Why do people hate Ebonics so much? I often find it kind of odd that anyone who loves language would hate Ebonics - or AAEV - so much since I actually often find there's more creative (and often actually more sophisticated) use of language emerging from Black culture in the US than there is in the mainstream dominant culture.

AW - Do you feel the same way about Cockney or Jamaican Patois as you do about AAEV?

>what i don't understand is why so many people are so eager to study made-up languages (like esperanto or klingon) but mention learning a few of the ones we already have and people throw up their hands and say "oh that's too hard".

Klingon probably is too hard. A lot of other languages are not really too hard, but will be almost impossible to master because of irregularities,bizarre spelling and pronunciation rules and complex idioms. Esperanto has the advantage that it can be much more easily mastered, and the advantage that mastery is about equally open to everyone.

>why not study persian or chinese instead of esperanto? why not study portuguese or russian or any of the hundreds of african languages, or welsh for that matter?

These are each worth studying for those who want to study them, but none is an easy choice for a universal auxiliary language.
I used to favor Mandarin for that purpose, but decided it was still unnecessarily weird in a number of ways, even when one puts aside the writing system. I'm still gradually chipping away at Mandarin, but not for the same reason. I suppose a case can be made that languages like Chukchee are worth trying to preserve, although fewer people now speak that than speak Esperanto. To that end, I might point out that
requiring the Chukchee to learn the natural Russian language rather than an artificial, politically neutral language, puts them in a weaker social and political position than the Russians who surround them. If Russians had to communicate with Chukchee in Esperanto and vice-versa, this would be a little bit more 'fair'.

>languages we already have carry our cultures and our histories, yet they are dying all around us. because of their fluid, evolutionary nature, our languages remind us of where we've come from (and what we've come through), sociologically, geographically, historically...

I'm not suggesting that people give up their primary languages. I'm suggesting that if they also have to learn a second language, it's pointless to make them learn an unnecessarily complicated language that strongly favors native speakers, their national interests,
and the cultural biases built into that language.

>an invented language may be simpler, but it is uni-dimensional; it teaches, celebrates, cradles nothing.

It teaches the important basic skill of thinking in a second language to those who might never be able to do this otherwise,
it celebrates the basic respect all peoples should have for each other in recognizing the profound challenge of learning ANY natural language and it cradles our hopes for a future which, if not universally agreeable, is at least universally intelligible.