What the Word Be (BOOK REVIEW)
What the Word Be:
Why Black English Is the King’s (James) English
by Diane Proctor Reeder
Written Images
Paperback, $19.95
200 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4951-0505-0
Book
Review by Kam Williams
“Blacks
came to the U.S.
chained to each other but from different tribes. Neither could speak the
other’s language. If two black people, at that bitter hour of the world’s
history, had been able to speak to each other, the institution of chattel
slavery could never have lasted as long as it did.
Subsequently,
the slave was given, under the eye, and the gun, of his master… the Bible… and
under these conditions the slave began the formation of… black English.”
n
James Baldwin as excerpted in the
Introduction (pages xiii-xiv) from
his article “If Black
English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me What Is?”
When most
people talk about the “King’s English,” they’re referring to a very proper,
aristocratic way of speaking in terms of grammar and syntax. That style is far afield
from the uniquely African-American phraseology also known as Ebonics.
In fact,
the pros and cons of teaching black English has been the subject of debate in
recent years, with detractors arguing that it has no place either in the
classroom or in polite society. Those naysayers might rethink that position
after perusing What the Word Be: Why Black English Is the King’s (James)
English.
For,
according to its author, Diane Proctor Reeder, the roots of Ebonics can readily
be found in the King James Bible, the text employed by most slave masters to
teach Africans English. To prove her point, Ms. Reeder simply quotes from
scripture, such as “Surely the people is grass,” which is found in Isaiah 40:7.
The
playwright/editor/businesswoman came up with the idea for her opus after
scouring the Good Book front to back several times and finding over 1,500
verses written in black English. Here, she carefully cites hundreds of those examples
from both the Old and New Testament, including Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Job,
Deuteronomy, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Who knew
that the Bible is riddled with such supposed mistakes as unmarked past and
present tenses, subject-verb disagreements, double subjects, bizarre uses of
the verb “to be,” pronoun insertions and absence of the copula? Nevertheless,
to this sister, there’s a method to the madness, and what academics might
denigrate as nails on the blackboard ghetto parlance may now more accurately be
appreciated as a God-ordained vestige of slavery worth preserving. Reeder’s
persuasive conclusion? “We learned how to speak the way we do because our
ancestors learned to read with the King James Bible as their primary text.” You
be feelin’ her?
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