That the Queen’s English that I speak so eloquently before you now, is not my first

language, no. My grandmother never used such diction when

she spoke me up in the welfare line amongst the other dwellers,

or when she called down to me from the project window for dinner no, we spoke a more southern

fried English. This rhetorical recipe has been in my family

for generations. Grandma say, Big Mama hid it under her tongue

as she headed for northern cities during a great migration.

Scholars call it African American Vernacular English.

but My guys they call it Slang. The Man calls it Ebonics.

I call it America’s creole, the last remaining squab birthed from a European and African

pidgin. Turned into the dialect of the dough boys,

the bass that appears in a rappers rhythmic rhetoric

spoken everywhere from the trap house to the liquor store

from the HIV testing clinic to the bus stop

Ebonics is the official language of the undefined black culture

the native tongue to the underrepresented black American

and long before I received Liberal arts degrees and stood unimposing in academic settings

I was born on the south side of Chicago, and managed to garner up enough street cred from the school

of hard knocks to qualify me to teach you all a few of my languages essentials

So hipsters I hope you got your note pads ready. This is Ebonics 101

Chapter 1 Any English word that holds an (in) combination,

the (i) becomes an (a) like

Bille Holiday couldn't just sing that girl could sang

If Martin did all that walkin I wonder if him feet stank

Traveled all them miles just to hear freedom rang I wonder what he was thankin

Chapter 2 Any English word that holds an (or) combination

the (r) sound becomes silent like

Emmitt screaming Don’t beat me no mo like Rodney screaming Don’t beat me no mo

like Trayvon asking What is you following me fo

Chapter 3

Any English word that holds an (er) combination, well the (er) becomes an (a)

like in the great quote from the linguistic scholar Ms Lauryn Hill

"And even after all my logic and my theory I add a "Motherfucka" so you ignorant niggas hear me.

see there's culture in these words

the bended back of my speech comes from years of carrying the black experience

the verbal diaspora of Africa shapes my spine we cross our t’s with the middle passage

dot our i’s with strange fruit curve our s’s with mid atlantic roots, you

cannot expect us to be slaves to your phonetics forever

and just like our history we will defy the structure of your jim crowe grammar

refuse to speak within the lines of your mason dioxin diction

you can not correct this context this

connotate my accomplishments see, me, be, black , male,

use double negative to make positives he will write

until the black story no longer subsists he will write until the clinched pen is synonymous

with a clinched fist he will write until the black male is able

to live

be

exist

class dismissed.