News Archive / Speak Ebonics? DEA is looking for translators 30.08.2010

Speak Ebonics? You may have a future at the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Yes, academics and culture warriors may argue endlessly over the merits of "black English" as a subject to be taught or whether it is a separate language. But the DEA has little doubt about its usefulness. The federal agency has put out a request for linguists who are fluent in "Ebonics."

Reason: Drug agents in certain communities need help in translating wiretaps.

Score one for the separate-language side. As a black American who grew up immersed in both cultures, I, as a parent, still have doubts about the usefulness of black English as a teaching tool in the lower grades. But as a former police reporter, I have little doubt about its usefulness in law enforcement. In some neighborhoods, it sometimes takes an Ebonics speaker to catch one.

"Ebonics," you may recall, is the mash-up of "ebony" and "phonics" that the Oakland (California) Unified School District created in 1996 to rebrand the traditional vernacular known to us old-timers as black English.

They didn't get far. There already was a growing backlash against bilingual education in California, among other states, and against certain ghetto-centric black youths who ridicule standard English as "acting white." The glorification of Ebonics didn't have much of a chance.

So when I heard that the Justice Department recently issued a request from the DEA's southern office for nine Ebonics-fluent linguists, I thought at first that it was a joke. But to the DEA and other crime fighters, Ebonics is no joke. Cultural conservatives may attack or ridicule multiculturalism but, however begrudgingly, no one respects the nuances of ethnic diversity more seriously than the police.

source:  http://www.chicagotribune.com

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