THREAD:

Wondered why everyone was talking about #AAVE all of a sudden. Seeing as I've got time and am bored, let's get into a bit of history and context.

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So we all know slavery. Africans of different tribes stolen & brought to the Americas.

So the Africans spoke different languages, but had to communicate with each other. Cause you know, slavery. They were also being told what to do by Europeans. Cause, well

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According to linguistic theory (which has its own issues, but that's another thread), the enslaved Africans first probably created a pidgin that was influenced by their languages and that of their master. There would have been little consistent grammar, but it did the job.

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The next enslaved generations of children would have developed this pidgin into a creole. Because their master's language demanded the most attention (via being beaten into them), the creole would have more & more become more like the European language.

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A dialect of the European language emerges after more generations. It sounds less like a mix of languages and more like a regional...dialect of the European language.

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While this was happening all over the Americas, let's apply this to the US. Africans are stolen & brought here. They develop a pidgin, creole, then dialect of English. Because of racism, white people want nothing to do with us outside of our labor, thus segregation.

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So until emancipation, its mostly spoken in the enslaved communities and is horribly misrepresented by white people in media (see: Uncle Tom's Cabin). Wonder if this trend will continue? Stay tuned!

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In the decades after emancipation, Black communities migrate but remain in segregated communities. They carry their dialects with them and the dialects evolve both in their original communities & in cities like New York and Chicago. Aka why the blaccent is real & diverse.

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While this is happening, white people are still there. They describe our speech as "jungle talk" butcher it in media (i.e. Huckleberry Finn). Black people internalize this and in wanting to be treated like, well, people, many try to distance themselves from the dialects.

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This began pre-emanciapation (Frederick Douglass), and continues to this day. An evolution of beating the African out of us, so to speak. Our language is deficient and the only way to be "better" is to speak "better."

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In the 1960s and 1970s, Black linguists work against this racism. They create the term "Ebonics" in 1973 to replace racist descriptions of the language. (Labov also "discovers" the structure of Black speech, so congrats to him?)

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This begins a debate in education that remains to this day. If Black people have a dialect, should it be used in the classroom? Should it be taught? (see: Oakland Ebonics controversy) Should it be encouraged?

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Codeswitching emerges as a term that helps describe how Black people change their speech. All the while, we speak more for ourselves in the media. Our speech culture becomes less segregated from white mainstream culture.

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As white supremacy does, it evolves and folds in new things to maintain its power. Non-Black kids grow up hearing rap and think that language belongs to them. But they were not immersed in it so they use it awkwardly. They use it to amplify their racist jokes.

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This comes out in media--movies, shows, music, standup comedy. It evolves with the internet. Black people talk, white people laugh. YouTubers mock/steal it, pass it on to Vine, TikTok, etc. Remember the "This is for Rachel" song? Isn't it SO FUNNY when Black women talk?

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Black people face the same questions of when and how we're allowed to speak authentically, while non-Black people who grew up with the media we created believe they have some claim to it cause whiteness told them they did.

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AAVE (African American Vernacular English) is just one type of Black language and only one name for it. Patois is Black language, Haitian Creole is Black language. There's nothing lesser about them. They all demand the same respect. #BlackLanguageMatters

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