(Image from Pixabay)
Discrimination in Politics 2009-2017 President of the U.S. Barack Obama
George W. Bush and Joseph R. Biden once called Obama “articulate.” Articulate for...being black? Would they say that about his use of AAVE? Because Obama, although he may have held back from constant usage, has proudly spoken in the vernacular. During a pre-inaugaral lunch at a diner in Washington DC, Obama was caught on video saying "Nah, we straight" after a waitress asked if he needed change. In his last White House correspondents' dinner, he ended his speech with two words: "Obama out." During his speech to a predominantly black crowd in South Carolina, Obama used the phrase "they’re tryna bamboozle you," which resonates with the words of Malcom X. In their review of H. Samy Alim and Geneva Smitherman's book titled "Articulate while Black: Barack Obama, language, and race in the US," Stuart Davis and Nikole Miller mention an instance where Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, commented that he observed that Obama speaks “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one," and Joe Biden's comment back in 2008 that Obama was "the first mainstream African American who is articulate" (Davis & Miller, 281). In response to such discriminatory comments, Davis and Miller share Obama's statement that "'[a]ny black person in America who’s successful has to be able to speak several different forms of the same language" (Davis & Miller, 281). Obama had a "conscious awareness of language and language style" that allowed him to shift his speech depending on what he knew would appeal to his target audience. Being able to communicate to both white and black voters is, arguably, the reason why Obama won the presidential seat from 2009-2017. |
Code-Switching
As Senate Majority Leader Reid remarked, Obama could speak with no dialect "unless he wanted to have one." What Reid is referring to is the act of code-switching. Code-Switching may be defined as the use of more than one language or language variety concurrently in conversation. As seen with the example of Obama, individuals tend to switch their language style in order to fit their context, which oftentimes occurs when someone is placed in a setting where one needs to portray themselves as "professional." One can look at code-switching as something that is a part of ordinary life, while others view it as an imposition that causes damage to one's identity, specifically racial-identity The latter is the case with many speakers of AAVE where they feel forced to change their speech in order to prevent linguistic discrimination.
Vershawn Ashanti Young presents in his journal article, "'Nah, We Straight': An Argument Against Code Switching," a study by Linguist Rebecca S. Wheeler and elementary school teacher Rachel Swords from their book titled Code Switching: Teaching Standard English in Urban Classroom (2006). Young explains that Wheeler and Sword urge that the job of language educators is to "help our students transition from home grammar school to school grammar in the classroom." Their work emphasizes on refraining from referring to race in the discussion of code-switching because it's "not about it" (Young, 50). However, Young argues against their claim and questions "how can you draw on the experiences of African Americans, then render them invisible, extract their historical and contemporary racial experience from the discussion?" (Young, 51) To Young, code-switching and race are inextricable form each other.
Vershawn Ashanti Young presents in his journal article, "'Nah, We Straight': An Argument Against Code Switching," a study by Linguist Rebecca S. Wheeler and elementary school teacher Rachel Swords from their book titled Code Switching: Teaching Standard English in Urban Classroom (2006). Young explains that Wheeler and Sword urge that the job of language educators is to "help our students transition from home grammar school to school grammar in the classroom." Their work emphasizes on refraining from referring to race in the discussion of code-switching because it's "not about it" (Young, 50). However, Young argues against their claim and questions "how can you draw on the experiences of African Americans, then render them invisible, extract their historical and contemporary racial experience from the discussion?" (Young, 51) To Young, code-switching and race are inextricable form each other.
The video below is on Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele's, stars of the popular comedy show Key and Peele, discussion on the topic of code-switching and race.
(Fusion, 2016)
Discrimination in Society#BlackLivesMatter Movement 2020
The movement started back in 2013 with the death of Trayvon Martin but gained greater recognition after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis cops in 2020. Floyd's death, however, was only the start of a series of attacks recorded throughout the nation against African Americans by police officers. Situations such as these enhanced the need to code-switch in social settings, especially in confrontations with the law. According to an article by Courtney L. McCluney, Kathrina Robotham, Serenity Lee, Richard Smith, and Myles Durkee from the Harvard Business Review, they propose that "code-switching often occurs in spaces where negative stereotypes of black people run counter to what are considered “appropriate” behaviors and norms for a specific environment" (McCluney, C., Robotham, et al., 2019). They comment that the constant deaths of black individuals during police interactions has given rise to the prevailing idea of the need to code-switch in order to "survive." |
(Image from Pixabay)
David Miller, founder of "The Dare To Be King Project," partnered with a few other organizations to create the SALT Project which proposed a set of guidelines that encouraged black people to code-switch in order to survive police interactions. Their "Get Home Safely: 10 Rules of Survival." Their #1 guideline states: "be polite and respectful when stopped by the police" and "watch your words" (Miller, 0:00:07-0:01:30). Guidelines, such as these, only reiterates the preconceived notion that AAVE is a stigmatized dialect, which is reinforced by the marginalization of its speakers. The idea here is that in order to be taken serious or to even be respected in society, one must go against their own identity as an African American (which, let us not forget, language and culture are inextricable from each other) in order to appeal to the preferences of others.
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Public Opinion Survey
I asked 30 random participants a variety of questions regarding their opinion of AAVE. Sixteen of the participants were of white racial backgrounds, thirteen were of Latin American descent, and one was of Asian background. They all live in the central coast of California, mainly Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo. The participants varied in age, the youngest was 21 while the oldest was 43, and had different occupations ranging from college students, educators, and employers, etc.
The most surprising part of this survey was finding out that no one, even those in professional settings, didn't know what AAVE was or that there was an actual name for "black" speech. It was also interesting, but expected, that the majority of the participants (66.7%) believed that the structure of AAVE was grammatically unacceptable. Another interesting discovery was that more than half of the participants (56.7%) had never witnessed discrimination against a speaker of AAVE. One reason for this could possibly be that we are in an area that is not predominantly black, so witnessing such encounters could be more rare here as opposed to being somewhere in the south. The survey not only taught me how AAVE is depicted throughout my community, but it made me realize how many people lacked knowledge of it.
The most surprising part of this survey was finding out that no one, even those in professional settings, didn't know what AAVE was or that there was an actual name for "black" speech. It was also interesting, but expected, that the majority of the participants (66.7%) believed that the structure of AAVE was grammatically unacceptable. Another interesting discovery was that more than half of the participants (56.7%) had never witnessed discrimination against a speaker of AAVE. One reason for this could possibly be that we are in an area that is not predominantly black, so witnessing such encounters could be more rare here as opposed to being somewhere in the south. The survey not only taught me how AAVE is depicted throughout my community, but it made me realize how many people lacked knowledge of it.