I’m curious: is Ebonics a speech pattern people have to learn? I’ve seen a number of comedians and actors, like Eddie Murphy, who seem to go easily from speaking in Ebonics to “speaking white.”
This is a separate dialect of American English. Some folks are raised with this as their native dialect and learn Standard American English as well (and can successfully “code switch” between them fluently), and some are only fluent in their native dialect and only semi-fluent in SAE. Read more here: African-American Vernacular English - Wikipedia
“Speaking black” is more than AAVE. There’s also what’s referred to as a “blaccent”. A person can speak Standard American English and speak with a noticeable blaccent. See Ayesha Rascoe.
But to answer your question, people learn AAVE the same way they learn SAE: by absorbing the speech patterns of the people around them. Eddie Murphy and 90% of other black folks do what’s called “code switching”, where they go from one way of speaking to another depending on the audience.
Thanks for the clarification, monstro and iiandyiiii.
IMHO it’s time to get past this “is she black enough” and “she’s not descended from slaves” sh*t and just enjoy the fact that Trump/Pence will be scrambling over this for a while. Personally I’m liking this.
People of all races are diverse. As one comedian (almost) put it, “There are folks into basketball; and folks into Dragonball.” Harris seems like a good choice to me. Naturally, Trump supporters are going to look for faults. Some of the ones they have found seem ridiculous. This is not unusual in politics. In fact it is far too common.
The idiots are really showing their asses right now.
I think this sums it up well:
I like that the GOP is flailing now, because what they’re really saying with all that flailing is “we got nothin’.”
When I heard about the Harris announcement, I felt a little twinge of disappointment that it wasn’t Susan Rice. Then I realized that picking Harris means that we aren’t going to have another round of Benghazi hearings this fall, and I felt better.
Sure. Every normal person would agree to this.
The point of having those discussions is not because there is some genuine reason to care but it is to stir shit up. Muddy the waters. Mudsling absolutely anything and everything they can.
What better, in a conservative view, than to divide the African-American community into an internal war over who is “more” African-American? It’s a stupid debate but one they would love to see happen.
I didn’t see this posted yet but might have missed it:
Eric Trump, junior asshole, liked a tweet Wednesday that said
“Raise your hand if you think Harris was a whorendous pick. May have misspelled,”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world/eric-trump-likes-tweet-calling-kamala-harris-whorendous-pick/ar-BB17VRtD
Meaning he knows it’s not misspelled for his purposes. SIL Douchebag.
Good grief, what a prack.
Isn’t her father a descendant of slaves?
According to Columbia University professor John McWhorter (himself Black FWIW), he has researched the issue and found that when you control for poverty, police do not kill Black people any more frequently than White people (although they do “rough them up” more).
Right wing websites are saying her great great (however many times) grandfather owned slaves in Jamaica in the early 1800’s.
Attaboy, Stephen.
Brilliant
Trump has already jumped on the birther bandwagon:
Guess we didn’t have long to wait, eh?
On the bright side, Biden has raised 48 million in the 48 hours since Harris was announced as his pick. I guess people are happy with his choice.