Ebonics, which comes from the words "ebony" and "phonics" is a term that Linguistics use to describe Black Dialect or Black English. The debate over Ebonics has several sides. Almost everyone has an opinion. Rachel Jones and Sonja Lanehart are two authors who stand on opposing sides of this argument. In her article, "What's Wrong with Black English," Jones defends the mainstream language ideology while Lanehart defends the alternative language ideology in her article "African American Vernacular English, Identity, and Education." Their views differ completely and not much common ground is shared between the two.
             In her article, Rachel Jones examines what it means and how it feels to be told she "sounds white" because she uses standard English. She notes that "for many blacks, standard English is not only unfamiliar, it is socially unacceptable." Of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and James Baldwin she writes, "They all have full command of standard English, and I don't think that knowledge takes away from their blackness or commitment to black people." She concludes, "My goal is...to one day see more black people less dependent on a dialect that excludes them from full participation in the world we live in." Jones insists that her use of standard English has propelled her from a life of poverty, and it seems that she believes that the use of Ebonics by people today is equivalent to succumbing to a form of self-delusion that rejects success as a "white thing." She believes that a line can be drawn from protecting one's heritage and assimilating sufficiently to gain admittance to a society, but she believes that one can both assimilate and preserve and I cannot agree with that statement. In her article, Jones comments on the fact that she is "almost Jekyll a
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