A group of radical left-wing groups in California are pushing for schools to add Black vernacular into a Golden State program that pushes multilingualism for kids.
Black Californians United for Early Care and Education (BlackECE) is a “collaborative partnership of organizations committed to advancing language justice for Black children in early childhood education.” Those groups include Californians Together, Catalyst California and Early Edge.
A co-founder of the umbrella group said she was teased as a kid for “talking white” and doesn’t want Black children, like her son, to feel “shame” for the way they speak.
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“The workgroup brings together BlackECE, Californians Together, Catalyst California, and Early Edge to challenge harmful language hierarchies and affirm Black English as a legitimate, rule-governed language rooted in Black history, culture, and community,” according to the coalition’s website.
BlackECE’s 10-point policy framework also includes reparations.
Ashley Williams, a co-founder of the BlackECE, spoke with PBS about the importance of the group’s work.
“I don’t want my son to walk into any room and feel like his voice is not valued or his perspective can’t be heard because he’s not saying it in one way or the other,” she told the outlet. “But with that comes a lot of shame and embarrassment because you’re being constantly corrected when you’re still in a moment when you’re just learning language.”
“Black English” is a broad term used to describe the way African Americans speak, according to ScienceDirect.
The most common defined form of “Black English” is African American Vernacular English [AAVE], characterized as a “systematic dialect spoken by many African Americans, characterized by specific phonological, syntactical, and lexical features, including word-final consonant cluster simplification, invariant ‘be’ for habitual meaning, and multiple negation.”
BlackECE insists that the dialect is not slang or broken English, and provides some real life examples of AAVE.
“She be working,” is one example listed on the website.
“They happy” and “bes’ friend” are among others.
“We talk about multilinguals, but we don’t include Black children who may be African-American English speakers,” Xigrid Soto-Boykin, an early childhood language expert at Arizona State University, told PBS. “We completely miss this subgroup of children that could also benefit from their language backgrounds to be sustained, but also to be leveraged for their own learning.”
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California — a state where more than half of children under the age of five live in homes where another language besides English is spoken — implemented a program called “Promoting Equitable Early Learning and Care For Dual Language Learners” in 2020.
The program “declares biliteracy as a state goal and strongly promotes multilingual proficiency for all children, beginning in early childhood.” It focuses on policies that “reflect a dramatic shift in public sentiment away from a focus on English only and to a focus that values bilingualism as an asset and a strength.”
BlackECE says “Black English” should be added to that California program.
Williams recalled being teased for “talking white” by family members, and complained that her teachers were “adamant about proper English,” which she said made her feel insecure.
“Really at the heart of this, it’s about affirming our identity and our culture and our humanity and not having to perform as something you’re not just to be accepted in a room,” she reportedly said.
“We know that with being deemed multilingual learners, there’s resources, there’s supports, there’s teacher training. And we’re saying, ‘Yes, and we belong in that conversation too.’
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