "white's only" hospital after being refused admittance. In fact, she was taken directly to a "black" hospital by the black ambulance driver - half a mile from the nearby "white" hospital - where she died from internal injuries. (They amputated one of her arms while trying to save her, BTW). I guess the myth is just more believable than the truth somehow.

--

---

Stu Derby | There's never a Vicki Robinson around when you sderby@bcm.tmc.edu | need one, despite what Joel says. Houston, Texas | Note: alt.folklore.urban is a smiley-free zone.

http://www.urbanlegends.com/
Copyright Information

[mrustow]

From a historic perspective, the first English that Black slaves from Africa heard was from sailors on ships - "Aye, Captain, he be swabbing the deck," etc.This "gutteral" English was spoken by the English working class and indentured servants . It's no wonder it rubbed-off on the slaves as they learned to speak English. The slave overseers, indentured servants, and other "lower class" people that slaves came into contact with spoke this type of English.

I heard of a recent piece by a staff writer at Insight magazine who showed that ebonics matches the English spoken by whites in Robert Louis Stevenson adventure stories.

However, as blacks as well as poor whites have become educated (in the proper sense), they "should" have dropped the "gutteral" English for proper English, but as we can see, this is not the case.

It is a shame that African Americans in power enslave others with such nonsense! Whites are NOT holding African Americans down, they don't have to, African Americans in power are doing it.

Actually, I think the matter is more cooperative -- black authority figures refuse to teach poor blacks proper English, but that's fine with the poor blacks.

[mrustow]

He**, these guys haven't even read many of the people they lionize. Try to talk to one of them about W.E.B. DuBois -- all they know is the endlessly quoted "prediction" from him, that the 20th century would be determined by the color line --

Most of them are certainly unaware of DuBois' remark that black folk are like a bucket of crabs, and if one tries to climb out of the bucket, all the rest pull him down. You should see their reaction to John McWhorter, who wrote Losing the Race (against affirmative action for admission into college.) He's been persona non grata with them ever since.

I was unaware of that remark, too. I read an interview with McWhorter a year or so ago, in which he said he was able to get though to young blacks, in spite of the campaign against him by the black elite. He came across as one of those apparently gentle guys with layers of steel just beneath the surface. He'd better have layers of steel.