Introduction LISA DELPIT In a study conducted in 1974 to assess the development of attitudes in preschool children toward "Black English" (BE)and "Standard English" (SE), Marilyn Rosenthal, the researcher, painted two identical cardboard boxes with similarly drawn faces. Two tapes had previously been made by the same bi-dialectal African American speaker, one in African American language (as distinguished by vocabulary, syntax, and pronunciation)and one in American Standard English. A tape player with one of the tapes was put into each box, out of the children''s view. Each box was described as a "head" and each relayed the same messages. The voice in each box introduced itself to the children and indicated that it had a present for the child. Later, each box also asked the children if they would give the speaker their crayons. The children were then asked a number of questions, including these: Which "head," Steve [Standard English] or Kenneth [Black English], would you like to get the present from? Whom do you like better? Whom would you like to play with? Whom would you give your crayons to? Over 70 percent of the time, both African American and European American three- to five-year-olds categorized the BE speaker as African American and the SE speaker as white. Further, most of them wanted the present from the SE speaker because he "had nicer presents.

" The majority of the children of both ethnicities believed that the BE speaker, Kenneth, "needed" the crayons more, with one European American boy, aged five and a half, saying that he would give his crayons to Kenneth "cause he don''t have nothing" and one four-year-old European American girl indicating that she was afraid of Kenneth (Rosenthal, p.62). The findings are fascinating. They indicate, according to the researcher, that very young children have developed attitudes toward African American language and assumptions about its speakers that closely parallel adult American views: Interestingly, the African American and white children reflected differences in their personal preferences towards the representative speakers of the two language forms, with the white children preferring the SE speaker and the African American children preferring the BE speaker. Furthermore, there were expressions of learned stereotyped images associated with both speakers. Many of these were pejorative toward the BE speaker--identifying him as talking silly, being unintelligible, being harmful, having nothing, and not having drawing ability. The SE speaker was stereotyped as being more gentle, looking better, having better drawing ability, and being the symbol of success (the last idea was expressed by Population B [African American]). It should not be surprising that these attitudes carry over into school.

In another study done in the 1970s, student teachers were asked to assess eight hypothetical schoolchildren on the scales of intelligence, being a good student, being privileged, enthusiastic, self-confident, and gentle [Giles & Powesland, 1975:3, cited in R. A. Hudson, Sociolinguistics, Cambridge University Press, 1980]. The eight hypothetical students were each defined by three types of information: a photograph, a tape-recorded sample of speech, and a sample of school work (consisting of an essay and a drawing). Each piece of information was based on a real child, but the pieces were recombined to give equal numbers of occasions in which each type of information would be judged positively and negatively. Hudson (1980)describes the study results: The question to be answered by this experiment was: what would happen if information from one source gave a favourable impression but that from another source gave an unfavourable one? The very clear answer was that information from the speech sample always [emphasis added] took priority over that from the photograph or the school-work: a favourable impression on the speech sample overrode unfavourable impressions from the other sources, and conversely. (p. 208) As Michael Stubbs contends (in chapter 5), if school considers someone''s language inadequate, they''ll probably fail.

Our language embraces us long before we are defined by any other medium of identity. In our mother''s womb we hear and feel the sounds, the rhythms, the cadences of our "mother tongue." We learn to associate contentment with certain qualities of voice and physical disequilibrium with others. Our home language is as viscerally tied to our beings as existence itself--as the sweet sounds of love accompany our first milk, as our father''s pride permeates our bones and flesh when he shows us off to his friends, as a gentle lullaby or soft murmurs signal release into restful sleep. It is no wonder that our first language becomes intimately connected to our identity. Just as our skin provides us with a means to negotiate our interactions with the world--both in how we perceive our surroundings and in how those around us perceive us--our language plays an equally pivotal role in determining who we are: it is The Skin That We Speak. For better or worse, in our stratified society our appearance can serve to create an expectation of success or failure, of brilliance or stupidity, of power or impotence. Those whose skin color or hair texture or facial features do not place them within the dominant phenotype are often viewed as "lesser than.

" But our language "skin" provides an even more precise mechanism for determining status. The omission of an "s," an unusual inflection, or a nasalized word ending can indicate to listeners exactly where in the social hierarchy a speaker should be assigned. Victoria Purcell-Gates sums it up in the title of her chapter, ". As Soon As She Opened Her Mouth!" The purpose of this 2002 collection is to explore the links between language and identity, between language and political hierarchy, and between language and cultural conflict. Most of the articles in this collection make reference to African American language (also called Black English, Ebonics, or African American Vernacular English), which is, without question, one of the most vigorously debated linguistic codes in our nation''s history. As early as 1884, J. Harrison attempted to detail in a fifty-sevenpage treatise that the language of "Negroes" was an oddity that only vaguely resembled language at all. This volume also concerns itself primarily with language and education.

This issue of language use in school is particularly volatile. The commencement of formal education is usually one of the first settings in a person''s life when their language may be judged as right or wrong; when assumptions may be made about their intelligence, family life, future potential, or moral fiber every time a sentence is uttered. African American language has had a particularly stormy relationship with the educational power structure. Schools often see themselves, and are seen by the larger society, as the arbiters of what is proper, correct, and decent. African American language forms have been considered none of the above. Thus, there have been continual moves to eliminate its presence in classrooms, and raging debates whenever it appears that there might be some move to suggest otherwise. The most recent flare-up, the so-called "Ebonics Debate," took the country by storm during 1996 and 1997. The Oakland School District put forth a proposal that named the language form spoken by many of its African American students "Ebonics.

" It not only provided a moniker, but the proposal also declared Ebonics a distinct language, not a dialect or substandard form of English. Further, it recommended that teachers be trained in the elements of Ebonics and steeped in aspects of African American culture. Such training, they argued, would enable teachers to create instruction for African American students that would allow them not only to excel in learning standard English, but to excel in all school subjects. This result had already been achieved on a small scale using the program the board advocated, the "Standard English Proficiency Program." Despite the school board''s good intentions, the country went on a rampage, with reporter after reporter declaring that Oakland was planning to teach Black slang and ghetto language to its schoolchildren. Several of the essays in this volume refer to the debate, and more details of the battle are described in chapter 3, No Kinda Sense. Also included, as an appendix, is the formal response of the Linguistic Society of America on the Oakland Ebonics debate. However, this was not the first time African American language and the education establishment engaged in a very awkward, painful, and public dance.

After the riots of the 1960s the general public became aware that African American children were failing in schools in large numbers. African American leaders and, later, President Johnson''s "War on Poverty" demanded solutions. Educational scholars, casting about for blame, sp.