'Standard' English has been in practice for an extremely long time. It could be still debated as to the reasons that the 'proper' way to speak English is considered proper and why Black English is not considered an acceptable formal and taught language. My own opinion is two-fold. One, when slaves were brought to America, they had no formal training in the English language. They picked up only slight phrases from their owners and just learned as best as they possibly could, given the circumstances. My second opinion is that possibly, in order to rebel against the whites who treated blacks as terribly as they did, they came up with their own jargon that broke a number of 'standard' English rules.

Jordan is fighting a losing battle when she cannot even find a group of twenty black students who speak Black English regularly, who have trouble reading their own spoken language. I myself would have trouble reading a conversation full of my own teenager jargon.

This unusual reaction only proves my point further. Black English as it stands today is a specific jargon that exists in a primarily black community. When required to read it on paper it is confusing and often hard to follow. To teach students how to speak this other language would further complicate the already difficult rules English speakers have to follow. I know from experience that white teenagers have a dialect of their own. The persistent use of the word 'like' and 'uh' and 'so' are very apparent in any conversation. However, these teenagers do not go up on a soapbox and profess to the world that we need to recognize this as a proper way to speak. Why? Because it is not!

In her futile effort to teach students how to write like they speak, she came up with a list of rules to follow in order to write Black English. I not only found them amusing but also very disturbing. Obviously, since Jordan wrote her paper in Standard English, she recognizes the importance of correct grammatical construction in formal papers. By telling students it is OK to write "[a]in nobody sing like Tina" or "[h]e have him wallet then he lose it" (280) tells them how to write incorrectly. What irritates me the most is that if Jordan, being the highly educated female that she is, knows that standard English IS protocol and IS required to get that job or to get your point across, then why is she accentuating the importance of something that just cannot help students in the long run? This is the egotistical part of Jordan. Call it efficacy but one female professor is not going to change the world. Unfortunately, we are so set in our traditional customs and ways that it is not possible for the country to change in that manner.

The fact remains that everyone has their own form of talking, of communicating, of shooting the breeze. It is different for all Americans no matter their color, race, origin or whatnot. It just so happens that Standard English originated from

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Approximate Word count = 1500
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)