AAVE isn’t slang or jargon. It is a dialect. It is the dialect spoken by most black Americans, even us ‘whitey’ sounding ones. One of it’s most distinctive hallmarks-- the use of the word ‘be’ to mark aspect-- is quite useful and I use it all the time. It is also the most mocked and misunderstood.
But that’s a completely different thread.
Okay, so that’s not the same thing as the slang that the kids speak nowadays then?
Also, after I posted, I’d read someone else’s post where they mention “poor white” vernacular such as “ain’t got none” and so on. It made me remember my ex-boyfriend’s complaints that I spoke “stuck up”. Though he’s not from the poor south area, he’s from Minn., but did have a limited and slang-y type vocabulary.
I could be way off base, but I’ve long thought that the problem was not at all caused by race, but more economically based.
No. First off, “African” is not a language. Secondly, Jamaician patois is on equal footing with AAVE, since both are English dialects created by the descendants of slaves. African-Americans are a ethnic group separate from others.
As for the “today’s youths’ insistance upon this type of speech” observation, what makes you think this kind of conformity is a new thing? When you were coming up, the black kids you were exposed to were probably from a different class pool than the kids that you associate with “bad English” today. There’s nothing new going on; you just have more exposure to an underclass that you didn’t before.
Sorry on the first, of course I was oversimplifying. Let me clarify, African Americans, wouldn’t it be truly authentic if they spoke the language of the region from which their ancestors came?
As to your second thought. Where did I say I thought it was new, or that I approved of other “slang” but not black youth slang? I don’t find it the slang from “my” race, any more palatable than that of ebonics (is that the correct name?). But I don’t see users of other slang insisting that IT is what makes them authentic whatever race they might be.
Or to simplify, I don’t understand the belief that “kno-it-ime-sain = true authentic blackness”, nor do I see a comparable attitude among other races who use slang.
This doesn’t mean it’s not there, it just doesn’t seem to be as prominent or insistant.
Most African-Americans don’t know where their African ancestors came from, linguistically speaking. But the most important thing to remember is that A-A’s became English speaking Americans as soon as they were brought over here. That’s what their ancestors spoke, so that’s what they speak. “Authenticity” would not be based on anything other than that.
I didn’t say you approved of non-black slang, and I have no idea where you got that from.
By talking about the black folks you went to school with and then talking about how different they were from “youth today”, it seemed like you comparing two apple and orange groups. Class differences likely exist.
Didn’t you just mention your ex-boyfriend calling you stuck up for not using regional dialectic speech? There’s no real difference between him and some black kid in the hood guffawing because another kid talks like a WASP. The only real difference is that instead of saying “stuck up”, the black kid will accuse the other one of “acting white”. But both are reactions to someone seen as being high fallutin’ and different.
A rose by any other name smells the same to me, so I don’t see why blacks should be treated as novelties with respect to this.
But slavery wouldn’t be “authentic”, so one would think that they’d eschew the slangy poor “slave english” (not sure the correct term for it would be) based upon its heinous origins. I thought that that was why black people of my parent’s generation were SO enamored of proper education, because it went so far away from the poorly educated history of their enslaved ancestors.
I know I don’t understand the culture, but I don’t get why they’d want to embrace poor education and poor speech, since that was part of what being a slave entailed. I’d think that most black people would want to stay as far away from anything that smacked of slavery as possible. I guess that’s the difference I see in just “slang” as opposed to specific types of black youth slang.
I guess just your comment on the black “underclass”. That term seems a bit loaded to me, but that’s JUST me. I don’t consider black youth, even those in the ghetto as being “underclassed”. The term has a negative connotation to me. So that’s where I got that you were thinking I disapproved.
Yes, I think I did mention that I thought it was more class than skin color related. I wasn’t comparing apples and oranges though, I was speaking of what the parents of the black kids of my day believed in, and obviously fostered in their children. None of these kids were rich, just average, like me.
Well, I’m not from Minn. only he was…But Okay, I sortof agree. With the difference that my boyfriend didn’t accuse me of not being an authentic white person. I guess that’s the point that’s “stickin’ in my craw”. 
I agree, again with the difference pf the idea that some have that slang vs no slang or worse those with a proper way of speaking being considered “not authentic”.
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.
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.
I meant “underclass” in terms of SES status. 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.
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 <insert majority race>”.
What’s with this hijack? Is there any evidence of a prescriptive campaign, official or otherwise, for AAVE amongst blacks?
EDIT: Oh, nevermind, I get what you’re talking about.
I have nothing to add to the main topic of discussion, I just wanted to comment on how clever that one post was. Writing your explanations of the different ways in such a manner that they would read how you’re describing it? Well done.
That’s all I’ve got. I just wanted to say “neat.”
I was struck upthread by a comment… the use of Steve Urkel as an insult. I was called “Urkel” for being dorky once or twice. I think as soon as there was a Black nerd character out there, that became a pretty popular dis.
