I "Be Like" Confused

I feel stupid asking these sorts of questions constantly but I really need someone to explain to me the objection Black people have to using correct grammar.  Is it because it's too many words to use and they feel that they can communicate more effectively by completely eliminating parts of speech so as to be more concise?  Is it because speaking correct English conforms to a European standard and to be "really" Black is to rebel against the slave master's language by butchering his language?  Black people embrace every other thing the slave master beat into us: his religion, his standards of beauty, his social mores, but I’m supposed to believe that we are rallying against prepositions and dangling particles because the white man gave it to us?   

I've heard the argument that Black people are simply replicating the patterns of speech from West Africa and even ancient KMT but that's absurd.  We don't replicate anything else from Africa, why only speech patterns.  And maybe I’m the only one who can see the obvious but it seems clear to me and anyone with half a brain that Black peopel are clearly replicating the speech patterns of the slave, not the West African.  Is there some moral objection to speaking correctly I'm unaware of?  I'm really confused why conjugating verbs seems to be so offensive for Black people.  I don't want to assume it's only because the educational system has handicapped us to be inarticulate.   I know that schools in Black neighborhoods aren’t held to the same standards as those in rich, white neighborhoods but it CAN'T be because we don't know that they are speaking incorrectly because everyone has a television and access to  . . . . Oh wait . . . I think I just partially answered my own question.  Almost every Black TV show, movie, and certainly every Black song on the radio butchers the English language beyond recognition to some sort of ghetto code so it's very likely that people just don't comprehend that they are not speaking correctly; they believe that they are using the English language in its correct usage. 

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm super Black.  I'm Blackety, Black, Black, Power-to-the-People, Raise-Your-Fist-in-Defiance, Red, Black, and Green, Black.  Not once have I ever considered my correct usage of the English language anything other than an effective tool for communication. I don't think, and maybe I'm wrong but it doesn't make sense to me, that using multi-syllabic vocabulary words makes me a sellout.  I use the correct tools when I garden.  I use the correct tools when I sew. I don't think that using a Frisbee and a can of sterno will enable to make a gourmet meal because those aren't the proper utensils. I use the correct tools when I speak and when I write so that I might be able to effectively communicate my thoughts and feelings to others.  It seems to me that the Black community is wallowing in butchering the English language and proud to do so because they . . . I'm not sure why they are so intent on slaughtering the English language, thus the formulation of my question.  Communication is the foundation for the way we interact with people and it appears to me that Black folk are content with third grade linguistics and not much more. 

Acting Black

I hear people complain, not my personal circle of friends but others on the net, that they are looked down upon by their friends for speaking well, for “acting white”.  That’s not necessarily true either.  I’ve had friends make those sorts of comments and criticisms and then I remind them that their particular circle of friends are all educated and articulate.  They don't really get that comment directed at them, they only pretend that they do so they can be included in the number of outraged and offended who have nothing better to do on the internet but complain about "those Black people."   It seems true however, that a great many people in our community still feel that to be educated is to be a sellout, is to “act white”. 

I have had several personal experiences where when I contradict someone’s misguided and tragically flawed logic or opinion, they tell me that going to college and getting a higher education doesn’t make me smarter than them.  I understand that as a defense mechanism, an attempt to make themselves feel validated and to lesson my arguments by believing that years of study, research, and reading have no impact on one’s body of knowledge.  It is, however, nothing more than a defense mechanism with not one iota of validity. Yes, going to college, studying, makes me more informed.  You might have common sense and you might be street smart but thinking you know about subjects that you haven't studied, getting your "knowledge" about subjects from listening to Michael Baisden, no, that does not mean you are more informed than I am. 

I’m also the beneficiary of numerous notes, emails and communiqués from individuals in the “conscious community”, individuals who are extremely informed and well read, that are phonetically misspelled, grammatically incorrect, and incoherent.  On the rare occasion that I respond to those sorts of messages, informing the sender that I’m discouraged by their lack of basic English skills, I’m usually assaulted with the concept that achieving the white man’s education, knowing how to articulate oneself well in standard English, is to be unable to grasp my true African heritage.  It always seems that the party line is that TRUE Africans can only communicate in ebonics or some variation thereof.   I shouldn’t need a key and a translation guide have to decipher an email about the plight of my people. 

