From Rosina Lippi-Green's English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the U.S.

African American attitudes toward Black English addresses the most difficult and painful issues concerning identity and solidarity within the African American community. Regardless of one's profession, politics or class, most African Americans won't deny the necessity for bidialectalism. Examples are given for practicing selective bidialectalism in the course of acquiring power and finance to instances of native language choice representing political freedom resulting in another kind of power.

It's important to realize that most Black English speakers acknowledge while it is viable and adequate, also acknowledge that it will never be accepted, ultimately setting up an unresolvable conflict for native speakers.

This is why pressures to assimilate to Standard English originate from outside and inside the African American community.

Two clear examples of how people rationalize linguistic subordination in relation to Black English follow:

-- Those who believe there is no BE, only English with bad grammer

--Those who challenge not its existence, but its definition .

Exact origins of BE are unclear, but the African American diaspora was crucial in its development as a vehicle of solidarity in a time of oppression.

Throughout this article a number of African Americans from various backgrounds are quoted regarding BE, many of whom are BE speakers-- Such notables as Toni Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, Christopher Darden. One that particularly struck a nerve, Donald McHenry, believed that BE prevented the assimilation of norms which can eliminate the differences deemed devisive to American interests. He fails to address the connection between language and the basic human rights protected by law from the tyranny of majority rule, pointed out by Lippi-Green.

Dr. Geneva Smitherman offers her take of Dubois's social theory "double consciousness", which she dubbs linguistic push-pull. This manifests in pressure for African American BE speakers to assimilate or risk exclusion, while African Americans subscribing to SE are treated with skepticism or distrust among their own.

The influx in immigrants of African descent (Haitians ect.) also helps to shed light on the importance of language

negotiations within Black communities.

Lippi-Green effectively points out those who continue to disregard BE linguistic definition, basing it solely on grammatical agreement, excluding phonology and rhetorical devices.

The remainder of this article analyzes a recording of an "Oprah Winfrey show" on Black English with Dr. Smitherman as a guest. She discusses instances where Winfrey was unable to accept criticisms that were devaluing BE, while at the same time declaring an allegiance to SE. Next Shelby Steele, a conservative writer/scholar, rationalizes his criticisms by sharing a personal experience that could go suggest that rejecting arguments for linguistic assimilation would be projected as racist. By providing approaches to the "linguistic push-pull" we realize that regardless of the various opinions within the African American community two points are made clear:

--the need to resolve the conflict

--the complexity of the responses.

Lippi-Green ends on this accord: THE REAL PROBLEM WITH BLACK ENGLISH IS A GENERAL UNWILLINGNESS TO ACCEPT THE SPEAKERS OF THAT LANGUAGE AND THE SOCIAL CHOICES THEY HAVE MADE AS VIABLE AND FUNCTIONAL.-- so pick it up and read it!