In Tom Wolfe books about the denizens of the Upper East Side, English nannies are the gold standard of status. The peasants have to get by with other brands.
From MSNBC:
I used to read a lot of mountain climbing books, which were full of glimpses of Tibetan culture. As the highest altitude culture in the world, and one of the most isolated, Tibet has always had a certain glamor. From what I read, however, I would not characterize "cleanliness, organization & dedication to education" as values of traditional Tibet. The smell of rancid butter was something practically every climber to visit Tibet remarked upon.
I love how the media has so totally bought into the Cheap Labor Is Good mindset that getting escalating salaries makes Tibetan nannies victims of their own success.
But is learning to speak Spanish with a lower class Mexican accent really the first step into a glittering career in international business?
I'm shocked, shocked to hear this.
Never ...
From MSNBC:
Tibetan nannies: Parents’ new status symbol?
In some families, the ethnic background of a nanny carries a certain cachet — and entrenched stereotypes.
“Generally speaking, what is the difference between someone from the Philippines, Tibet and the Caribbean in terms of child-raising mentality, patience, education ...?,” wondered a recent poster on the popular parenting site UrbanBaby.com.
Such posts — and parents — are not alone in voicing their wishes to hire nannies with the “right” socio-ethnic background for their children. For the past several years, Tibetan nannies have been all the rage in New York City. On message boards and playgrounds, some parents claimed Tibetan nannies were “very balanced and Zen” and aided in children’s “spiritual development,” whereas in areas such as Dallas, for example, Latino nannies have been more in demand for their Spanish-speaking abilities.
At the Diki Daycare Center in Astoria, N.Y., demand for Tibetan nannies became so great that the preschool began offering a Tibetan nanny referral service.
“Tibetan women are well known for being caring and loving nannies,” reads the promotional literature. “They are recognized for becoming ‘one of the family’ and offer the same compassion and quality of care for their charges as they do their own children.” Furthermore, it says, “Cleanliness, organization & dedication to education are values of Tibetan culture.”
I used to read a lot of mountain climbing books, which were full of glimpses of Tibetan culture. As the highest altitude culture in the world, and one of the most isolated, Tibet has always had a certain glamor. From what I read, however, I would not characterize "cleanliness, organization & dedication to education" as values of traditional Tibet. The smell of rancid butter was something practically every climber to visit Tibet remarked upon.
In fact, Tibetan nannies have become so popular that they may have become victims of their own success as they’ve been able to request and get escalating salaries — much to the annoyance of some employers.
I love how the media has so totally bought into the Cheap Labor Is Good mindset that getting escalating salaries makes Tibetan nannies victims of their own success.
“Our nanny has priced herself out of our range and I will let her go because she guilted us into paying through the nose,” recently wrote an outraged New Yorker on the message boards of UrbanBaby.com.
The downturn in the economy may also be compelling some parents to shift their focus to their own financial futures rather than the “Free Tibet” movement by seeking nannies who offer more practical perks — free language instructions.
“The trends that I see are more toward education, cultural enrichment,” says Clifford Greenhouse, the president of the Pavillion Agency, a nanny and housekeepers employment agency. “[Parents] are getting realistic as to the important things in life.”
To that end, he says, the top requests are for nannies who are native speakers of “world languages,” such as Mandarin Chinese, Russian, and Spanish because, Greenhouse says, parents want their children to have an educational leg up, and a free language lesson thrown in with child care seems to fit the bill.
But is learning to speak Spanish with a lower class Mexican accent really the first step into a glittering career in international business?
Licensed employment agencies are prohibited by law to discriminate on the basis of ethnic background, though if there is a legitimate cultural or educational reason behind a request for a nanny with a particular background, owners of such firms will generally entertain them.
But doesn’t all this smack of plain, old-fashioned racism? It certainly does to many nannies. ...
What is even more troubling, points out Blaine, is the blatant racial profiling conducted by prospective employers, largely the mothers of nannies’ charges.
“Women who would never feel comfortable making such sweeping generalizations about anyone’s racial background in other areas of their lives, like work, somehow feel free to do it when they’re talking about hiring nannies,” she says. “People are more upfront when they’re talking about their homes and their kids because you don’t have to worry about H.R. coming to you, there’s no policing.”...
I'm shocked, shocked to hear this.
