Remember Ebonics? It was a term invented some 55 years ago to describe the variant of English often used by black Americans when speaking among themselves. It made headlines in 1996 when the Oakland, CA school board adopted a resolution aimed at improving the scholastic performance of African Americans by treating Ebonics as a distinct language, using it as a tool to improve their acquisition of standard English, just as in other forms of bilingual education. Although the board never intended that teachers conduct instruction in Ebonics, the resolution (as described by African American linguist John McWhorter in his book Losing the Race) soon became enmeshed in racial controversy, between critics who misrepresented the resolution’s intent and defenders, some of them advocates of black separatism, who accused the critics of racism.
The Ebonics controversy is now passé. Instead, the cutting edge in education theory is led by a scholar who argues that grading students on the basis of the quality of their work, rather than their perceived “effort” or the sheer quantity of their submissions, is inherently racist and a major contributor to inferior academic performance by black students. The leading proponent of this position is Asao Inoue, Professor and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, Equity, and Inclusion for the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at Arizona State University. He is the 2019 Chair of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, a past member of the CCCC Executive Committee, and the Executive Board of the Council of Writing Program Administrators. The CCCC has itself awarded Inoue two “Outstanding Book” awards for publications over the past half-dozen years.
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