I was talking about this thread with an Indian American friend a few days back. She noted, and I agreed, that America has a pretty anti-intellectual streak. Look at our leaders. How else does one explain George W. Bush’s success? He certainly didn’t aim to come across as intelligent. In fact, as a politician in this country, your ability to be folksy and connect with the common man are probably more important than one’s academic credentials…
…which is to say, with the exception of recent immigrants - which makes sense, considering the Immigration Act of 1965 ensures that most immigrants to the US are well-educated, high-achieving folks. And there is something to be said about the fact than in this country, education can take a person pretty far. It’s not surprising that recent immigrants are off the charts obsessed with their kids doing well in school.
One thing that’s interesting is how the immigrant advantage diminishes by the third generation - that is, the grandchildren of the immigrants, which is Xue Lan Rong and Frank Brown’s focus in their research. The hypothesis is that by the third or later generation, the descendants of Kenyan, Korean, or Argentinian immigrants are well assimilated into American society. The immigrant “striving” perspective is considerably muted at this time. Those kids are less likely to hear stories of how Grandma/pa sacrificed so much to come to America.
I might have gone a little OT here, but I’m writing a dissertation… I find it difficult to talk about anything else but my own research, but I just wanted to throw that out there. If I followed Nginza’s point, agreeing that there’s a pretty strong anti-intellectual streak in American society, period, lends credence to her argument.
Speaking as a 19 year old inner city black youth, probably the only one on this board…allow me to retort. In my personal experience, being intelligent does NOT equate to acting white. Nobody I know, including myself, because to be honest, lord knows I can’t stand an oreo, has used the term in this context.
I went to an 100% black public grammar school in a bad neighbordhood on the far far south side of Chicago (the wild hundreds if on the offhand chance anybody is familiar with that). I got straight A’s. Never got one bad conduct mark. Sure, I got called a smarty arty and a goody two shoes, but never was accused of acting white.
Then I went to a majority black public high school on Chicago’s west side. I kept good grades. I got a 32 on the ACT (first time, bullshit you not). I got a full ride scholarship thanks to that. The smarty arty comments dissappeared. People on the block actually encouraged my scholastic endeavors.
Never once in my life have I been accused of being an oreo. For the first 12 years of my life I had only seen white people on TV, how could I be? Yes, I’m book smart. But believe me, I have so many stereotypically black behaviors it’s ridiculous. I have an excellent grasp of the English language…when I need to. But when I’m outside of work or maybe a classroom? Yeah, I say “aks” and “skrimps” and “finna” and don’t pronounce my E’s and R’s, just because that’s my natural dialect. I roll my eyes and snap my neck when I argue. I play my music too loud and put 22 inch rims on my car. I keep my TV on BET and use nigga and bitch interchangably and without discrimination with male and female. I wore a “ghetto prom dress” like the ones you get in emails. All of my boyfriends’ pants were too big and had some kind of gang and/or drug affiliation. I get people to buy me juice on their food stamp cards.
So, why is it that I have never been called whitewashed? I mean, I’m smart right? See, acting white is a multifaceted term. It is how you speak, act, dress, how many white friends you have, and how you REALLY feel about other blacks. This is a package deal. All must apply. You can skateboard and still “act black”. You can listen to rock music and still “act black”. I used to have a Backstreet Boys addiction myself. But if you’re sitting at a table with Becky and Amy talkin bout “Ohmigod today in Hollister this total welfare queen spilled coke on my Hermes scarf blahblahblah!” and purposely avoiding all things deemed black, then…you may be an oreo. Trust me, there are a million and one airhead idiots that act white. Brains have nothing to do with it. At all. I think the only people that assert this are white people who have no interaction with the antagonizing party of black people, only the “oreos”; and black people who really ARE whitewashed and really DON’T
identify with black people. But this is all my own personal conjecture.
(my above post got cut off, sorry.)
The Fryer study to which I linked very early in this thread made the point that the insult “acting white” appears to be limited, specifically, to public schools with rather evenly mixed populations. This was true in the Shaker Heights schools, but, clearly, not in yours.
Can somebody explain to me what this is? I’d never heard of it before (see, I told you I was congenitally dorky), and I’ve just looked through 5 pages of Google hits on “ghetto prom dress” without seeing any actual representation of anything that could reasonably be any kind of prom dress.
(I did find among those links some porn shots of naked ladies, but I assume that is not what the term “ghetto prom dress” actually means, unless red child went to a really interesting prom.)
Kimstu: This is one of those “black thangs”: it is high sport among American blacks to send e-mail forwards featuring pictures of ghetto-fabulousness. It can be something as simple as the “when they were young” pictures of black celebrities as kids to pimped out rides to ghetto wedding photos. it’s like that episode of My Name Is Earl where Joy and Crab Man got married, only, y’know, not fiction.
I don’t know where you might find these things on the web, cuz I laugh and delete mine after I get 'em. I can assure you they do exist.
You haven’t lived until you’ve seen the ghetto girl with the pregnant prom dress with the stomach midriff cut out of it to maximize sex appeal…
Oh, wait… here they are. My google-fu is greater than yours…
Oh, I can soooooo tell you grew up over here in Northwest Atlanta. LOL!
Sshhhhh! Don’t go telling the white folk what us black folk be doing!
See how useful that ‘be’ is? It doesn’t mean what we do nor what we’ve done. It means what we do, have done and continue to do.
oh, damn.
I arrived all late to the conversation just in time to kill another thread with visually disturbing contribution.
CP time strikes again.