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March 29, 2025 - Lionel Nation

20:01

AAVE or Ebonics? The Real Reason Black English Freaks People Out—and Jasmine Crockett Just Proved It

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	I have been a lover of accents my entire life.
	When I was in high school, all of my friends were the best mimics ever.
	A priest or somebody.
	It's what we did.
	It was never about race.
	It was, can you make the sound?
	Can you sound like that?
	I was raised in Tampa where we had a lot of Sicilians and a lot of Cubans.
	And I could do loads of Cuban accents and variations of accents.
	And it was never meant to mock.
	It was like, can I do it?
	For some reason, if you can do a British accent, oh, you're good.
	You're an actor.
	When people do faux British to do Shakespeare, I've never understood it.
	Black folks doing British Shakespeare.
	Okay, I'm not going to say anything.
	Which leads me to this.
	I am in love with African American black slang sounds.
	As I am everything else.
	I can do gradations of Southern.
	I can do what?
	Old school Atlanta.
	Old school kind of John Kennedy versus Hee Haw versus Junior Samples.
	I can do Southern, white Southern in degrees of education.
	You name it.
	Never anti-white.
	Never.
	And when it comes to black voices, In the criminal justice system and in the legal profession, I had, for periods of time, years, almost exclusively, I would say almost exclusively, because when I got out of the prosecutor's office, I had a lot of court-appointed cases, and a lot of them were black folks.
	But black folks, I learned about different levels, simpler, sometimes uneducated, people who lived in the projects, all kinds of people.
	We call them projects.
	And I studied them.
	And I would understand slang I heard that was absolutely beautiful.
	And if I was good, I could call.
	I one time called a friend of mine.
	And I could imitate his black client.
	And I'm on the phone.
	And I could fool him.
	I thought that was the greatest compliment ever.
	I'm not mocking black people.
	I was imitating this person.
	I could also imitate my old Aunt Rose, who was this old Sicilian, no longer with us, bless her heart, but I could imitate Aunt Rose.
	So when I imitate somebody, I love the sound.
	I want to hear.
	I love to hear.
	And in New York, oh my God!
	I had an Indian...
	Years ago, in fact, I was a prosecutor.
	And I never really understood the voice, the certain accents.
	And it might be, maybe it's one area versus another, I don't know.
	So to make a long story short, he was explaining how he was a victim of robbery.
	And he said, I came back under, no, he said, the word I use to start his accent, like people used to use it.
	Antipasto, to do Boris Karloff.
	His was basket.
	Because he was saying that in the morning, they robbed him, and he had a tip basket, where they had tips.
	It was ahead of his time.
	This was 40 years ago.
	And he said, but they took my basket?
	My basket?
	And I leaned over and I said, how do you do that?
	How do you do that?
	So anyway, we became friends.
	I wasn't, I'm not mocking.
	I'm trying to get it.
	I'm a musician.
	How did you bend that chord?
	How did you, did you hammer on afterwards?
	Is that a tuning?
	Do you mute?
	Because you can mute when you play the guitar with the palm of your hand.
	I want to get sounds.
	I love sounds.
	So to make a long story short, this is a tremendously long intro because you always have to do it whenever you talk about anything involving black or African American.
	You've got to set it up because they sit back.
	They, not whites, not blacks, see what I'm doing?
	They just wait.
	The thought police, you know, they wait.
	And the thought vigilantes.
	Did you say something that could any way be construed as anti-war?
	Okay.
	All of a sudden, we get somebody.
	The classic Jasmine Crockett.
	Ciao!
	Okay.
	Now we get into this kind of a sort of a vernacular.
	If I were explaining this to somebody else, Butterfly McQueen, Hattie McDaniel, not Ebonic, we'll talk about this in a moment, but almost a vernacular.
	Like a vernacular.
	I've known, I think you know people, maybe not.
	People who are Latinos or Cubans or whatever who say, ay Dios mio!
	Now how do I know what that means?
	You know what I mean?
	Same thing here with Italian.
	We have Italian-Americans which will slide in with their own particular versions.
	I use the word chidrulo for cucumber, for idiot, all the time.
	Now how many times have people watched the Sopranos and they go, hey, hey, I got your gabagool, hey, mozzarella, that kind of thing.
	So what we do is, If you do this with anybody else, it's okay.
	You mention black folks, and you are a racist.
	So here comes Jasmine Crockett.
	The best, by the way, who is in a class all her own, speaking something which I know, is Tiffany Henyard.
	Tiffany Henyard is from another world.
	We'll get to that.
	So the other day, Jasmine Crockett, and there's a part of her I like.
	I love it.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm old school.
	I am old school professional wrestling.
	I mean, she's a heel.
	She's the heel.
	She's fantastic.
