Respect AAVE.
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Hi all!
Most newsletters are inspired by the current news. This newsletter was inspired by a typo. My typo, actually, from a newsletter a couple days ago. I type these intros last, and sometimes too quickly, eager to get to bed. So I typed "ass" instead of "as," failed to notice, and sent it out. (Thanks for the cheeky 🍑emojis in your responses).
It made me think of how many times people have corrected my pronunciation of the word "ask" as "ax". And made me think of AAVE. So today's email outlines how racial bias against how Black people speak often prevents us from being heard, and the importance of honoring and respecting this language.
If these emails support your anti-racism practice, consider giving $5/month on Patreon, or making a one-time contribution on our website (new!), PayPal or Venmo (@nicoleacardoza). You can also now share this with your whole workplace with a custom enrollment link and reporting.
Nicole
TAKE ACTION
1. Pay attention to microaggressions that use derogatory statements around speech and grammar. Use tips in the newsletter – and do additional research – to respond.
2. Do research to learn about the origins of AAVE.
GET EDUCATED
African American Vernacular English (AAVE) is a dialect of English that is spoken by Black people in America. It sounds different from Standard American English (SAE), the English spoken by white people and taught in our schools. Despite the fact that AAVE has its own comprehensive words, and syntaxes, it’s widely ridiculed in society, and dominant culture often infers that people that speak using AAVE are less intelligent and capable than those who do not. Most people, regardless of race, do not speak Standard American English, yet AAVE is the most stigmatized and debated (AfroPunk).
These perceptions are reinforced by our education system that consistently shames students for using AAVE (The Atlantic). It’s also enforced by editorial standards. The AP stylebook avoids AAVE in its definition of prescriptive grammar, or, how grammar should be used (Daily Utah Chronicle). And this can have serious consequences. A study found that speaking AAVE makes it more likely that jurors will view Black people as guilty of a crime (Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice).
The latter point was put on full display in the George Zimmerman trial when Rachel Jeantel, a 19-year-old Black woman who was on the phone with Trayvon Martin in the minutes before he was murdered, took the stand. Zimmerman claimed he acted in self-defense, while Jeantel insisted he was the instigator. Her knowledge made her a star witness to the trial, but her testimony was dismissed by jurors because of their prejudice against AAVE (Stanford offers a legal take, and CNN has a video of an anonymous juror expressing her biases).
Speech recognition technology also fails to recognize AAVE. A Stanford study analyzed five major speech recognition technologies. On average, the systems misunderstood 35% of the words spoken by Black people, but only 19% of those spoken by white people. Each had error rates that were nearly twice as high for Black people than for white people – “even when the speakers were matched by gender and age and when they spoke the same words” (Stanford). The problem stems from a lack of representation: the machine learning systems used to train speech recognition systems likely rely heavily on databases of English as spoken by white Americans. If you read our report on the racial bias in facial recognition software, this likely sounds familiar (Anti-Racism Daily).
It might be easy to make light of this. Many of us think of speech recognition software when asking Alexa to change a song, or telling Siri to set an alarm for 7 am tomorrow morning. But what will happen when everyone is using it to drive hands-free cars, support with surgeries in hospitals, and identify ourselves at airports (Future of Everything)? And how well is this necessary tech supporting people with disabilities, who rely on voice recognition and speech-to-text tools for essential functions (Scientific American)? And consider how some automated software already associates negative sentiment with posts using AAVE language, even if they’re positive (People of Color in Tech). How can that be manipulated to infer criminal intent or aggression in forms of tech policing?
Photo by Ilias Chebbi on Unsplash
As a result of all this, many people that speak using AAVE are fluent in code-switching, or, adopting different patterns of speech and behaviors in different social contexts. There’s a wide range of examples on code-switching (NPR, who started a podcast on this topic, has a list of user-submitted examples), but for today, we’re focusing on how many Black people code-switch to navigate the stereotypes related to AAVE. Because of the issues mentioned above, it should come at no surprise that studies show Black students selectively code-switch between standard English in the classroom and African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) with their peers, and Black people are taught to code-switch to survive police interactions (Harvard Business Review). We’ll look at code-switching in full in another newsletter, but it needs to be referenced here, at minimum.
But here’s the thing. The racial bias against AAVE is a social construct built to protect whiteness. There is no historical or grammatical grounds for entirely discrediting any type of English, let alone AAVE. In fact, correct language is relative to its time and setting, and native speakers are the ones who decide what is acceptable (JSTOR). Take the idea of double negatives, something that AAVE is often criticized for with terms like “ain’t nobody.” Those fell out of favor in the eighteenth century, but were loved by Chaucer and Shakespeare, and are critical in expressing negativity in both French and Ancient Greek (JSTOR).
A similar social construct of whiteness influences how Americans perceive British accents. Consider how many popular films have a villain with a British accent (JSTOR). Studies show that English speakers that don’t speak with this accent consider those that do as being more intelligent and from a higher socioeconomic status, but also less trustworthy, kind, and friendly – characteristics together that apparently create an attractive villain (JSTOR). These situations are clearly quite different, with drastically different implications, but they do show how easily false stereotypes can be painted when vernacular is judged in relation to the default of whiteness.
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"The modern truths about language: language changes constantly; change is normal; spoken language is the language; correctness rests upon usage; all usage is relative.”
John Ottenhoff, The Perils of Prescriptivism: Usage Notes and The American Heritage Dictionary
Despite all of the harm Black people have to suffer because of the racial biases around language, AAVE is trending in popular culture. In fact, most of the slang the “cool kids” are using these days is terminology made common in the Black community, and has been throughout time (JSTOR). This is another example of cultural appropriation: how dominant culture can wield the culture of marginalized people without honoring it, or experiencing the same discrimination and harm.
No one embodies this better (in my personal opinion) than Thug Kitchen, an anonymous blog that went viral in 2013 that used AAVE and referenced Black music and culture alongside vegan recipes and tips. It wasn’t until their first book release that it was revealed that the creators are white. Bryan Terry, a Black author and food advocate, wrote a comprehensive op-ed on the issue for CNN. And it wasn’t until June 2020 that the founders decided that now is the time to change the brand name (VegNews). There are countless other examples of this – consider that the word “twerk” (and the dance that goes with it) had been around for decades, but became a cultural phenomenon by Miley Cyrus’ performance at the VMAs in 2013 (USA Today). Zeba Blay at Huffington Post has a whole other list for you and your “basic” “squad” and your “bae” to “turn up” to on “fleek” (HuffPost).
As we mentioned before, language is fluid. So there’s not necessarily anything wrong about white people using words popularized by Black culture and now part of the accepted lexicon. Some even argue that it shouldn’t be considered cultural appropriation at all (National Review). But remember that the popularization of Black slang doesn’t seem to be popularizing Black people being safe to celebrate their own culture. Remember that Thug Kitchen was being praised by Gwyneth Paltrow (Epicurious) in the same news cycle that called Rachel Jeantel "dumb and stupid" while she testified against the man that murdered her best friend. And for me, that says more than enough.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
AAVE is as valid of a language as SAE
There is no logical grammatical argument against AAVE
Despite AAVE being popularized in pop culture, it's still ridiculed in workplaces, classrooms, and other parts of society
Black people experience discrimination and harm when using AAVE
Related Issues
July 13, 2020 | Respect the roots of Black hair.
July 9, 2020 | Acknowledge the harm of microaggressions.
June 26, 2020 | Face the bias in facial recognition software.
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