This is straight-up tragic. The “anti-racism” sweeping institutions still ends up rendering black people as somehow different, other, unable to meet even basic standards. Ralph Ellison weeps.

“Rutgers English Department to deemphasize traditional grammar” https://www.thecollegefix.com/rutgers-english-department-to-deemphasize-traditional-grammar-in-solidarity-with-black-lives-matter/

This is the opposite of empowering. Black Americans are Americans. The slang is colorful and beautiful but we don’t speak English as a second language. And if the children of immigrants can excel in the classroom using standard English, why do people think we cannot?

There is growing pressure now to do away with SATs, GPAs and now even any shared conception of Standard English. What kind of world are we creating? In what way could this utter condescension possibly render a historically oppressed people suddenly equal?

Final point. I’m fluent in Ebonics and have been my whole life. That *never* prevented me from mastering the wider society’s linguistic customs. A teacher thinking I couldn’t write at the level of my white classmates would have constituted the worst racism I’ve ever encountered.