However, like all dialects, AAVE shows consistent internal logic and grammatical complexity, and has evolved naturally among a community of speakers.
[16] Ogbu (1999) argues that the use of AAVE carries racially affirmative political undertones as its use allows African Americans to assert their cultural upbringing.
Rickford & King (2016) argue that a lack of familiarity with AAVE (and other minority dialects of English) on the part of jurors, stenographers, and others can lead to misunderstandings in court.
They especially focus on the Trayvon Martin case and how the testimony of Rachel Jeantel was perceived as incomprehensible and not credible by the jury due to her dialect.
[20] A 2019 experimental study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, NYU, and Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity, found that court stenographers in Philadelphia regularly fail to transcribe AAVE accurately, with about 40 percent of sentences being inaccurate, and only 83% accuracy at the word level, despite court stenographers being certified at or above 95% accuracy.
A 2016 qualitative study by researchers at Stanford University also suggests that testimony in AAE—and other nonstandard varieties—is not necessarily always understood in a judicial setting.
[33] With AAVE long facing discrimination and stigma in public education, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), a division of National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), issued a position statement on students' rights to their own language in April 1974.
[36]Simpkins, Holt & Simpkins (1977) developed a comprehensive set of dialect readers, called bridge readers, which included the same content in three different dialects: AAVE, a "bridge" version that was closer to "Standard American English" without being prohibitively formal, and a Standard English version.
[45] Like other similar programs,[46] the Oakland resolution was widely misunderstood as intended to teach AAVE and "elevate it to the status of a written language.
"[47] It gained national attention and was derided and criticized, most notably by Jesse Jackson and Kweisi Mfume who regarded it as an attempt to teach slang to children.
[49] In an amended resolution, this phrase was removed and replaced with wording that states African-American language systems "have origins in West [sic] and Niger–Congo languages and are not merely dialects of English ..."[50] The Oakland proposal was explained as follows: that Black students would perform better in school and more easily learn standard American English if textbooks and teachers incorporated AAVE in teaching Black children to speak Standard English rather than mistakenly[51][52] equating nonstandard with substandard and dismissing AAVE as the latter.
Baratz & Shuy (1969:93) point to these linguistic barriers, and common reactions by teachers, as a primary cause of reading difficulties and poor school performance.
IDEA was intended to guarantee that all students with disabilities in U.S. schools have the chance to receive a free and appropriate public education in the setting with the fewest restrictions.
According to Smitherman, the controversy and debates concerning AAVE in public schools imply deeper deterministic attitudes towards the African-American community as a whole.
The case of Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children et al. v. Ann Arbor School District, commonly known as the Ann Arbor Decision, is considered to have established an important precedent in the education of poor African-American students who are Black English speakers.
Gabe Kaimowitz, lead counsel for the Plaintiffs, alleged that the students were denied equal protection of the laws, because applicable Michigan regulations did not recognize social, economic and cultural factors differing those pupils from others.
The sixth claim asserted that the Ann Arbor School District violated federal statutory law because it failed to take into account the home language of the children in the provision of education instruction.
Throughout the middle of the twentieth century many civil rights groups and leaders challenged the school board's racial segregation through legal and political action.
One of the actions, Brown v. Board of Education was filed, and is an important and significant case, which ultimately led up to the Ann Arbor Decision.
On December 18, 1996, the Oakland Unified School District in California passed a controversial resolution recognizing the legitimacy of Ebonics – what mainstream linguists more commonly term African-American English (AAE) – as an African language.
Jesse Jackson criticized the resolution, saying "I understand the attempt to reach out to these children, but this is an unacceptable surrender, borderlining on disgrace."
His comments were seconded by former Secretary of Education William Bennett, former New York governor Mario Cuomo, and Senator Joe Lieberman.
Characterizations of Ebonics as "slang," "mutant," "lazy," "defective," "ungrammatical," or "broken English" are incorrect and demeaning.
From this perspective, the Oakland School Board's decision to recognize the vernacular of African-American students in teaching them Standard English is linguistically and pedagogically sound.
Modern scholars conducted studies that focused on the relationship between success in grade level reading and writing and use of AAVE.
Dr. Anne H Charity conducted a study on the relationship between children’s familiarity with standard English and reading scores.
Dr. Charity concluded that children whose home dialects differ from SE face a greater academic barrier when reading and writing.
In a 2018 article, Walt Wolfram and Erik Thomas argue that educators should "recognize and build on the strengths that students bring to the classroom from their home language and dialect.
Similarly, in a 2020 article, Rebecca Wheeler and Rachel Swords argue that teachers should "acknowledge and validate"[81] the language and culture of their students.
[82] Another researcher named Dr. Amanda Godley conducted a study with three predominantly African American, 10th-grade English classes.