YO GRANDMA

Now that Obama has opened up the race issue more openly and courageously than anyone has ever done before in this country, we’ll add to the conversation here and pat ourselves on the back, like the “typical white people” we are, along with Obama’s grandma. (Actually I don’t know the race of all the Parvum Opus readers.)

||| Referring to Bill Cosby’s remark that “we’re raising our own home-grown immigrants”, Anne DaBee sent another gem from her store of shrewdly observed experience:

Case in point, particularly with regard to Cosby's comments on the "foreign language" spoken by so many young blacks ~ and I don't mean whatever "Ebonics" is supposed to be:

Back in the mid-to-late '70s I worked in a middle school whose population was about 25% black. There were "good" black kids, and there were not-so-good ones, just as there were "good" white kids and not-so-good ones. At that time there were few to no Hispanics, but we had quite a few Asians ~ who outperformed many of the other students of whatever color. Their culture, if you will, expected children to do their best and make their families proud of them. The children excelled in their studies, even while struggling to learn a new language ~ and then went home and taught that new language to their parents.

Many of the black kids, on the other hand, made a point, even back then, of speaking their own language, wearing their own fashions, and in general doing their own thing. Around this same time the NAACP was howling that more disciplinary actions were taken against black students than against white students, proportionate to the black/white percentage of the total population. They claimed that if 35% of the black kids received disciplinary action and only 15% of the white kids did, it was obviously discrimination and had to be stopped. And when threatened with "a trip to the office", the "bad" kids sneered and said "Go ahead and be sendin' me to the office, I be back in fi (5) minute 'cause I black and they ain't gonna do nuthin a me."

Unfortunately, they were right. But we had one teacher who, if The Authorities ever got smart enough to allow merit pay, would have been the first recipient, because she refused to tolerate that sort of behavior in her classroom. Her students were expected to speak correctly in her classroom, to dress appropriately, to follow instructions without argument, grumbling or complaining, and to treat her and each other with respect. She told her students it was none of her business how they spoke or acted on the street or at home, but in HER class they were to speak proper English and act according to the rules of polite conduct. They soon got the message that she meant it, and her classes were a model of what a middle school classroom should be. A great example for the rest of us ~ especially since she, herself, was black. More "parenting", perhaps, than some of those kids had ever experienced before. One can hope that some of her teaching carried over into other classes and other parts of their lives...

I can hear some people arguing, “Who’s to say what’s proper English?” As I told my American students, standard English is our common language, it’s most useful in business, and it’s what I know. What’s the point of going to school if not to learn what you don’t already know?

||| Dave DaBee wanted me to correct last week’s quote that he said Obama is naïve; Dave just wondered if it’s possible that he might be naïve about some things, considering his relative youth.

||| Walter Williams noted that as a possible “first” Obama isn’t good enough, and compared him to baseball first Jackie Robinson: “In 1947, black people could not afford a stubble bum baseball player.” (By the way, I’ve always heard “stumble bum”, not “stubble bum”, but both are logical, as we might expect bums to stumble and also to have a stubble.)

||| Jeremiah Wright’s church newsletter printed a Hamas manifesto last year. Wright’s replacement said Wright has been lynched and crucified by the media. But he’s just been heard and disapproved of by the public. I don’t care for the false crucifixion metaphor, especially at Easter time, nor of the “hunky Christ” contest in San Francisco, although I will defend to the point of inconvenience their right to free speech. (Meanwhile, the newspaper no longer publishes a special Easter page for fear of offending.)

||| Remember the Lakota (Ohio) school that canceled (then reinstated) production of “And Then There Were None” because of its original title? Continuing problems include some complaints about a documentary of the Civil Rights days, including Martin Luther King, Jr. using the word “Negro”. I feel like if everyone’s really careful about saying only the words they’re told to say (for example the inaccurate “African American”), someone will complain about their tone of voice. Crying racism once too often will backfire eventually, and a number of black (or Negro) writers agree. See Stupid Black Men by smart black man Larry Elder.

DENNIS EX MALAPROP

As a regular listener to Dennis Miller, I’ve mentioned his frequent misuse of words, especially noticeable because part of his comedy shtick is to throw around a slightly elevated vocabulary. One of his listeners has done what I wanted to do, coming up with “Dennis Ex Malaprop” as a twist on his Dennis Ex Machina bit, and noting his mistakes in a friendly way, to Miller’s amusement.

This week Miller said, “I’d be disingenuous if I didn’t say that [McCain’s age didn’t bother me at first].” “Disingenuous” is used a lot these days to mean dishonest, but it’s not quite that. It’s being dishonest while pretending to be innocent, ignorant, or naïve. There are so many ways to be dishonest.

FREE RICE

At the Free Rice web site, you can play a simple vocabulary game and every time you get a word right, they donate grains of rice to the poor. The words get more difficult as you progress.

FREE SPEECH

||| “Pitch This” is another good piece from Mark Steyn on free speech vs. Canadian government funding of movies.

||| Good article on Islam and free speech by Peter Hoekstra.

||| My Chinese student appears to be alarmed about the news he’s able to hear or read here, or at least alarmed that he is able to hear it. He said he could be “disappeared” if he took the wrong books or videos home, or was careless in his e-mails to friends in China. He could end up as one of those plasticized bodies in the “inspiring” exhibit now in Cincinnati and elsewhere. He was startled when I said that we think the Dalai Lama is a good man. And although Tibetan Buddhism extends back for centuries, he thinks Tibet is really part of China.

CROSSWORD CLUELESS

A crossword puzzle clued “propaganda” as “misinformation”. It may or may not be misinformation; it is material propagated (see the connection?) by a government or other to promote its interests. I like to recommend word puzzles to students to improve their spelling and vocabulary, but incomplete word definitions such as this one are sometimes misleading.

CHINGLISH

If you liked Engrish (also Japlish), you’ll enjoy “Feudal to Translate: A guide to the English dialect spoken only in China” by Abigail Lavin in The Weekly Standard. A sample:

People’s Park Rulers for visitors.

||| public meeting or fund-raising Of any nature is inexpedient, activities of a feudalistic and superstitious nature ... are not allowed

||| Visitors are not supposed to tease, scare, or capture bird, cricket, fish and shrimp or cicada (except those for community purposes).

BOOK COMMERCIAL

Fred just spotted what may be the first TV ad for a book of fiction. The short ad for a Jonathan Kellerman novel called Compulsion was interspersed with commercials during a morning news show; it wasn’t a shopping network program or a book discussion channel. Is this the beginning of a publishers’ trend?

______________________________________________

Discussing language, education, journalism, culture, and more, Parvum Opus by Rhonda Keith is a publication of KeithOps / Opus Publishing Services. Rhonda Keith is a long-time writer, editor, and English teacher. Back issues from December 2002 may be found at http://www.keithops.us/. Feel free to e-mail me with comments or queries. The PO mailing list is private, never given or sold to anyone else. If you don't want to receive Parvum Opus, please e-mail, and I'll take you off the mailing list. Copyright Rhonda Keith 2008. Parvum Opus or part of it may be reproduced only with permission, but you may forward the entire newsletter as long as the copyright remains.

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