Remember the witness, Rachel Jeantel, who spoke a funny  quasi-English and everyone was in a flummox about it?   She spoke Gullah.  The Talking Heads nervously decided that she was from Haiti.   Some people were especially shocked by her language.  They cited it and then dismissed it as a condition of poverty and isolation.  Surely the remnant and result of racism.   A vernacular of the repressed.

For the last 40 years, no one has been allowed to address Gullah or teach or even read Gullah since Toni and Alice said it was racist and the Civil Rights movement leaders of the time decided, and  apparently still believe, that it reflects badly on Black society.  That's just rubbish.   It is simply a real language which is both historical and still current and in use as Miss Jeantel demonstrated when she testified at the Zimmerman trial.  It's a rich and personal and expressive language of people who preserved their stories and wisdoms in their unique communities and for all this time.   By now it has been a working language for 300 years.   Political correctness is misdirected when generations of kids and adults are prevented from learning the ideas and morals of folk tales from their heritage because someone or some group is too sensitive to bear the legitimate language of Gullah.

English was spoken in West Africa as the language of commerce as early as the 17th century when the British secured West Africa and the slave trade in that area.  Many slaves spoke "British" when they were sent to the British colonies of Georgia and Carolina, originally to grow rice.   That  "British'" spoken at the time, called Pidgin, plus various West African language influences and the "American"  dialects in use at the time, all created Gullah.  It is unique to the New World.

Anyone who has ever read J. C. Harris's Uncle Remus will know how wonderful and vivid this language is.   Mark Twain loved Uncle Remus, read it to his children and used Gullah in Huck Finn.  I hope you will enjoy learning how many great writers were influenced by it.    Did you know, for example, that the term Kumbyah is Gullah?  It means come by here.  We think we invented it in the 60's.

Uncle Remus and other collections of African-influenced stories written in Gullah are books which are actually banned in many libraries and schools in the US as racist...… in America, the land of the First Amendment.     No wonder our children have no moral compass.  They are ignorant of character-building classics such as Uncle Remus' who is up there with Aesop for basic and wonderful skills in solving very human dilemmas and relationships.

"If thine eye offend thee, cast it out,"  That's the original First Amendment concept.   Turn the channel, walk away, shut your door, govern your house, that's on you.  But banning books, art, or language is felony stupid and anti-American.  Be whatever kind of dope or jerk you want and do it out loud so we can each decide about it and you.   To regulate and discriminate and ban books and language based on "sensitivity"  is unconstitutional per se and results in generations of American children being deprived of Uncle Remus and even of Huck Finn.   Uncle Remus, written in Gullah or latin, is a force for good and tolerance.

Thank you Rachel Jeantel for bringing Gullah to our attention and for taking the flak from do-gooders and talking heads who can't get real jobs.