Sociolinguistic Artifacts

I was reminded of this newscast by the reading by Wolfram and Eisenhauer. I remember watching this video for a Black studies class I took in high school in our sociology unit. This feels close to me because I grew up in the OUSD/BUSD as a BIPOC student. Though I didn't speak AAVE growing up, I was constantly surrounded by it in my family and friend circles. Toni Cook and Fay Vaughn-Cooke make some excellent points in this broadcast and somehow maintain their composure while having to deal with crazy ass news anchors and interviewers. The term Ebonics is a portmanteau of "ebony" and "phonics", meaning Black speech. I think this raises an interesting question about AAVE's place in the academic sphere--why not? Another question it raises is: Is AAVE a language or a dialect? I don't feel equipped yet with enough linguistic knowledge to comment on this. Unfortunately, the conversations discussing this are cut short in the video.