The "ebonics" thing has really hurt the effort to infuse black people into the mainstream. Failure to communicate intelligibly has probably caused more people be denied job opportunities than anything else. If you present yourself to a prospective employer with an unkempt appearance, slouch around the office with your hands in your pockets and your damn hat on sideways, and then top it off by mumbling incoherently or speaking so-called "street" english - you're toast.
I tried to find a reference, but was unable to, so this might be wrong. I was told by a friend whose wife was employed as a teacher in the CA public school system that TEACHERS were pushing "ebonics" as a subject to be taught in school. Allegedly the motivation for doing so was that bilingual teachers were paid more and that ebonics would have been classified as a second language. How ridiculous is that?
I used to own an awards and gift business. After being open for about three years I began to question why I did not have many black customers. It was certainly not due to store policy, nor was it due to any racist attitude on the part of the staff, but black customers were few and far between. Finally it dawned on me that I had inadvertently done my buying from a "white" perspective. I had nothing that would appeal exclusively to blacks. In addition to bringing in more ethnic merchandise, I sought to add a black person, preferably female, to the staff. No experience was necessary, the only requirements were that she should be neat, able to do basic math, and have good communication skills. Long story short, after looking aggressively for over a year, I was unable to hire such a person because every individual I interviewed had poor speaking and/or spelling skills.
So as I see it, based on the narrow reference of my own experience, one of the things black people need to do in order to become successful is to learn to speak the language properly. No "we be" or "stays at" or "ax you dis".
Recently I stopped in at a fast food joint in a neighboring town. The staff was 100% black. The facility was clean and the food was decent. The only problem was that understanding what the staff was saying was damn near impossible. And when they started talking to each other, I was lucky to understand two words out of ten.
So to tie this to the topic, crime and violence are largely symptoms of socioeconomic problems. There are some things the government and industry can do to mitigate these problems, but black people need to put aside their tendency to murder the language and learn to communicate. Until they do, there will always be a predisposition to view them as less intelligent and unemployable.