The bottom line, she says, is that race just doesn’t matter. “I can tell you, that in 18 years of doing this, I’ve never had a racial stereotype confirmed in the aggregate.”
Never ...
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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59 comments:
*Russian* nannies?! Eeek!
As the highest altitude culture in the world, and one of the most isolated, Tibet has always had a certain glamor.
Definitely, but you have to wonder why high altitude would be associated with cultural development. Judging from this report on what is probably the second-highest altitude culture in the world, there wouldn't seem to be a positive correspondence.
Love the use of "guilted" as a verb. Never seen that before. Bet it catches on.
My first reaction was something you did obliquely comment on down in the list. If by "Latino" you mean a mestiza or india Mexicaness, that's what you DON"T want. And high class wealthy Mexican girls don't work as nannies.
You want Castilian or European South American Spanish, not the kind steezers speak. That's VERY declassee'.
CJ's video (above) of the annual Inca religious ritual of mass fistfights to water the potato croplands with blood from broken noses is well worth watching. I especially liked the blonde newsbabe narrator who towers about the Inca fighters.
The boxing is rather like that in a Rocky movie -- no defense, and mostly roundhouse rights.
The conquistador hats in that vid are a nice, albeit confused touch.
I can imagine that 500 years from now, the inhabitants of the former USA will pummel each other to
the tune of Snoop Doggy Dogg while wearing Uncle Sam hats and Richard Nixon masks.
Definitely, but you have to wonder why high altitude would be associated with cultural development.
The glamor would be more about the region and its physical surroundings, I would think.
If there is any correlation, I would suspect it would be inverse. One thing that is common to most major population centers is proximity to a body of water to facilitate trade. And such areas tend to be lowlands.
Hey this great, vindication for my Latina nannies are for losers theory!
Nannie wars are an expat (and hence SWPL) obsession in Hong Kong, where I've lived as an expat for many years. The majority of 'foreign domestic helpers' as they're officially termed (calling them 'maids' rather than 'helpers' is BAD) are Filipinas, but now substantial numbers of Indonesians have made inroads. The irony is that native-Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese women are totally banned.
Anyway, in the context of this story, it's interesting to note that Nepalese helpers do seem to carry a bit of cache here among expats.
But the big SWPL/status whoring game is focused on how you tell others you treat your helper. The standard self-congratulatory narrative recounts how your current helper was paid the government-mandated minimum salary by her previous HK Chinese employers, who also made her eat plain rice for dinner, and sleep in the bathtub. But now you've totally transformed her life by paying her a salary far above the market rate, cut her hours down to 9-to-5, given her a big screen TV, lend her money every time she tells you sob stories about sick relatives, pay for her to take extra holidays, etc. Some expat employers, in bursts of extreme SWPLism, even brag about how much of their housework and cooking they do themselves, so you're simply must acknowledge that they're not asking too much from their helper.
This has resulted in a subset of helpers who won't work for anyone but expats, and who spend much (most?) of their time texting their friends about how they've put yet another one over on their employer that morning.
Most White pre-school kids one sees in Manhattan are accompanied by non-White women. As other commenters have said here before, school-age white kids are relatively rare in Manhattan. The public schools are awful and the private ones are very expensive, so many families relocate to the suburbs once their kids become old enough to go to school.
Most of the obvious nannies I see on Manhattan's streets are Caribbean blacks. You sometimes see East Indian and East Asian women, but those are relatively rare. Can't tell you how common English or Russian nannies are because if I see them with these kids, I'll just assume that they're the kids' mothers.
Tibet's importance to liberals and neocons is easily explained: Tibetans have the lowest human capital of any ethnic group in China. They're PRC's equivalent of blacks in the US and of the proletariat in 19th century Europe. If you want to topple a society's leaders by riling up the malcontents or by guilting the leaders for their real or imagined mistreatment of the malcontents, groups like Tibetans become important.
I once saw a putative list of mean IQs of different Chinese provinces. The list originated in the PRC. The methodology was not explained, and these might as well have been guesses, but Tibet was listed dead last at 85. The top provinces were around 105. Even if those numbers were made up, they're still important because they reflect internal Chinese stereotypes, and, as everybody here should know, stereotypes tend to be true.
"The conquistador hats in that vid are a nice, albeit confused touch."
The bowler hats on some of the women were even weirder. A legacy of an old British attempt to extract something valuable out of those mountains?
