The Formation of Black English and Its Influences on American Culture

Talking Black In America addresses how advanced, unique, and culturally important African American English is (Hutcheson and Cullinan, 2017).

She states, “White standards of English persist, supreme and unquestioned, in these United States” (124). White english is hardly doubted as the only language accepted in the United States. Jordan acknowledges many of the African American students in her class don’t relate with the language they speak everyday. The class pinpoints their discussion of The Color Purple around the

The film “American Tongues” documents a variety of English accents that are present across the United States and highlights a lot of the opinions people have about accents and people who speak these accents. A large majority of the people who express opinions about other peoples’ accents tend to express negative views, as they see their own accent as the superior one. The film focuses on showing the array of accents found in the U.S., but also how a lot of people who speak these “inferior” accents work to learn “Standard American English” to increase their chances of getting jobs and communicating in more official domains. Although the film was made in 1988, it expresses views still present in today’s society towards different accents, as people tend to continue judging others based not only on what they say, but also how they say it.

With a background affected tremendously by the dark history of African Americans, language has become a significant problem to what the term Black English really means to different people. In If Black Language Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is, James Baldwin attempts to analyze what a language really means and how Black English evolved to fulfill an important role for Americans. Black English sounds proper to blacks, but to whites it may not be a proper use of language. Throughout this essay, Baldwin uses a specific tone and relates to his audience by opening his mind to both emotion and logic while still upholding his credibility. Baldwin tries to persuade the audience to respect the language of Black English using his personal experience. The history of different languages mentioned in the essay is used to help convince the audience of thinking about the term language from a new perspective. Whites and Blacks both may speak the same language, but that does not mean that they understand each other because the language can be spoken in different matters. As Baldwin states, “The white man could not possibly understand, and that, indeed, he cannot understand, until today”. A white man or black man had to be careful about the words they used in front of each other because some words would be considered offensive for one another. Baldwin uses African American language and culture to reveal the impact that the English language Americans use has created.

Speech is often associate with race because some individuals believe that if the person does not sound “educated” enough the person comes from a lower class and was brought up in the so called “ghettos” and this association is often made towards someone that forms part of a minority group. The author illustrates that race is tight up with speech

In the midst of a long passage on black people in his Notes on the State of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson (who sniffed that [Phyllis] Wheatley’s poetry was “below the dignity of criticism”) proposed that black inferiority- “in the endowment of both body and mind”- might be an unchangeable law of nature. (181)

been contented, and healthy for them to increase their value with the Anglo- Americans. For

The Unites States is a true melting pot of ethnicities and cultures. For many members of minority groups a certain hybridity is readily adopted, but for others, cultural assimilation can be quite difficult. Chicana author, Sandra Cisneros described this phenomenon as “always straddling two countries… but not belonging to either culture” (Doyle. 54). African American author, Alice Walker shared Cisneros’ sentiment, but focused her attention on the assimilation of black cultures and subcultures within the United States. Cisneros and Walker make the same poignant statement about the strains of cultural assimilation, with reconciliation of split identities as the goal, in their respective works, 1991’s “Woman Hollering Creek,” and 1973’s “Everyday Use,” yet their unique ethnic perspectives allow them to make it in surprisingly different ways.

In the civilized society that everyone lives in today, all languages and culture should be equal. That is the main idea in both Gloria Anzaldua’s essay, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, as well as James Baldwin’s “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?”. The authors in both these texts support their argument in various ways, and in doing so, manages to effectively persuade their audience. The ways that each author approaches their argument is different in their appeals, evidence, and styles. Similarities also exist between the texts of the two authors. The rhetorical strategies that Anzaldua uses makes her argument much stronger than Baldwin’s argument.

While Kylie Jenner’s faux dreadlocks for her ‘rebel-themed’ Teen Vogue photoshoot were described as beautiful, edgy, and raw by various style magazines, Zendaya Coleman’s dreadlocks she wore on the Oscars red carpet were described as making her look like she “smells like patchouli oil. Or, weed," by Fashion Police host Giuliana Rancic. America loves to appropriate black culture, even when black people themselves, don’t receive the same amount of love from America. From box braids to dashikis, black culture has been stolen by America and used for their own personal gain, disregarding the historical context and meaning of these traditions or blatantly perpetuating stereotypes.

The “new” negro no longer embodied “old” characteristics that defined a black man. Society had always taught a black man how to act; however, now he was adapting to the world. Locke declared that ‘the Old Negro’ had long become more of a myth than a man” (Locke, 1). A furthered and detailed definition of an “Old Negro” was that he “was a creature of moral debating historical controversy” (Locke, 1). The four

White over Black: American attitudes toward Negro 1550-1812 is a book written by Winthrop D. Jordan, who was a historian in the subject of the history of slavery in the Americas.

Jazz has been apart of Black culture long before it became adapted into the “old-age American traditions”. “Beat to his socks” was a term in the old days that many Black individuals used to describe the immense poverty and endless hard work. ( Baldwin, 1979) My great grandfather used to use that term, often during my childhood. He would continuously tell stories of his favorite Jazz performers. Baldwin pointed out that White Americans renamed the phrase into the Beat Generation. He went on to point out a few other terms that have been “stolen” from our culture. Ending his example about Jazz, he stated, “ I do not know what white Americans would sound like if there had never been any black people in the United States, but they would not sound the way they sound” (Baldwin, 1979). With that being said, Black English isn’t just a language, but it is also a footprint for cultural

As professors teaching Black Studies today will tell you, the socialization of blacks into the American traditional culture failed. We have failed to bring the vast majority of the offspring of the slaves into the culture of Western Civilization, the culture of Abraham Lincoln. While part of the black community is Christian and has been socialized for years, the dominant black majority in America is led by the Democratic Party and rejects Western Civilization.

African American English is diverging from Standard American English. As shown in Do You Speak American (2005), AAE originates from the time of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. English was introduced to trade ports in Africa by colonialists, resulting in the creation of pidgin - a mixture of English and African languages that is still in use today. More recently, African Americans who have moved from the South to the North have been more segregated, creating greater divergence between AAE and SAE. As many African Americans maintain ties to the South, such as continued contact with friends or family in the south, similarities between AAE and southern dialects remain. However, each group have selected features that are important, such as maintaining ‘r’ in the North or keeping certain features as a way of preserving history, resulting in different dialect patterns between the North and the South to develop.