# "Acting white" damage control **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [May 11, 2007, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691 "2007-05-11T14:31:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 12
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2007, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/221 "2007-05-14T23:30:17Z")
And we do be plannin’ us some runaways, revolts, and rebellions, don’t we? Ha! ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2007, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/222 "2007-05-14T23:32:53Z")
> [@](#): > > But if, say, I’m an academic who annually visits Princeton each July to work in a special collection at the library there or something, couldn’t I say “Summertime I be going to Princeton”? Noooooooo! Please. No. That wouldn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2007, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/223 "2007-05-14T23:34:03Z")
[QUOTE=Nzinga, Seated] Noooooooo! Please. No. That wouldn’t work. [/QUOTE] Why not? ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2007, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/224 "2007-05-14T23:46:49Z")
Please ask one of the more articulate posters to answer that. I am grasping to figure out how to explain it, and I am having trouble. I would never say, “Summertime I be going to Princeton”. Under very specific circumstances, I might say, “I be going to Princeton in the Summer”. I can’t figure out how to explain the difference. Let me not pass the buck here, though. Let me try. It is the only way to grow. I might say, “I be going to Princeton in the Summer” if someone needed to know what I usually do in the summer, especially if there are other schools that I may be going to, or other seasons I may be going there. When you say, “Summertime, I be going to Princeton” it sounds as if I am specifying this Summer. A specific Summer…this upcoming summer. I would never say that. It only works if there is some question of when I might be going there. Like, I can’t say, “Wednesday, I be going to Princeton.” ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2007, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/225 "2007-05-14T23:50:11Z")
“In the summer, I be at Princeton” sounds better to my ears. But just slightly. I would never use “be” if I was talking about something that happens regularly, but not constantly. I would say something more standard, like “In the summer, I go to Princeton”. There’s no rule that every sentence has to deviate from SAVE. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/226 "2007-05-15T00:03:45Z")
> [@monstro](#): > > “In the summer, I be at Princeton” sounds better to my ears. But just slightly. > > I would never use “be” if I was talking about something that happens regularly, but not constantly. I would say something more standard, like “In the summer, I go to Princeton”. Yowza, this **is** subtle. How about if, say, I live in a nearby town but commute daily to Princeton for work? Can I say “Every day I be going to Princeton to teach them lazy-ass kids”? (No offense to Princeton students intended; somehow the object phrase “them kids” just sounded as though it needed a forceful adjective, but what do I know. :)) ---
**Author:** ![Biggirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biggirl/32/3294_2.png) [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/227 "2007-05-15T00:26:35Z")
[QUOTE=Nzinga, Seated] Like, I can’t say, “Wednesday, I be going to Princeton.” [/QUOTE] But “Wednesdays, I be going to Princeton” is perfectly fine. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/228 "2007-05-15T00:30:38Z")
[QUOTE=Kimstu] Yowza, this **is** subtle. How about if, say, I live in a nearby town but commute daily to Princeton for work? Can I say “Every day I be going to Princeton to teach them lazy-ass kids”? (No offense to Princeton students intended; somehow the object phrase “them kids” just sounded as though it needed a forceful adjective, but what do I know. :)) [/QUOTE] It _is_ subtle, but I’m not trying to pretend that I’m the AAVE expert. I just don’t think I would use “be” like that. This is how I would communicate the above: Friend: **monstro** , what do you do everyday? **monstro** : I be at school, teaching them lazy-ass kids. I can’t see myself ever saying “Every day I be going to school…” As **you with the face** said above, noting the specific interval of time adds ambiguity to the sentence when there otherwise would be none. Also, the “going” throws things off. It emphasizes the act of moving rather than the act of being there. Here’s where “be going” would make sense: Friend: When do you have quality time with your boyfriend? **monstro** : When we be going home from school on the bus. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/229 "2007-05-15T00:33:07Z")
Sorry, that was **Nzinga** , not **you with the face** who said that. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/230 "2007-05-15T00:38:14Z")
Oh help, I give up. Thanks anyway! You know, I think trying to use a different dialect of one’s own language is harder than using a different language, because you have all these automatic expectations of how it should work that are subtly different from the way it actually works. At any rate, I now have a little more sympathy for those silly non-AAVE speakers who try to sound cool by using AAVE and get the grammar wrong. It don’t be easy. Or something. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/231 "2007-05-15T00:46:58Z")