The newsbabe and presumably the participants themselves rationalized these fistfights through religion, but I was left skeptical about that being the primary motive. Who doesn't like watching fistfights? I'm much less interested in sports than the average guy, but even I can enjoy boxing on TV.
This reminded me of the fact that ancient Greek travel writers consistently reported that in their times Middle Eastern temples often served as houses of prostitution. Something about sacrifices to the Gods. The Gods must be appeased! Riiight.
“The trends that I see are more toward education, cultural enrichment,” says Clifford Greenhouse, the president of the Pavillion Agency, a nanny and housekeepers employment agency. “[Parents] are getting realistic as to the important things in life.”
Great news! Now maybe some newly minted US college grads can find work as nannies.
Spanish is certainly a world language, #2 after English. Mandarin Chinese is spoken by the majority of the population of China and in Chinese communities abroad. It is a difficult language, not widely taught and rarely understood by non-Chinese. Russian is spoken only in Russia and, mostly as a second language, in the newly independent countries of the former USSR, most of whom have their own native languages and only use Russian to communicate. For example, I've spoken Russian in Gerogia, but the Georgians really hate the Russians and would just as soon be rid of the Russian language. When I tried Russian in Poland, I got angry responses and sharp corrections (many Polish words are similar to Russian, but, as I was told, many are QUITE DIFFERENT). Poles would struggle to communicate with me in bad English rather than switch to Russian, which we both spoke better.
Years ago I read about a French explorer who lived for two years in Tibet and followed the local custom of not bathing. he then decided to bathe (on a whim) and was promptly and ferociously attacked by vermin which had left him alone in his rank state.
100 years ago, a quick and dirty way to tell how much money someone had was by their butler, which was the first thing that greeted you when you entered someones house. I have heard the expression, " so rich, they have a white butler."
Not Tibetans...Gurkhas! They'll teach your kids ruck marching, the bayonet, and the kukri! Then they can beat the snot out of little Trevor or McKenzie.
And high class wealthy Mexican girls don't work as nannies.
Middle class Mexican girls work as au pairs.
I learnt two words today:guilted and steezer.
From now on, in my mind at least, they will always be, like Cheech and Chong, infuckingseparable.
Richard
Aren't "peasants" more likely not to have nannies at all?
WTF happened to hiring an actual American girl? Those New Yorkers are scum. I live in a very wealthy NW suburb and we've got a wonderful local college girl for a nanny and most of the nannies our friends have are also local girls. They're not that expensive so I can only assume it's about paying crappy wages under the table. Or is there something wrong with American girls in NYC that isn't out in the provinces?
Crazy.
Earlier today I mentioned in a comment to this post that I recently saw a Chinese list of purported mean IQs of Chinese provinces and regions. Somebody mentioned this on a private mailing list I belong to.
Anyway, I just searched for this on the wider Internet. It gets a lot of hits
My Chinese is limited, but it's good enough to see that no sourcing is provided on any of the pages I examined. These could well be guesses based on Chinese stereotypes about the relative intelligence of different Chinese groups. Anyway, here's the list:
1. Shanghai 109
2. Shandong, Jiangsu 107
3. Hebei, Beijing, Tianjin 106
4. Northeast (Manchuria) 106
5. Shanxi, Anhui 105
6. Shanxi (Guanzhong) 105
7. Henan 105
8. Inner Mongolia 104
9. Gansu, Ningxia, North Shanxi 103
10. Zhejiang, Xinjiang, Qinghai 103
11. Fujian 103
12. Hunan 103
13. Jiangxi, Chongqing 101
14. Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, South Shanxi 100
15. Hubei 100
16. Guangdong 100
17. Guangxi, Hainan 95
18. Tibet 85
Non-PRC:
Hong Kong 107
Singapore 105
Taiwan 105
Macao 104
WTF happened to hiring an actual American girl?
It's called status. It's all about jostling and competing to rise to the top of the status hierarchy. Were American girls ever even the top choice for the highest elite? It was always foreign to some degree as Steve indicated in his post. English, French, Euro girls were probably preferred over regular American girls as a way of signaling elite exclusivity.
Anyone can hire a young American girl who's up to her eyeballs in student debt and so isn't that expensive. So the elite needs something exotic to confer exclusive status.
Has it ever been really that different? The European aristocracy of old often sought out each other for mates rather than from their own immediate ethnic groups, countrymen. Enough so that eventually they probably had more in common with each other than with the countries they ruled over.
