Suite For Ebony And Phonetics Summary

How culture is viewed depends on three aspects: ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, and universal human rights. Ethnocentrism is the viewpoint that a person’s own culture and its contents are intrinsically better than another culture. Cultural relativism means that every culture holds equal value, and the values of one culture are not better than another. Universal human rights are the rights agreed on by the United Nations stating that every human has set rights because of their humanity including equality, freedom form discrimination, right to life, freedom from torture, etc. There are fine lines filled with tension intertwining all three of these topics within anthropology. The article “Suite for Ebony and Phonetics” published in Discover …show more content…
If a person had been perceiving Ebonics as sloppy English used by African-Americans, they could think about why they had held these opinions. According to linguistics, “Ebonics is not slang” but a dialect of English (Discover Magazine). A person’s views on Ebonics as slang could have been clouded by their ethnocentrism since Ebonics does sound so much like English. Another person could have thought of the dialect as just the uneducated speech of African-American young people who are more than likely criminals. This opinion, sadly, more than likely exists and a societal response to people who hold this opinion should be to learn more about the dialect. Learning opens people’s minds and creates pathways to letting in diversity. Universal human rights should be taken into account with this opinion because those who speak Ebonics should have freedom from discrimination against their language. They have every right to speak this language no matter if it sounds like lazy English to some people. Overall, the response to this article should be to stop judging cultures one doesn’t …show more content…
I was quite set off by the line, “some readers might be fuming that it’s one thing to identify Ebonics as a dialect and quite another to promote its usage,” (Discover Magazine). As the daughter of a social worker, social justice is a top priority for me and universal human rights is too. That line reminded me of the discrimination that still goes on for African-Americans in America to this day. They can’t even have their own language without Americans ripping into it and calling it lazy. I think the fact that I had some but little knowledge that this dialect even existed until a few years ago shows the ethnocentrism of Americans. Schools only teach about American wars and American history, even more so white history. Ebonics is a part of American history that is left out as well as Native American history and what really happened in the Mexican-American War. Most importantly, the fact of Ebonics being called lazy English reaffirms the need for cultural relativism. I think that is the most important lesson for people, including myself, to learn from this