Apparently, the federal government is finally recognizing Ebonics as a viable language.
Indeed, the Justice Department’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has put out a call for Ebonics interpreters to work in its Southeastern regional office in Atlanta. Specifically, the DEA is seeking the assistance of nine linguists fluent in Ebonics to “monitor, translate and transcribe” wiretapped conversations of suspected drug traffickers. In addition to being native speakers of Ebonics, a “DEA Sensitive” security clearance is required for all candidates.
And this is not the first time that law enforcement has sought to use Ebonics fluency as a tool, although never in such a formal manner. Most notably, a Houston Independent School District (HISD) police officer circulated the “Ghetto Handbook: Ebonics 101,” which was filled with racist stereotypes, in 2007
The HISD outrage inspired me to write my first blog, “Houston We Have a Problem Over the Ghetto Handbook.”
As I explained at the time, “American Ebonics is a contact language that resulted from the mingling of non-English-speaking, displaced and enslaved Africans with English speakers. Hence, its lexicon is English but many of its grammatical structures and its syntax, according to some linguists, closely resemble those found in West African languages.”
Ebonics is among the 114 languages–categorized as either “common” or “exotic”— for which the DEA’s Regional Linguist Services is presently seeking contract translators. According to the foreign language requirements of the DEA, Ebonics is classed as exotic, as it is “newly identified.”