All three mindsets are dumb. 

To me, acting like you are white would be to be ignorant of other people’s history and culture.  Acting white would be diminishing other people’s pain, using your skin color for unearned privileges, trying to oppress people in order to make yourself feel superior.  Being barely literate and uneducated doesn’t make you more Black, it doesn’t make your Black experience more authentic.  The more we as a people ascribe to the notion that acting white is to be informed, intelligent, and articulate, the more we assert that being “real” or being Black is to shun education, the more we are playing into the hands of EXACTLY what white people expect us and want us to be . . . dumb niggers.  Educating oneself in an institution of higher learning does in fact make you smarter than stopping your education at the 12^th grade.  How much smarter is up to the individual but to assert anything different is absurd.  Mastering the English language doesn’t mean you can’t fight for the revolution, it simply means you can address multitudes of people in a way that everyone can understand. 

To act Black is to behave in a manner where we excel despite the circumstances.  Acting Black is to make a way out of no way.  White people can excel in life because they have inheritances, nepotism, institutionalized racism that allows them to get a foot in the door for no other reason, with no qualification other than their skin color.  Acting Black is excelling despite the fact that we have to work twice as hard to get half as far.  Acting Black is carrying yourself with dignity and grace when white people try to belittle or demean your by making racist comments and then excusing it by saying, “I’m just joking.”  Our Blackness is our strength, our ability to survive, adapt, and shine.  Shine on Black man and Black woman, shine on. 

Reverence II

Shit ain't Changed

Black people are hysterical. We really are a comical people. We have internalized racism to the point of insanity and we justify it, throwing logic out the window. Somehow, Black people have been convince that the N word is now a term of affection simply because it can be heard on the radio and TV, we now think that the word has a positive meaning. Some uniformed clown said, "oh, we changed the meaning of the word," and everyone said, "Ohhh, yeah, we changed the meaning." The meaning of the word hasn't changed one bit since we first landed on these shores. We might USE it as a term of affection but that’s a far cry from the meaning the word being changed. If a woman says, "That nigga didn't pay his child support," or, “girl, that nigga don’t have a job,” I'm almost positive that she doesn't mean it as a term of endearment. When Chris Rock does his Black people vs niggers, I can promise you that he doesn't mean wonderful person. Pay attention to how the word is used on a daily basis. It’s not used interchangeably with my dear brother, it is used as a way of saying black man. How has that changed from slavery? The meaning of the word hasn't changed. The only thing that has changed is the FCC ruling that says that it can't be said on TV.

Name one other word, in the English language or any other, that started out with a negative meaning and was changed to mean something positive. Name one. Black people used the word after slavery to refer to each other because that is all they knew to refer to themselves as. At no point in history did the meaning of the word change. The only thing that has changed is that you can now turn on the radio and here the word. White record execs are the masterminds behind the mainstreaming of the word, not some underground movement by Black people to change the connotation of the word. Do not fool yourself into thinking that we as a people made some sort on conscious decision to take the negativity out of the word. The word is now and will always be – NEGATIVE. I missed that meeting when we as a people decided to turn the word into a positive word with lots of love behind it. Who was in attendance at that meeting? Jay-Z, Ludacris , oh no, I guess it was Diddy and Snoop? I guess Dr. King wasn‘t at the meeting. Certainly, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, all the slain civil rights leaders of our history weren‘t there either.

I want to vote again. THE WORD NIGGER IS A VILE AND DISGUSTING WORD. Just because we use it commonly, does not mean that it is now positive. We need not even go back to slavery to find the abhorrent use of the word. My mother was imprisoned for demonstrating in the sixties. She was spit upon until her dress was ripping with spit. Read that again, dripping with spit. She risked her life so that we would not be called NIGGER and now it is on every song on the radio. My grandfather was a civil rights leader, he affected the lives of thousands. I have never heard him, to this very day, use the word when referring to another black person. NEVER! But I guess because Kanye does, than it is a term of affection. Right!

I find it very hard to believe that as creative as we are, that we can't find one other word to use that means brother. We have to defend the word that our ancestors were called when they hung from trees, their flesh ripped from their bodies with the whip.