The argument concerning the use, or the status, or the reality of black English is rooted in American history and has absolutely nothing to do with the question which the argument supposes itself to be posing. The argument has nothing to do with language itself but with the role of language. Language, incontestably, reveals the speaker. Language; also, far more dubiously, is meant to define the other --- and, in this case, the other is refusing to be defined by a language that has never been able to recognize him.
People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate. (And, if they cannot articulate it, they are submerged.) A Frenchman living in Paris speaks a subtly and crucially different language from that of the man living in Marseilles; neither sounds very much like a man living in Quebec; and they would all have great difficulty in apprehending what the man from Guadeloupe, or Martinique, is saying, to say nothing of the man from Senegal --- although the "common" language of all these areas is French. But each has paid, and is paying, a different price for this "common" language, in which, as it turns out, they are not saying, and cannot be saying, the same things. They each have very different realities to articulate, or control.
What joins all languages, and all men, is the necessity to confront life, in order, not inconceivably, to outwit (智胜) death: The price for this is the acceptance, and achievement, of one’s temporal identity. So that, for example, though it is not taught in the schools the south of France still clings to its ancient and musical Provencal, which resists being described as a "dialect’’. And much of the tension in the Basque countries, and in Wales, is due to the Basque and Welsh determination not to allow their languages to be destroyed. This determination also feeds the flames in Ireland, for among the many indignities the Irish have been forced to undergo at English hands is the English contempt for their language.
It goes without saying, then, that language is also a political instrument, means, and proof of power. It is the most vivid and crucial key to identity: it reveals the private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from the larger public, or communal identity: There have been, and are, times and places, when to speak a certain language could be erous, even fatal Or, one may speak the same language, but in such a way that one’s antecedents(身世，经历) are revealed, or (one’s hopes) hidden. What does the example of Basque and Welsh illustrate