title: Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice
author:  John Baugh 
description: <br />"A lucid new study of...perhaps the most strident linguistic controversy in recent memory."--<em>The New Yorker</em>
zlib_text: ![](images/00001.jpg)
  
  * * *
  
  
    
    
  An Accursed Race  
    
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  
  # An Accursed Race
  
  
  ### Elizabeth Gaskell
  
  
  
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  We have our prejudices in England. Or, if that assertion offends any of my
  readers, I will modify it: we have had our
  
  
  prejudices in England. We have tortured Jews; we have burnt Catholics and
  Protestants, to say nothing of a few
  
  
  witches and wizards. We have satirised Puritans, and we have dressed-up Guys.
  But, after all, I do not think we
  
  
  have been so bad as our Continental friends. To be sure, our insular position
  has kept us free, to a certain degree,
  
  
  from the inroads of alien races; who, driven from one land of refuge, steal
  into another equally unwilling to receive
  
  
  them; and where, for long centuries, their presence is barely endured, and no
  pains is taken to conceal the
  
  
  repugnance which the natives of '