The United States Drug Enforcement Administration’s Atlanta office is seeking nine people who are fluent in Ebonics.
By formal definition, Ebonics was originally the language of people who descended from Black African slaves, particularly those in West Africa, the Caribbean, and North America. For the past fourteen years or so, however, the word Ebonics has become a description of African American or Black nonstandard United States English. Because of a controversy involving the type of language students were speaking in Oakland, California in 1996, the Oakland School Board found it necessary to differentiate between standard United States English and the African American language. They began labeling the African American language as Ebonics at that time.
The reason the Atlanta DEA office is hiring Ebonics translators is because current employees in the office are apparently not versed in the linguistics necessary to understand people they are monitoring. To ward off criticism of being a racial job, an agency official mentioned that one of the best speakers of Ebonics of all time is Eminem, a Caucasian rapper.
The job was posted online in May 2010, and the office is still looking to fill the job vacancies.
Source: Fox News
Comments
Nice job of presenting a 'touchy' subject very well. Few are even touching this story.
Agreed.
I agree too. Can we argue about the Ground Zero Mosque now? ;-)
Give me a break. We waste billions trying to educate the uneducable. Put them in jail at the age of 5 and throw away the key. We will save billions of dollars and countless lives.
without knowing the color of the person that wrote this comment,me being a woman of color is not offended at all by your point of view. Personally speaking,I can't stand the type of ignorance that people have in low-incoming neighborhoods. Just because you have a certain address,does not give you the right to be a loser and claim that "the man" is keeping you down! It's free to read
This is a reply to the "Woman of Color" who responded to this comment above. You, my good lady, are one very intelligent 'Woman of Color'!
The world is getting crazier by the second!
Watch the movie idiocracy and that is what america is going to turn into
.. the feds want the "ebonics linguists" to help them eavesdrop on black/urban criminals, rappers and the general public. the person/s who get this job will be nothing more than glorified SNITCHES! already the feds has the power to listen in on regular citizen's phone conversations, they want to know what folks are talking about good or bad.. they take this information and use it against us to frame, put out misleading info, and infiltrate any movement they feel is a threat to the amerikkkan way of life.
suggested reading: the auto biography of ASSATA SHAKUR
also, this so-called "ebonics" is a dialect of black american culture, every culture and sub-culture has their own ways of speaking slang, the problem is when blacks don't learn how to speak regular english, then you become marginalized as ignorant and ghetto. this is a problem of our own doing and can easily be corrected thru education in the home and in school.
You had me until I got to the part: "can 'easily' be corrected thru education in the home and in school" - proper education taught to these people in the home? Of which country do you speak? Not Obama's.
whites are the only ones who care about this country... build a wall and split the country in half...
Why give blacks half the country? The black population isn't near 50% of the US's population. Whites just allow blacks to act like they're equal in number. Honestly, blacks are few and far between compared to the white majority. Blacks know it and think whites are totally stupid for not pushing it as blacks push their minority.
"Oh stewardess, I speak jive."
Ebonics is a song by Big L. May he RIP!
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