I love the English language. I mean proper English. It is beautiful; and I sure don’t pretend to have it mastered, but I love to read and hear it spoken nicely. A healthy respect for the English language is the reason why the Dope is the only board I post to! There are no others that draw me in with such eloquent posts. That being said, I sure do have a soft spot for Black English. “Where you be at?” rolls effortlessly off my tongue to mean, “Where do you frequently hang out? Where can I often find you?” Outsiders may think it means “Where are you right now.” They may make movie characters say it to mean, “where are you right now.” Others may mock it and use it mockingly to mean, “where are you right now.” But that is not what it means. I love to speak slang and Black English. I don’t allow my own daughter to, though. She speaks very good English, and I want that to be cemented and for her to have a very large vocabulary before I allow her to indulge in Black English. But I do love to speak it myself when I can. Which is often, but not all the time. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/232 "2007-05-15T01:41:42Z")
Which does bring this back to the op! How old is your daughter? What if she was mocked by Black peers for speaking proper English properly and for having a less than complete mastery of Black English (AAVE)? Even if that wasn’t referred to as “acting White” how would you respond to those who mocked her and how would you counsel her? Would have a different effect than an Appalachian White boy (for example) being mocked for speaking English properly? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/233 "2007-05-15T02:12:40Z")
[QUOTE=pizzabrat] :dubious: Always? “Tuesday goes much better for Heather than the day before. She talks in class, undetected this time, raising her hand just often enough to fool the teacher into thinking she’s paying attention.” [/QUOTE] I was thinking of it as a stand alone sentence, not as a phrase or part of another sentence. Probably what I should have said is that it’s hard to imagine a context in which it would mean “she is currently talking in class”, as in right this very second. It would be a pretty unusual context for it to mean that. ---
**Author:** ![Nzinga\_Seated](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/b5ac83/32.png) [@Nzinga\_Seated](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nzinga_Seated)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/234 "2007-05-15T02:28:40Z")
**John Mace** , I don’t want her to get teased at all. Not for anything. Already, she seems a bit different from her own cousins, neighbors and school mates. If they call her “whitey”, (has never happened), I will be angry. _But I just don’t anticipate anyone calling her that because she is smart._ (which I think she is exceptionally so; but doesn’t every mom think that of her child?) Where I come from, no one puts anyone down for being smart. She _is_ a bit nerdy, and there is a chance that her awkwardness and lack of ‘coolness’ may cause someone to call her names. If that happens, I will be angry. But I do expect it. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/235 "2007-05-15T02:29:50Z")
[QUOTE=John Mace] I have to admit that I would never have known about the “he be going” meaning if a **real live Black person** hadn’t explained it to me. [/QUOTE] As opposed to all those fake dead ones that be running around, eh? ---
**Author:** ![Hippy\_Hollow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hippy_hollow/32/4841_2.png) [@Hippy\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hippy_Hollow)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/236 "2007-05-15T02:48:12Z")
Y’all be all over my head with this AAVE talk. The only time I think folks from round the way use a sentence like: “She be talking in class.” Is to indicate that she is a habitual talker. I’d be more likely to hear “She be talking in class all the time, and we can’t hear nothing.” _that’s all I got_ ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/237 "2007-05-15T06:01:19Z")
[QUOTE=you with the face] What? I have no idea what you are saying. If it wasn’t for slavery, there’d be no A-A ethnic group, so in that sense, it is quite “authentic” (whatever that means). It doesn’t matter that AAVE was born out of slavery. Value judgements about the heinousness of its origins don’t matter, either. People don’t suddenly start speaking another dialect just because their mother dialect came out of oppression. [/quote] Well, one of the complaints of Al Sharpton is that black people who speak in a grammatically correct way (Barack Obama (sp?) aren’t authentic. Add to that the youngsters who accuse their peers of “acting white” as in “you are not truly black unless you use the accepted slang, as WE, the deciders of what is cool and black have deemed authentic”. > [@](#): > > Education leads to economic power and wealth. That’s why ALL people value education. I don’t think black folks of your parent’s era were thinking “I need to go to school so I won’t be ignorant like my great grand daddy”. It was the American Dream that motivated them, just like it did everyone else. Yes. But I do remember reading and hearing that what motivated black people regarding education WAS, at least in part, to kick their past so to speak. Sortof like the semi-jokey saying “a woman has to work twice as hard as a man to be considered half as good (fortunately it isn’t hard)”. Having come of age, as a woman in the 70s, I can say that this is true, and certainly motivated ME to “show them”. So why wouldn’t black people, whom so many had been so rotten to for so long not have that sort of “I’ll show them” motivation as a great part of their love for education? (seems as if it was some Martin Luther King biography, but that was way back in the 80s, so I apologize, I honestly don’t remember where I first read it, I know Bill Cosby harps on it a lot). And if it’s just a “chasing the American Dream” thing, why has it fallen so out of favor with so many young black people? In my humble opinion, and as you mentioned before, it has nothing to do with