Thoughts on black folks
There is something extra disheartening about a black person denying racism and appointing all responsibility for black folk being treated with respect. This morning while catching up the random that is FB I came across something a screenshot of a tweet thread about the use of the way black people speak. After clicking to get the full post I quickly becam annoyed with one guy who proclaimed himself an intelligent black guy who knows how to speak proper English and dismissed the ascertain someone else had made about the inherent racism of the attracts on non standard speech particularly when speaking of black vernacular.
The point was made, rightly I agree, that the speech patterns being held up for ridicule were in fact fairly common adaptations across several groups from multiple countries. The standard English speaking black guy "sesbg" kept trying to change the conversation from one where people were discussing the intricacies of speech to belittling anyone who spoke that way while concurrently rebuking claims of racism. I'm not sure why he thought interjecting that he makes fun of southern speech among others would be considered favourable but to me I was akin to putting a sign on his forehead stating he was a jerk. Nice when they let you know up front so you don't waste time on it.
What trips me out is how someone, a black American in particular can be so quick to try and invalidate something associated with the black community as something holding no value and pumping himself up as being proper. Respectability politics at its finest and I bet he doesn't realize that being black is not an inoculation from negative prejudgement. Of course I also think that rigid insistence that they are doing things properly and someone not doing them the same way who may have a bad time in some way is an attempt to use away the reality of the randomness of life.
The point was made, rightly I agree, that the speech patterns being held up for ridicule were in fact fairly common adaptations across several groups from multiple countries. The standard English speaking black guy "sesbg" kept trying to change the conversation from one where people were discussing the intricacies of speech to belittling anyone who spoke that way while concurrently rebuking claims of racism. I'm not sure why he thought interjecting that he makes fun of southern speech among others would be considered favourable but to me I was akin to putting a sign on his forehead stating he was a jerk. Nice when they let you know up front so you don't waste time on it.
What trips me out is how someone, a black American in particular can be so quick to try and invalidate something associated with the black community as something holding no value and pumping himself up as being proper. Respectability politics at its finest and I bet he doesn't realize that being black is not an inoculation from negative prejudgement. Of course I also think that rigid insistence that they are doing things properly and someone not doing them the same way who may have a bad time in some way is an attempt to use away the reality of the randomness of life.
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