Like other posters said I think it’s fine if it sounds organic and it’s not for the purposes of mockery or trying to act black. A lot of it is part of general speech already, especially with younger people.
I think people that get too hung up or weird about it neglect to realise that language evolves with time and trying to gatekeep it along racial lines is probably a form of racism itself?
Kind of similar to the discourse around cultural appropriation with other cultures wearing traditional dress of other cultures (in a non-mocking way). Also the people that get most hot and bothered about this stuff are other white people honestly.
AAVE is not a strictly racial category, it’s not like some people are predisposed to speak it due to their skull shape or whatever. It’s social chauvinism to misappropriate a dialect that isn’t one you were socialized into, but there are white people who are socialized into AAVE, African Americans who are not socialized into AAVE, and also, rarely, uses of it that aren’t misappropriation (e.g. linguistic studies, to use the safest possible example).
yeah, i was generally talking about misappropriation
Depends on who you are and how you’re using it.
Plenty of white people grow up in diverse environments or even all black environments so they pick up the dialect. That’s unavoidable
Other people get influenced by their friends or spouses who say things or from the media they consumed, they look it up, and think “that’s a cool word I’ll say it next time when it fits my situation”
Then there are the rich libs in their bougie neighborhoods or gated communities that try to be hip or rebel against their white bread upbringing. Even if they don’t mean to be racist, they become caricatures of black people because they want to fit into an environment they’ve never been exposed to get some kind of cred. Because they’ve never been exposed to it, all they have to go off is the most mainstream depictions.
This. I know a lot of white people who have either grown up speaking that way, or who picked it up naturally and have earned the right to use it. I’m homeless, in a very white city—the homeless community here though is at least 1/3rd Black, if I had to guess.
i’m mixed race, but it’s been a couple of generations, so i pass as white, and i grew up around black people, and i was taught to speak in “white” coded ways in order to “sound educated,” get a job more easily, avoid discrimination, etc. etc. so in a way i’m the yang to the yin of people like this. even when I’m around black people i don’t code switch back to AAVE because it doesn’t feel natural to me even though i’ve been exposed to it my whole life. to do so would make me feel like the one lightskinned mix person trying to play up how black they are, and it comes off as cringe. I mostly try to listen more than I speak, in person, even though in text i ramble.
is it racist for white people
Yes.
Depends on the intent.
And your proficiency. And whether you know another dialect of English already.
There’s a difference between a Japanese teenager picking up AAVE while learning the language and an aged white millennial Usaian trying to sound like the TikToks.
Ah yes, the reverse weeb learning English by watching The Boondocks
I stand corrected.
Even a white teenager using black slang will probably not be a big deal because everything they consume will include it so it becomes part of their vocabulary. But if you’re some middle aged white corporate guy whose neighborhood and circle are entirely white and you rarely use slang and suddenly one day you say “deadass,” you just come off as corny.
I don’t think it’s racist per se, but if there’s no reciprocation from your circle or your environment, you just become a caricature
You can still appreciate black culture while being true to who you are. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RqvjpAEzQOY
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Honestly, I’ve seen people (not just white people) use terms from AAVE so… I think? And Black people around 'em wouldn’t care (I assume; they didn’t seem to express any visible reaction)… I think?
It’s hard to tell. You may be over-thinking it.
A lot of AAVE has also gone into Internet meme culture, don’t forget, so there’s that to consider.
i pick up a little from my friends here and there but i can’t imagine doing lines and lines in the dialect without it being deliberate and terrible
Do lines of cocaine, not lines of AAVE.
👃…
75% of white people don’t associate or even know a single black person, and the majority of the rest are not socialized in AAVE
So the list of “reasons” to speak AAVE become increasingly dominated by racist motives
White people are only allowed to talk like Dave Chappelle’s whiteface character from Chappelle Show
All white people have to wear a collar voice change gizmo that makes them sound like David Cross
Being white is racist in itself, so yeah
I just realized your PFP is that pizza dude from Uncle Grandpa lmao
Pizza steeeeveeeee
I’m just glad the zoomers haven’t discovered Jive.
Imagining the TikTok voice opening with “Dig what I’m putting down, how I went from a dead pigeon bucket from Nantucket to a lothario from Ontario”
My favorite jive slang is biscuit is a gun.
Heard it used non ironically for the first time in “Cotton comes to Haarlem”
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it’s ok if it’s Barbara Billingsley, everybody else should just speak in their regular voice.
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oh god why do i keep starting struggle sessions
tbh I feel like there aren’t really a lot of white people that talk in AAVE. For the most part white people, especially younger ones, have just adopted a couple words and phrasings that slightly differentiates their speech from the stereotypical transatlantic accent, but to call that AAVE is really selling AAVE short.
Whether or not that’s racist, I’m torn. I mean there is a discussion to be had about the gentrification and co-optation of language, but a lot of those terms have also at this point entered the general American lexicon. I can’t really fault some random middle-schooler for not knowing the history of “based” or something. I think even “cool” comes from AAVE. But there are a lot of people calling stuff gen Z slang or Internet slang, when really it’s AAVE (which further problematizes the use of “slang” to refer to these things, since AAVE is not “slang.”)
I also feel like the Internet’s embrace of these words has just made them corny as hell. They’ve become meme words, and I feel like they subsequently become marked as unserious, almost joke words. I can’t use the word “bet” anymore thanks to a bunch of white tiktokers wanting to talk like Black people. Every time I hear “sus” I think of amogus. “Woke” - I mean we all know the story of the fall of “woke,” need I say more? Anything white people touch immediately becomes uncool. I will never take anyone who uses the word “cap” unironically serious again.
White people can can only sound like cassius green trying to sell something.
gen
Depends on how/why. The rapper snow learned patois from jamaican immigrants and im pretty sure he still does concerts in jamaica.
