Outcry over "Wuff Tickets"

Black English vs. standard usage in the courtroom

Many of the black kids at Ann Arbor's Green Road Housing Project in Michigan do not talk much like their well-to-do white classmates at the neighborhood King elementary school. Some of it is simple pronunciation: "We do maf work" for "We do mathematics work." Some of the differences lie in odd verb tenses: "She-ah hit us" for "She will hit us." More often the difference involves the verb "to be." Green Readers say, "He be gone" when they mean, "He is gone a good deal of the time"; "He been gone" when they mean, "He's been gone for a long while"; and "He gone" when they mean, "He is gone right now." Some is pure idiom. "To sell wolf tickets" (pronounced wuf tickets) means to challenge somebody to a fight.

Such speech, widely known as black English, is customarily pounced upon by teachers trying to teach standard English usage. Though that would seem a normal part of pedagogy, a small group of Green Road parents felt that teachers were expressing their disapproval of black English too harshly, causing student embarrassment and hurting the children's chances to learn. The parents filed a federal suit in Michigan's Eastern District Court, demanding that school authorities "recognize" black English as a formal dialect with historic roots and grammatical rules of its own.

Like most Green Road parents, the plaintiffs want their children to use standard English, but they insisted that the school respond more sympathetically to the dialect in teaching. "Language is like clothing," said University of Michigan Professor Daniel Fader, testifying on behalf of the children. "When you take it away from the child, you leave him naked." As Attorney Gabe Kaimowitz insisted, "We're looking for use of black English as a bridge to get kids to use standard English."

The suit divided Detroit's black community. "A. mountain out of a molehill," said Detroit N.A.A.C.P. President Larry Washington. "The dominant language of this country is English," added Washington. "If our children are to increase their chances, that's what they have to be taught." School officials insisted that the suit was unnecessary and cited as evidence an existing volunteer training course in the techniques of teaching standard English to black English speakers.

After three weeks of argument, U.S. District Judge Charles W. Joiner concluded that the school had not been as sympathetic as it should have been. In a 43-page opinion that is expected to serve as a precedent for other legal challenges, Joiner provided the first judicial acknowledgment that black English is a distinct dialect, not just slovenly talk, and ordered the Ann Arbor school district to prepare a plan for teaching black English speakers. Last week the district announced a $42,000 special program. All teachers at the King school will now be required to take "sensitivity courses" in how to steer small pupils tactfully away from "wuf tickets" and into the verb "to be."

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