Activists Want Preschoolers to Learn "Black English"

**Unknown - Show Introduction/Announcer** (0:10)
Live from the Liberty University Studio in Memphis, Tennessee, it's America's favorite gun-toting, Bible-clanging, deplorable American. Todd Starr.

**Todd Starnes** (0:29)
You know, it's an interesting thing, a language. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Todd Starnes radio program. Great to have you with us today.
So I came across a story yesterday that really struck me in just a weird sort of way. Last night doing research for the show and we've got a lot, we've got a lot going on, including what's happening overseas with the president right now, NATO and Iran. And I want to get to all of that, but I've got to start out with what's happening here in America. When it comes to our language and that is the one thing that binds us together as a people, this collective language that we all speak known as as English. And there's been a lot of controversy among immigrant groups of late to push back on the idea that English is the official language of the United States of America. And there are a lot of reasons for that. I believe one of the things is without a common language, you really do not have a united country. And we have seen this play out across, well, really across the world.
And now there is a movement afoot, for example, in many southern and southwestern states, you've got people that just simply don't speak English. You'll go into some towns, nobody speaks English. You literally have to have to learn Spanish, if you want to understand what's happening in the restaurants or whatever. So there is not, so that's a problem in and of itself. I barely know enough Spanish to get through the menu at the Taco Bell, barely, barely.
And then in some places, there is a movement afoot to promote something called Black English. And that is our starting off point today. This is a, at first, I thought somebody's yanking my chain here. This can't be happening. But it's true. There is now an effort afoot to teach children what they're calling Black English. This is from the public broadcasting station in the San Francisco area, KQED.
And they're saying that there needs to be an official African American dialect and language. And, you know, we used to call this ebonics. But now they're calling it the African American Vernacular English or Black English. So there's standard English, which they referred to as White English. And then there's something called Black English. And these activist groups are working very, very hard to make sure that preschoolers in California are actually taught how to speak Black. And I want to give you an example here. So for one of the things is dropping the P's. So instead of a napkin, it's a napkin. Give me a napkin or I'm thin to do this. These are literally examples pulled from the website like Dylan, I'm thin to go to break. That would be, that's black English.

**Dylan** (3:59)
I think I'm understanding now.

**Todd Starnes** (4:00)
Dylan, you'd be doing a great job over there. That's another thing is use of the word beat. These are, I'm not making this up. This is actually, this is what they want taught in our public schools. According to KQED, generations of black children, see another, children grew up learning that their home language wasn't acceptable in school or the workplace. Many internalize the belief that black English is bad English, loaded with slang and grammatical errors. According to one expert, with that comes a lot of shame and embarrassment. What you be talking about? Because you're being constantly corrected when you're still in a moment when you're just learning language. Years ago, Dylan, when I was just a little fellow, I was working as an intern at some TV station, and we had one of these sweet elderly grandmother types who had been doing like a romper room, like children's show for like 50 years at the TV station. A beloved icon, this woman was, what was her name? Ms. Marsha is what they called Ms. Marsha. And so anyway, we were going out into some, I don't know, we were going out into some rough part of town. It was the hood. And Ms. Marsha and I were the only people of the Caucasian persuasion within a, I don't know, a two or three square mile area. And so anyway, they started talking, oh, it be Ms. Marsha, it be Ms. Marsha. And Ms. Marsha went over and corrected the grammar of the gang members. And I'm like, God, we're going to die. But the problem is, it turns out Ms. Marsha was wrong. Because Ms. Marsha wasn't speaking black, she was speaking white, according to this movement in California.