Since the Oakland Unified School District passed its resolution on Ebonics in 1998, Ebonics has been a lightning rod for controversy of all sorts. The utilitarian intent of the original resolution was lost as the debate of Ebonics became intensely political and, to a great extent, marred by existing patterns of racial hierarchy and stigmatization. Lost in this debate is the fact that numerous scholars have entered their support of Ebonics as a rule-governed linguistic system. Despite the immense and variegated body of literature examining Ebonics, few authors have developed strategies to engage the "Ebonics debate" constructively within the university classroom. It is important to pursue meaningful understanding of the possible latent functions of the Ebonics debate in the classroom. In this article, the authors present an exercise that provides a framework for examination of the apparently "natural" preferences for and against certain modes of speaking (MOS). This exercise also encourages students to consider "why" certain MOS are favored while others are stigmatized. (Contains 3 figures and 3 tables. Appended to this article are the results of the Fall 2005 administration of the exercise.)