This case is a judicial investigation of a school's response to language, a language used in informal and casual oral communication among many blacks but a language that is not accepted as an appropriate means of communication among people in their professional roles in society…. The problem posed by this case is one which, the evidence indicates, has been compounded by efforts on the part of society to fully integrate blacks into the mainstream of society by relying solely on simplistic devices such as scatter housing and busing of students. Full integration and equal opportunity require much more and one of the matters requiring more attention is the teaching of the young blacks to read Standard English…. Some evidence suggests that the teachers in the schools that are “ideally” integrated such as King do not succeed as well with minority black students in teaching language arts as did many of the teachers of black children before integration. The problem, of course, is multidimensional, but the language of the home environment may be one of the dimensions. It is a problem that every thoughtful citizen has pondered, and that school boards, school administrators and teachers are trying to solve. (Memorandum Opinion and Order, Martin Luther King Elementary School Children v. Ann Arbor School District Board, 1979)
The crisis is not about education at all. It is about power. Power is threatened whenever the victim—the hypothetical victim, the victim being in this case, someone defined by others—decides to describe himself. It is not that he is speechless; it is that the world wishes that he were. (Baldwin, 1981)
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