It seems to be a similar process at work fundamentally. Nothing ever changes I guess.
I can imagine that 500 years from now, the inhabitants of the former USA will pummel each other to the tune of Snoop Doggy Dogg while wearing Uncle Sam hats and Richard Nixon masks.
500 years from now, there won't be any batteries to power up the boom boxes.
And anything digital which wasn't printed out on acid-free paper will have been lost forever because there won't be an electrical grid to power up the old computers.
Steve, how much is Beijing paying you to disparage Tibetans and portray them in the most unflattering way possible? And how many PRC intelligence agents troll your blog to advocate for Beijing's benevolent rule of Tibet?
The phenomenon of SWPL yuppies, as detestable as they are, hiring Tibetan nannies isn't even a drop in the bucket as far as the immigration problem is concerned.
You might counter that it's important because it reflects on the beliefs and attitudes held by SWPLs that makes dealing with the immigration issue so intractable. But let's face it. It's a sideshow to the real force behind the problem: corporations' addiction to cheap labor.
> I've never had a racial stereotype confirmed in the aggregate. <
But in individual cases, however...
> you have to wonder why high altitude would be associated with cultural development <
Has to do with the commanding heights. The best people are on top, aren't they?
> Spanish is certainly a world language, #2 after English. <
Mexican is to Spanish what Ebonics is to English.
> Why not hire local (white) girls? <
Whites helping whites? Are you kidding? That's racist. Thus low-status. Dangerous, too: lower-class whites could jump out of their class and into our spots if we're foolish enough to help them, Thurston.
As to New York Jews, don't turn to them. They've got ABWG syndrome - Anyone But White Goyim. Same result.
I don't know about Manhattan, but I worked as a nanny in the 90s in SF.
This was the status hierarchy:
American white girls who are reliable and good with children
Any foreigner who is reliable and good with children
American white girls who are not reliable but are good with children
Any foreigner who is not reliable but is good with children
Anybody who is neither reliable nor good with children
However this was the status hierarchy for *nannies,* fulltime employees who might also live in. There are a lot of other possible childcare workers and I think you all don't grasp the nuances.
Au pairs for example are cheap, exclusively foreign, but much more of a commitment and generally poorly trained. They tend to be hired by families who are really into the cultural exchange aspect.
Part-time babysitters tend to be Americans, white or black, because foreigners don't want part-time work.
Just looking at women on the street with children won't tell you what kind of childcare worker a given person is.
*Russian* nannies?! Eeek!
Russian nannies, YUM YUM! Too bad the wife would never let me hire one.
Tibet has always had a certain glamor.
To people who have never been there to see the filth, indolence, and poverty.
Here in northern VA, child care is something that apparently White People Won't Do. We interviewed live-in nannies, and all of them were from Latin America or Africa. We found a good day care, and all the caregivers are Latin American, African (including American blacks), Middle Eastern, and Filipina. The only white woman is the one who runs the place. This seemed to be the model at every center we looked at. In my own mind a goal was to find a place that employed very few African-American females, since they all had that sullen, resentful expression typical of black women in America.
Tibet's importance to liberals and neocons is easily explained
Tibet's importance to "liberals" is due to the shockingly explicit nihilism of Buddhist thought:
1) Buddhism is atheism.
2) The Dalai Lama has gone on record opposing China's move towards free markets and advocating a return to Mao-ism.
The idea that we should be siding with the Tibetan Buddhists and against the Chinese Christians strikes me as insanity.
"16. Guangdong 100"
By far the most prosperous Chinese province. 100 million people and a per capita of $5,500 (nominal). So hard to believe. But also the province was the experiment province. When the economic reforms began in 1979, it was the first province allowed to develop.
"The idea that we should be siding with the Tibetan Buddhists and against the Chinese Christians strikes me as insanity."
The dominant liberal elite has much more in common with Buddhist nihilism and passivity than with Chinese Holy Rollers. Maybe decades ago, when a still somewhat vigorous Protestant elite was sending missionaries to China, when the China Lobby was a real force this would make sense. Not anymore though.
Most of the obvious nannies I see on Manhattan's streets are Caribbean blacks. You sometimes see East Indian and East Asian women, but those are relatively rare. Can't tell you how common English or Russian nannies are because if I see them with these kids, I'll just assume that they're the kids' mothers.
