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Published August 23, 2010
AP
It may be raising some eyebrows, but the Drug Enforcement Administration insists it needs to hire at least nine people fluent in Ebonics.
<span style="font-weight: bold">The DEA's Atlanta office has been looking for Ebonics "linguists" since at least May, when job vacancies were posted online.</span>
According to one posting, the linguist's duties would include "monitoring varying numbers of communications intercepts during any given shift" and then providing "reliable and accurate transcriptions."
<span style="font-weight: bold">An agency official, said there is nothing "racial" about the job, and described white rapper Eminem as "one of the best speakers of Ebonics there ever was</span>."
"There are words that people use that I never used," the official said. "It's a dialect that certain people use, and we see a need for it."
<span style="font-weight: bold">The DEA also sees a need for linguists who speak scores of other languages and dialects, including Jamaican Patois</span>. The DEA is looking to hiring such linguists too.
As for why the DEA office is looking for nine Ebonics speakers -- on a contract basis -- the official said that would cover teams of three working three different shifts.