AAE

"Da otha day, I was walkin’ down da street an’ thinkin’ ‘bout my ol’ frien’ Jackson. We use ta be such good friends, an’ den one day, outta nowheah, he say he didn’t wanna be my frien’ no mo’. It was sad. I fel’ real bad ‘bout it fo’ a long time. Then, as I turn the corna, I saw ‘im. He aks me, “How you doin’?” I say, “I’m okay. How you doin’?” He said, “Okay.” I tol’ him dat I am da new managa of my sto’. He said, “Congradulations.” He said he been workin’ real hard at his job an’ he was sorry dat he ain’t talk to me fo’ a while. He said I look good, and hope that we could get togetha soona ratha den latea. We shook hands an’ say g’bye."

Unfortunately, people are largely ignorant to the roots of AAE, or never bother to take the past into consideration, and for that reason, AAE is regarded as unintelligent by mainstream society. They believe that speakers of AAE are purposefully revolting against standardized English. That being said, I’m not sure, nor do I feel qualified to answer, about the issue of AAE-speaking children being treated either the same or differently from ESL students. On one hand, AAE isn’t a separate language from English. It’s a dialect of English, which means that English would not be their second language. But on the other hand, I believe that AAE speaking children would benefit from being taught Standardized English in a way that would help them learn the differences between AAE and SA. It is an unfortunate truth that conforming to mainstream society helps the individual flourish as a participating member, but would success be worth turning their back on their dialect and cultural heritage? I don’t know.