In the last couple of years I've seen more East Asian nannies on the streets. They tend to be older than nannies of other ethnic groups, generally 50+.
Peter
Steve never posts an open thread, so I'll put this here.
Link.
Israeli-Born Children of Foreign Workers Present Quandary for Jewish State
Like other countries in the industrial world, Israel faces the dilemma of how to deal with the families created on its soil by the foreign workers it invites in. But Israel, which has no immigration policy for non-Jews, finds itself in uncharted territory.
Sabine Hadad, a spokeswoman for the Interior Ministry, said deporting illegal residents is a matter of law enforcement.
“These people have broken the law and they know that,” she said of foreigners who overstayed their visas. “The law needs to be applied.”
Instituting a policy that allows the parents of children born in Israel to stay in the country permanently also would open a route for illegal immigrants to stay in Israel forever: simply have a child here.
Harel Kohen, an aide to Yaakov Katz, the lawmaker who heads the Knesset’s committee on foreign workers, said that taking a firm line on foreign workers illegally in Israel is about preserving the Jewish character of Israel.
“We need to ensure they do not stay in Israel, otherwise Israel is at risk of having its own people assimilated,” he said. “We could lose our Jewish identity.”
I dunno, sounds sort of "racist" and "xenophobic" to me.
John Podhoretz could not be reached for comment.
The current recession is affecting males more than females, and as there is no such thing as a 'mannie', I doubt there are that many unemployed Americans being cast aside for immigrant nannies.
Has anyone heard of a woman complaining that they are out of work because of the large number of foreign nannies?
Are any of the complaining commenters women?
Maybe there is no problem here.
Said it before, I'll say it again: The whole position of a nanny is bull____ . If you can afford to pay a nanny, one of you can afford to stay home with the kids.
-Vanilla Thunder
I used to read a lot of mountain climbing books, which were full of glimpses of Tibetan culture. As the highest altitude culture in the world, and one of the most isolated, Tibet has always had a certain glamor. From what I read, however, I would not characterize "cleanliness, organization & dedication to education" as values of traditional Tibet. The smell of rancid butter was something practically every climber to visit Tibet remarked upon.
hehe. Tibet does fairly reek of yak butter (although if you call it yak butter to a Tibetan they will giggle politely, because the term yak is only used to refer to the bull of the species in Tibetan). The Tibetan girls are fairly rosy cheeked and have pleasant smiles, so I understand the allure, but not necessarily from a housewife's perspective.
Anonymous said...
"Tibetans have the lowest human capital of any ethnic group in China."
Definitely not. The lowest IQ group in China are the Uighurs who are a Turkic group in the Northwest fringe of China.
Prove it.
No, white American women are not put out of work by foreigners. Black American women are in the sense that if the people who employ foreigners couldn't get them, they would have to hire black Americans instead.
"16. Guangdong 100"
By far the most prosperous Chinese province. 100 million people and a per capita of $5,500 (nominal). So hard to believe. But also the province was the experiment province. When the economic reforms began in 1979, it was the first province allowed to develop.
I find it hard to believe too. Four points lower than Inner Mongolia? Come on. Many, many successful entrepreneurs have Guangdong ancestry, and they make up the majority of the Hong Kong population. But as you said, who knows how much was a result of Guangdong's economic head start.
They also boast some top end intellectuals like Fields Medal winning Shing Tung Yau and Terence Tao (a possible candidate for smartest person in the entire world by the way).
Speaking of the tall, blonde infobabe narrating at CJ's video link; did you notice her ...um...state of arousal (headlights ON!) at the sight of all those viril young men fighting each other and drawing one another's blood?
And the mustachioed policeman?
Such things seem almost universal do they not?
plain, old-fashioned racismWhoaa, here come the Nazi's! I bet the journalist never suffered from discrimination in his life, yet talks as if it's about to stick out its neck.
Having a black butler is like wearing a stainless steel rolex. You have money, but not as much as you wish you did.
CJ's video link... headlights ON!
1:36 to 1:47
.
The irony is that native-Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese women are totally banned.
By whom, and why?
Poles would struggle to communicate with me in bad English rather than switch to Russian, which we both spoke better.
Not that you're wrong about former Soviet satellites hating Russian, which one would expect, but it's also expected that the same folks would want to practice their crappy English, not their fluent Russian. I.e., you were being used.
