A highly readable collection of key articles and essays by a leading scholar on African American language and politics. Smitherman discusses the inter-relationship between African American language, culture and education.

Preface INTRODUCTION: FROM GHETTO LADY TO CRITICAL LINGUIST Part one EBONICS, LANGUAGE THEORY, AND RESEARCH 1 Introduction to Ebonics 2 From African to African American 3 White English in Blackface, Or, Who Do I Be? 4 Discriminatory Discourse on African American Speech 5 “A New Way of Talkin’”: Language, Social Change, and Political Theory 6 Review of Noam Chomsky’s Language and Responsibility Part two LANGUAGE AND THE EDUCATION OF AFRICAN AMERICANS 7 English Teacher, Why You Be Doing the Thangs You Don’t Do? 8 “What Go Round Come Round”: King in Perspective 9 Ebonics, King, and Oakland: Some Folk Don’t Believe Fat Meat is Greasy 10 African American Student Writers in the NAEP, 1969–88/89 and “The Blacker the Berry, the Sweeter the juice” Part three LANGUAGE AND CULTURE 11 “How I Got Ovuh”: African World View and African American Oral Tradition 12 “If I’m Lyin, I’m Flyin”: The Game of Insult in Black Language 13 “Makin a Way Outa No Way”: The Proverb Tradition in the Black Experience 14 Testifyin, Sermonizin, and Signifyin: Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the African American Verbal Tradition 15 “The Chain Remain the Same”: Communicative Practices in the Hip Hop Nation Part four LANGUAGE POLICY, POLITICS, AND POWER 16 African Americans and “English Only” 17 The “Mis-Education of the Negro”—and You Too 18 Language and Democracy in the USA and the RSA 19 Review of Multilingual Education for South Africa, Part five COLUMNS 20 Soul ’N Style 21 Black English: So Good It’s “Bad” 22 “Still I Rise”: Education Against the Odds in Cuba Part six THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES 23 CCCC and the “Students’ Right To Their Own Language”.