blackness, and everything to do with where they are from and their refusal to take responsibility for their own lives. I saw the same thing in teenagers in Texas High Schools when I did subsitute teaching there. With the exception of those who did want to study and go to college only being called nerds, not questioned about their authenticity regarding being white, or being Texan. > [@](#): > > I meant “underclass” in terms of SES status. SES? (I must have missed that one in sociology class, either that or having worked in Federal project hell, I’m on Acronym overload :)). > [@](#): > > When you talk about black people, you need to be aware that, just like in all groups, there’s more to meets the eye than skin color. It seems that when you talk about blacks, you’re not making the same kind of distinctions you’d make if you were talking about whites. So yeah, the blacks you went to school with in Alaska are likely not going to be comparable to low-income urban kids who pick on **Biggirl’s** daughter. Class and regional differences should not be overlooked. I am aware of that, since I’m the one saying I don’t think race really matters, that my beef is with the accusatory nature of the little snots the OP is speaking of. That’s part of what I’ve been saying all along. It is WHO a person is, and how they comport themselves, not what color their skin is. At least to me it is. It seems that these young accusers of “unblackness” don’t believe the same thing. And of COURSE there are the same sorts of distinctions among whites (and natives etc). Did you miss the part where I said this wasn’t a rich group, or that I grew up poor? There are large groups of poor whites and poor other cultural groups too. Here, it is the native population. I don’t happen to feel that a person’s skin color is a cause of those class differences. A person can and will do what they decide to do, regardless of the color of their skin. I grew up poor and am not bright. But I managed to go to school and get a decent career. And that despite some serious young person mistakes, like getting married and having a child, and then a divorce much too soon. Part of that “deciding what to do, and what it will or will not do for them” is a person’s manner of speech, way of dressing and carrying him or herself and that has nothing to do with a person’s skin color, it is what they have decided for themselves. That is, either good behaviour, average behaviour, or bad behaviour. > [@](#): > > It wouldn’t make sense for your boyfriend to ascribe your behavior to being white, because, being part of the majority race himself, he doesn’t see it as a racial thing. Put him in a country where he’s a stigmatized minority, and he’d likely replace “stuck up” with “acting \”. I didn’t say he would accuse me of acting white. I said, he wouldn’t accuse me of NOT being white, or in other words, he didn’t accuse me of not being authentic. That IS what the OP is about. That is, black kids who speak in a grammatically correct way, or get decent grades etc and then their “cool” peers accuse them of “acting white”, or like Al Sharpton idiotically says " not being authentic". Again, my question is “authentic how”? How is bad grammar and harsh gangsta type slang “authentic” to being black? I agree that it may be “authentic” to being part of a specific class, JUST like the really horrendous “springerite” backhills Deliverance type jargon is “authentic” to being a banjo playing, white lightnin’ brewin scary white supremecist guy, but NOT to “being white”. ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/238 "2007-05-15T06:08:44Z")
[QUOTE=whole bean] how is that any different than “do”? [/QUOTE] Or “are”? ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/239 "2007-05-15T06:14:05Z")
[QUOTE=Biggirl] Now that you’ve mentioned it, I’ve spoken with my llittle white kid neighbors and they say “There’s no fit” when they mean “There’s no room.” Why do white people talk that way? Is that a feature of SAE? I’ve been a participant in many conversations when they do this. As a matter of fact, all my white friends’ children say ‘geeses’ when they mean geese and feets when it should be ‘feet’-- let me make this perfectly clear, some of my best friends’ children are white, so I will maintain that this is, in fact, a feature of SAE. [/QUOTE] Those are all bad grammar. You’re the correct one, it is “feet”, “geese” and I have no idea who would say “there’s no fit” (is there a lot of lead paint in your white friend’s neighborhoods? :D). ---
**Author:** ![CanvasShoes](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@CanvasShoes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CanvasShoes)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2007, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691/240 "2007-05-15T06:27:30Z")
[QUOTE=Nzinga, Seated] Polerius, it helps the speaker not have to specify such terms as “what we usually do,” “what we are likely to do” , “what we often do” _“We be at the Reggae club”_ I am telling someone that it is the club I usually go to. The club I most often go to, the club I will be going to in the future. \*I do not claim that Black English is anything like the Chinese language. [/QUOTE] I don’t know, you just gave ME a language lesson :D. If someone said “we be at the Reggae club” to me, that would mean “We are there now”. Unless of course they weren’t speaking with me on the phone, then I’d be pretty confused, or I might think they meant they’d just come from there, as in “we were just at the reggae club”. Maybe that’s why the other poster mistranslated it. Without you translating it, someone not knowing might think it implied present tense. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691.md?page=11) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/acting-white-damage-control/403691.md?page=13)