Years ago I read about a French explorer who lived for two years in Tibet and followed the local custom of not bathing. he then decided to bathe (on a whim) and was promptly and ferociously attacked by vermin which had left him alone in his rank state.
Funny, I had a French roommate for a couple years and he followed the Tibetan custom of not bathing, too (he'd shower once every few months, if that). I'm pretty sure he'd never been to Tibet.
"Prove it."
Eastern Xinjiang (Han and Hui majority) is growing rich and at a pace matching the rest of the country.
Western Xinjiang (Uighur majority) is poor and not improving.
To Svigor: by the PRC government itself (via the statutes of the HK government which, shall we say, is always eager to respond to the wishes of Beijing. There is a very 'hard' border between HK and the PRC, i.e. you need to pass through full immigration/customs procedures, even though HK is now ostensibly a full part of the PRC.
The reason? It's never stated, but the PRC seems to acknowledge that HK is indeed something special, and does wish for it to maintain some degree of difference from the mainland. Allowing in hundreds of thousands of young women from the PRC to be domestic helpers would constitute an open invitation to them to fully integrate themselves into HK life (i.e. find men to marry/have children with) and that's currently not a desired outcome. HK Chinese men seem to have little interest in the Filipinas/Indonesians who comprise most of the helpers here, so it's not an issue.
Ironically, though, loads of HK people would love to have native Mandarin-speaking helpers to teach their kids that language. As is, a lot of them do look hard for Filipinas who speak good English, so they derive some educational benefit that way.
Anon, thanks for the expansion.
minor point, but I was recently surprised at the number of black, possibly west indian, nannies pushing strollers down the sidewalk in the Tribeca area.
"CJ said...
Definitely, but you have to wonder why high altitude would be associated with cultural development. Judging from this report on what is probably the second-highest altitude culture in the world, there wouldn't seem to be a positive correspondence."
The first rule of Tinku is.....
....there is no Tinku.
The second rule of Tinku is.....
"I can imagine that 500 years from now, the inhabitants of the former USA will pummel each other to
the tune of Snoop Doggy Dogg while wearing Uncle Sam hats and Richard Nixon masks."
IF people know who Snoop Doggy Dog and Nixon are in 500 years, that would indicate a high level of studiousness; case in point, he changed his name to "Big Snoop Dog" about 15 years ago, but you didn't know that.
"Mexican is to Spanish what Ebonics is to English."
No David, it really isn't. Mexico is a Spanish speaking country, there is not country known as "Ebonica."
""The idea that we should be siding with the Tibetan Buddhists and against the Chinese Christians strikes me as insanity."
This is not, was not and presumably never will be a Christian country. If it was we'd have a cross on the dollar bill instead of a pyramid with an eye on top.
"Western Xinjiang (Uighur majority) is poor and not improving."
Great "proof" of course you know that the per capita income in Detroit is higher than it is in the Ukraine.
And Buddhism is not "atheism." Boiling down a large and multifaceted religion with many branches to this is simpleminded, when Buddha himself was asked about God, his response could be boiled down to "I don't know."
"Don't concern yourself with things that are not significant with you" would be much more accurate elucidation of Buddhist philosophy than "atheist."
It's obvious that Tibet is not Japan - although both are buddhist. (Shinto is Buddhism with a Japanese national spin.)
Tibet is both high-altitude and low-population density - and in that way closer to classical Scandinavia, even in terms of lack of "cleanliness" or more accurately soapliness, than to Japan or China proper.
"Shinto is Buddhism with a Japanese national spin"
No, one has nothing to do with the other, Shinto is a polytheistic, supernatural religion with a whole series of rituals and gods assigned to everyday occurrences such as the wind.
> "Mexican is to Spanish what Ebonics is to English."
No David, it really isn't. Mexico is a Spanish speaking country, there is not country known as "Ebonica." <
Wow. I'll bet you mastered the verbal SAT.
Let me clarify my point. The Mexican LANGUAGE is to the Spanish LANGUAGE what the Ebonics LANGUAGE is to the English LANGUAGE. Nationhood status has nothing to do with this point. After all, many Jews spoke the Hebrew LANGUAGE even during those long years when there was no Hebrew NATION.
However, an interesting (but separate) point could be made that the nation of Ebonics is actually "the black community," the black part of the "two nations in America" cliche.
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