Word: kingfisher
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...mind about the Oakland, California, school board's decision last month to certify Ebonics as an official language for black folks, so I decided to consult the experts. I put in a call to the Home for Retired Racial Stereotypes in a black section of Hollywood. The Kingfish answered. "Holy mack'rul dere, Andy, somebody wants to talk 'bout dis 'ere Ebonics. Could you or Tonto tell Buckwheat come to da phone? He de resident expert...
...deep I thought it was James Earl Jones. "Farina, Stymie and I only spoke that way in the movies because white people wrote the scripts," Buckwheat explained. "Our parents and teachers would never let us get away with speaking anything but proper English when we weren't working. The Kingfish usually speaks properly too, but he's hoping that since Black English is back in vogue, he can make a comeback...
...wrapped it up in so much Afrocentric jargon and education-speak that people thought the board was trying to dumb down the curriculum by teaching bad grammar and syntax. There was enough mangled phraseology in its resolution to make 16 episodes of Martin. But wait, let me get the Kingfish in on this. He's an expert on malapropisms...
...Kingfish came back on the line. "Dat's right, Brother White. When I perused the resolution from de school board, I thought somebody had made a typogirraffical error. Take dis 'ere sentence, which I quotes verbitim: 'Studies have also demonstrated that African Language Systems are genetically based and not a dialect of English.' Up on Lennox Avenue, dat means dat black children can't speak properly because of dere heredity. It sound like one of my schemes for trickin' Andy out of his money...
...somebody done peeped dere hole card," said the Kingfish. "The Clinton Administration said no way dey would fund a bilingual Ebonics program, and Maya Angelou and Jesse Jackson got all bent out of shape too. So the school board issued a statement sayin' dey wasn't settin' up a bilingual program, jist trying to he'p the kids learn standard English. But den dey puts in a paragirraffe dat convinced me dat the school board needs some he'p with its own English." He read, "'In the clause African Language Systems are genetically based and not a dialect of English...