Culture

Things Could Be Better (Pakistan)

Saturday, 05 September 1998 14:14 Last Updated on Thursday, 08 March 2007 07:07 Written by The Editor

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- During such a tumultuous week, it might be expected that people here were preoccupied by the U.S. missile attack in neighboring Afghanistan. After all, dozens of Pakistanis were among those killed in the barrage that fell on what the United States says were terrorist training camps.

But this is not the case, for people in Pakistan have concerns far more immediate.

Escape to the Land of Oppression? (Haiti)

Friday, 05 June 1998 13:57 Last Updated on Thursday, 08 March 2007 08:54 Written by The Editor

Can you imagine? Twenty-one brave Haitians suffered the misery and hazards of crossing intolerably hot, always potentially boisterous and shark infested waters, so that they might reach the shores of America.

Forty Thousand Lives Lost To Religious Insurgency (Algeria)

Thursday, 05 March 1998 13:46 Last Updated on Thursday, 08 March 2007 09:11 Written by The Editor

An intensification of terrorist hostilities has become the rule throughout Algeria. It is but the latest wave of violence that has been sweeping the nation for the last five years, where Islamic insurgency has claimed more than 40,000 lives.

Ebonics 102: Cultural Balkanization

Thursday, 06 March 1997 06:40 Last Updated on Wednesday, 14 March 2007 15:26 Written by The Editor

Ebonics Promotes Cultural Balkanization
By Niger Innis - Spokesman, Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

In a move inconsistent with the Clinton administration's pandering racial policies, the White House has said that no federal funds will be made available for bilingual "Ebonics" classes. The preemptive statement was made in anticipation of the Oakland, Calif., school board's request for federal dollars to teach their students standard English through the funnel of "black English," or Ebonics. The school board set the stage for this reaction recently when it declared that the slang spoken in Oakland's black community and in all our nation's black ghettoes was indeed a unique and authentic language. If this was not enough, the board will create Ebonics manuals, to be studied by any teacher who wants to teach black kids how to read and write in English. Delaine Eastin, California's superintendent of schools, says Ebonics won't help students get ahead in life.

Ebonics 101: A New Look At An Old Cloak

Thursday, 06 March 1997 06:39 Last Updated on Thursday, 08 March 2007 06:37 Written by The Editor

On December 18th of 1996, the Oakland, California school board officially declared that many of its 28,000 black students did not speak standard English, but a distinctive language spoken by American blacks that the school district and some linguists call Ebonics - derived from the combination of the words "ebony" and "phonics." The district's alleged goal is to better teach standard English and other academic subjects to black students by acknowledging the language spoken by many inner-city blacks. No other school system in the nation has adopted such a measure.