From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Sun, 22 Dec 1996 22:13:27 -0800 (PST)
To: Mark Rosen <mrosen@peganet.com>
Subject: Re: Ebonics
In-Reply-To: <199612222158.QAA10206@mercury.peganet.com>
Message-ID: <32BE22B0.584B@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Mark Rosen wrote:
> > Just saying someone has a Southern "accent" is prejudicial and ignorant.
> > It's true that anyone, Southern or otherwise, can slur words so they're
> > not clear, but on averages, Southerners who speak clearly with their
> > native inflections and pronunciations are easier to understand than your
> > typical Yankees, whose speech is generally thin, nasal and rather
> > pinched-sounding.

> Yeah. But I can't understand people with Southern Accents therefore I
> won't hire them.

Then let me speak a language that you, Mark Rosen, can understand:

Oswald did it alone.  George Lincoln Rockwell really *didn't* run all
of his new prospects through the FBI.  Sirhan Sirhan worked alone.
Money grows on trees.  And best of all, in the immortal words of
Noam (asshole) Chomsky: "I can see *no* forces who would have
wanted Kennedy dead".  (And not a single y'all in the bunch).

> > People talked about hate in the South in the 1960's.  What a crock.
> > Apartheid, sure, no doubt about that.  But hate, well, I grew up in
> > the North and I lived for a few years in the deep South, and the people
> > in the South don't hate like the Yankees do, on average.

> Wow. You must read completely different history books than the rest of
> the world.

Not the rest of the world, Mark.  People outside of the U.S. are pretty
hip.  It's guys like you who promote the popular ignorance here.  Did
you know, Mark, that many of the top important people of the world got
together outside of Toronto a few months ago for their annual meeting
of world-importance discussions, and the American press thought it was
not worth reporting on?  The Canadian press reported on it.  Maybe those
Canadians just don't have any respect for privacy, or maybe they are all
stupid, or (gag!) maybe they are all in cahoots with that nefarious
Neo-Nazi Willis Carto!!

> > If you want to see how hate works, look how the big-media organizations
> > have descended on Southern radio and TV and have been telling them that
> > they speak wrongly, and that Southern "accents" are something to be
> > ashamed of.

> Damn the liberal media! (That was a sarcastic statement - do you know how
> right-wing that sounds).

Gosh, Mark.  All we really need to go on here in the U.S. is our first
impressions of things.  No need to be suspicious about government maybe
wanting to *rule* us or anything like that, no need to worry that guys
like John J. McCloy, Henry Ford, and the Rockefellers would even *think*
to use the Nurnberg trials as a (gasp!) spy laundry, where the number
executed was what, 5 or 10?  Sleep well, Mark.  Nothing to be concerned
about.  Everything you read in the papers is true!

P.S. You'll note above I was describing actual experience, which you
     addressed as "reading history books".