Negroes Vastly Underrepresented At Spelling Bee

They didn't use any affirmative action cultural terms in the
competition.

Bob LeChevalier...

Considering that it could hardly be called an ***English*** language

home...

an English-speaking girl won it anyway.

spelling bee, why would any xenophobic nativist English-speaking-only
white-bread American racist think it significant?

<> Katharine Close, of New Jersey, came out on top after seven rounds of sudden
<> death spelling, competitively forming words like "tmesis" (putting a word in
<> another one), "izzat" (honour) and "kundalini" (life force in your spine),
<> while her last surviving rival, Finola Mei Hwa Hackett, of Alberta, in Canada,
<> hit back with "poiesis" (the act of making), "koine" (common language) and
<> "tutoyer" (using the "tu" form of address in French) .
<>
<> The decisive moment, in a final that commentators thought was less emotionally
<> fraught than recent years, came when Hackett stumbled over "weltschmerz"
<> (world weariness), erroneously starting with a "v".
<>
<> Close held her nerve to render "ursprache" and later described her relief when
<> the word was announced.
<> "I couldn't believe it. I knew I knew how to spell the word and I was just in
<> shock," said Close, a veteran of five national finals who finished in seventh
<> place last year. "I couldn't believe I would win."

3 Greek words, 2 German words, a French word, and two Hindi-Urdu
words. The highest achievement of an English-language schoolchild?

Perhaps if they had added some Swahili or Ibo words, those of African
ancestry might have had more reason to actually care. I wonder how
these champions would have done with ng'ombe (cow) or mbwa-mwitu (wild
dog) in Swahili or ntutu (hair) or nwannenwanyi (sister) in Ibo.

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You're talking about the final words.

Do you think that American negroes can spell Afroid words?

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Or even ebonics terms?

Donna Metler...

Shouldn't even bother, but actually a lot of my African-American students
are very aware of their African roots, and do know quite a bit of African
terminology (and quite a few of their classmates have African language
derived names now, because it's quite trendy). In addition, there are
several Afrocentric schools, both charters and privates, where African
languages are taught, so it is possible that a child may have studied
Swahili instead of French or German. Since most of doing well at spelling
bees is being able to generalize phonics patterns to unknown words based on
known, it might make a decisive difference IF such words were included.