According to the Daily Telegraph, on August 24, the US is seeking to hire nine people fluent in Ebonics, also known as African American Vernacular English, in order to interpret wiretapped conversations between suspected drug dealers, the US Drug Enforcement Administration stated.
Special Agent Michael Sanders said experts were needed to determine precisely what suspects were saying, which could be crucial in gaining convictions.
The Oakland board called for public money to fund "bilingual" education in English and Ebonics. However, the proposal was rejected by the Clinton administration, and sparked a fierce racially-charged national debate over whether learning, and language, could be "genetically based".
"It seems ironic that schools that are serving and educating black children have not recognised the legitimacy of this language, yet the authorities and the police are recognising that this is a language that they don't understand, ” said Professor H Samy Alim, an expert on black language and hip-hop culture at Stanford University.
The Linguistic Society of America has not taken a position on whether Ebonics is a language, but has said characterisations of Ebonics as "ungrammatical or broken English" were "incorrect and demeaning".

美政府雇人“破译”黑人英语
据《每日电讯报》8月24日报道，美国毒品管制局（DEA）近日声明，他们正在招募9名精通黑人英语的职员，以便翻译和窃听毒贩之间的对话。
特工迈克?桑德斯说，他们需要能够精确翻译犯罪嫌疑人之间对话的专家，以便取得有力证据。
奥克兰委员会曾提议采用英语和“黑人英语”相结合的双语教学，呼吁社会进行资金捐助。但是这一提议遭到克林顿政府的否决，并在全国范围内引起关于“种族歧视”的激烈争论，那就是教学和语言学习是不是应该由遗传基因因素决定。
斯坦福大学研究黑人语言和嘻哈文化的H 萨米?艾里姆教授说，“很不可思议的是，教育和服务黑人儿童的学校并不承认”黑人英语“的合法性，很多公共机构和警察竟然表示不理解这门语言。”

美国语言学学会并没有肯定“黑人英语”就是一门语言，还声称“黑人英语”不符合语法规定，结构上“支离破碎”，毫无文法可言的“低下语言”。