Howard Dean offered his views on HREF=”http://www.cal.org/ebonics/eboped.html”>Ebonics during an HREF=”http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0102-05.htm”>interview with
Boston Globe columnist Derrick Jackson:
Dean said his own education about unconscious racism began at Yale, where
he graduated in 1971. He was trying to get a child from the inner city of
New Haven that he was tutoring to talk “proper” English. One of his
African-American roommates told him, “Why don’t you leave him alone?”
To speak proper English is to have a leg up on success in America. Howard
Dean knows this. That’s why he gives his angry campaign speeches in proper
English, not Ebonics. Black children deserve better than Dean’s condescension.