African Americans are usually excluded from receiving federal or local funding as language minority students because English is their native language. African Americans share a unique linguistic history when compared to other immigrant groups. Slaves were separated by language upon capture in West Africa, thereby resulting in pidginization processes with English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese which flourished during the European African slave trade. Ensuing Creolization in North and South America has created special social and educational problems for descendants of former slaves. This article focuses on that problem in the United States. Evidence from law, educational policy, and linguistics is presented to claim that current linguistic regulations are inconsistent with the educational goals espoused in ''systemic reform'' (see Smith & O'Day, 1991).Several misconceptions prevail in the larger society regarding African American English (AAE), and many teachers harbor some of these stereotypes, often subconsciously, but often in overtly racist ways. The belief that Black English is bad English or ungrammatical are inconsistent with empirical linguistic evidence to the contrary. These misconceptions have profound social consequences in our schools and halls of justice. Class differences in speech and race have left indelible socially stratified watermarks throughout the United States, and here I explore some sociolinguistic aspects of these problems.A central dimension of this argument focuses on the inadequacy of current language policies for African American students. Speech pathology is commonly used to diagnose African Americans for special education, but vernacular AAE is not pathological. Similarly, many African Americans are placed in bilingual education classes with students for whom English is not native (ENN); this practice is also misguided. In conclusion, I call for comprehensive programs and policies for all students that adequately account for their linguistic diversity.