The Ebonics controversy in Oakland, California, took many people by surprise. Most had never heard of Ebonics before December 18, 1996, and once they did, few understood what the school district meant when it expressed its intent to use this new "language" to teach the district's African American children.

To understand how Oakland wound up at the eye of this storm, it is important to recognize the current situation of African American students in that district, and the political history of Ebonics in California schools.

Anatomy of a Controversy

For the past fifteen years, California teachers have had the option of participating in the Standard English Proficiency (SEP) program, which was created to educate teachers who work with Black children about the history of African American language. Once it orients teachers in the historical and linguistic foundations of African American communication, the program then provides teachers with techniques that are said to have been proven to help children who speak Ebonics learn to "code switch" into standard American English. Code switching is the mental "translation" process that occurs in people who are bilingual or bidialectical. Code switching allows a person to both understand and convey thoughts in either language.

The SEP program emerged after decades of debate, political struggle, and frustration over the poor academic performance of a disproportionate number of Black children in the state. Although it is used by school districts throughout the state, including by the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), it is a voluntary program. Despite the reputed success of the SEP program, California's African American students continue to lag behind many of their peers in their mastery of American English.

Black students constitute slightly more than half of the OUSD student population, yet they represent 80 percent of all suspended students and have the lowest grade point average (1.8) of any ethnic group represented in the district. One in four of the district's students is not proficient in standard American English and 26 percent are immigrants. Nearly three in four of the students receiving Special Education services in the district are African American while only 37 percent of the students participating in the district's gifted student programs are Black.