The Skin That We Speak

Lisa Delpit, a MacArthur Fellow, received the award for Outstanding Contribution to Education in 1993 from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, which hailed her as a “visionary scholar and woman of courage.” She is the author of Other People’s Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom (The New Press) and is currently the executive director for the Center for Urban Education and Innovation at Florida International University. Joanne Kilgour Dowdy is Associate Professor of Adolescent/Adult Literacy at Kent State University in the Department of Teaching, Leadership, and Curriculum Studies. She is the author of GED Stories: Black Women and Their Struggle for Social Equity.

Contents



Preface vii
LISA DELPIT


Introduction xv
LISA DELPIT



Part One: Language and Identity

C H A P T E R 1 Ovuh Dyuh 3
JOANNE KILGOUR DOWDY


C H A P T E R 2 Ebonics: A Case History 15
ERNIE SMITH



Part Two: Language in the Classroom

C H A P T E R 3 No Kinda Sense 31
LISA DELPIT


C H A P T E R 4 Trilingualism 49
JUDITH BAKER


C H A P T E R 5 Some Basic Sociolinguistic Concepts 63
MICHAEL STUBBS


C H A P T E R 6 Language, Culture, and the Assessment
of African American Children 87
ASA G. HILLIARD III


C H A P T E R 7 I ain’t writin’ nuttin’: Permissions to Fail
and Demands to Succeed in Urban Classrooms 107
GLORIA J. LADSON-BILLINGS


C H A P T E R 8 “. . . As Soon As She Opened Her Mouth!”:
Issues of Language, Literacy, and Power 121
VICTORIA PURCELL-GATES



Part Three: Teacher Knowledge

C H A P T E R 9 Topsy-Turvies: Teacher Talk and Student Talk 145
HERBERT KOHL


C H A P T E R 1 0 Toward a National Public Policy on
Language 163
GENEVA SMITHERMAN


C H A P T E R 1 1 The Clash of “Common Senses”: Two
African American Women Become Teachers 179
SHUAIB MEACHEM


C H A P T E R 1 2 “We don’t talk right. You ask him.” 203
JOAN WYNNE


Appendix: Linguistic Society of America Resolution on
the Oakland “Ebonics” Issue 221