Hillary and Ebonics

Brian Doherty from the April 1997 issue

Ebonics may have temporarily replaced the First Family as a topic for right-wing ire. Strangely, though, the two are linked; Ebonics is something else for which Hillary Clinton might be to blame. The idea that black English is its own language deserving special consideration dates back a while. It was during Hillary's late '70s tenure as chair of the Legal Services Corporation that an LSC grantee first tried to sue the federal government to define black English as a separate language -- which would require the state to provide blacks with mandatory remedial language training.