	I mean, I like her as an individual who's a legislator, but I like her style because she's driving people crazy, and I love people who drive people crazy.
	I love people.
	You want to talk about something?
	Go back and listen to Sam Irwin.
	Remember that he has a weird, he would always blink.
	He goes, how do I know that?
	Because my mama, I'm not a fool.
	My mama told me how to read and write.
	My mama told me.
	That was Sam Urban.
	He was a Harvard Law graduate.
	That was okay.
	Jasmine Crockett says the same thing.
	People say, huh?
	There you go.
	So it's not racist.
	It's just hypocritical or unfair.
	So anyway, so the other day when Jasmine Kroc, I know this is a long intro, oh my god, seven minutes, but you gotta be careful.
	If you want to do this biz, there's landmines, they're ready for you.
	You say something wrong, I mean, you just, you, even if you, it doesn't matter.
	I remember what I'm saying, anybody else can say who's black, and that's okay, but if I say it, whatever, suspect.
	Okay.
	So the other day when she and Mace were getting into it, Mace just says, why don't we step outside?
	I'm thinking, well, that's pretty.
	That's pretty rough, whatever.
	And sometimes she referred to Marjorie Taylor Greene as some butch, blonde, I don't know what the hell that was.
	I mean, they are really...
	And is that misogynistic?
	No, it's true.
	It's true.
	It was a catfight.
	Okay.
	So the word ghetto, they said, oh, she's so ghetto.
	Now, who said that?
	Black folks.
	And there was this article I read about people who said, that is not being ghetto.
	This is AAVE.
	Have you heard AAVE?
	You haven't?
	Well, African American Vernacular English.
	AAVE.
	Let's call it AVE.
	Versus what many people use incorrectly as Ebonics.
	Two terms that are often used interchangeably, but they're wrong.
	They're used interchangeably, but they're completely different.
	And sometimes ignorantly, and sometimes politically incorrectly, but they aren't the same.
	And they denote completely two different things, and the confusion surrounding them reveals more, I respectfully submit, than cultural perception and bias than the language itself.
	AAVE is the linguistically Recognized term.
	Oh yeah!
	It's recognized linguistically.
	It refers to the rule-governed dialect of English spoken historically and presently by many African Americans.
	Not all.
	Condoleezza Rice?
	No.
	Maxine Waters, no.
	Thomas Sowell, no.
	You can go down the list.
	No.
	Ayanna Pressley, no.
	But then you can keep going.
	I'm talking about people of note.
	Oprah Winfrey, no.
	And then there might be somebody who does.
	And it has its own grammar, its own...
	It's own phonology, its own sonority, its own vocabulary, and its own history.
	It isn't bad English.
	It isn't lazy or broken.
	It is a legitimate, structured dialect.
	Much like how British English differs from Australian or Southern American English.
	I guarantee you, if...
	Paul, what's his name, didn't he?
	Oh, that's quaint.
	Isn't that wonderful?
	I don't know who Crikey is, but aren't they wonderful?
	Same thing with British, the way we fall for this.
	Remember when Dick Van Dyke did the Cockney voice?
	Now, Ebonics, this was short for...
	Ebony phonics.
	Did you know that was kind of a truncation, if you will?
	This was coined in the 1970s, and it gained national attention in 1996, when the Oakland School Board controversially recognized it as the primary language of many African American students.
	And the board's intent, theoretically, was to respect students' cultural speech patterns.
	And bridge their learning to standard American English, okay?
	But the public, and much of the media, of course, mocked it savagely, and forever that became the term for anything that is considered urban, not urbane, okay, and the like.
	And critics, of course, saw it as giving up on proper education, as a political stunt, you know, kowtowing to these lazy...
	Speaking people.
	And worse, legitimizing poor grammar.
	Oh my God.
	Now, the backlash and the anger exposed perhaps a deeper issue.
	The conversation.
	And I hate when anybody says a conversation.
	A conversation wasn't just about language.
	It was about race.
	It was about class.
	It was about education.
	And what society deems acceptable.
	British talk about received and proper and posh.
	They do it all the time.
	Every language, every language has its distinctions.
	Where you're from, what words you use.
	And this is no different, but because there's a racial difference, different story.
	See, we always, the rule is, if you are within a group, you can say things about it.
	If you are without that group, depending upon what it is.
	For example, you can say anything about white people, anything about Catholics, anything about, you can say whatever you want, it doesn't matter.
	Do not, do not say anything that is considered to be at all negative regarding black folks unless you are indeed black.
	That simple.
	Now, Ebonics, or mocking it as idiocy, pretty much ignores both its, and I'm sorry to say this, linguistic legitimacy and its cultural roots.
	That is true.
	So, to some AAVE, African American vernacular English is real.
	It's real.
	It's legitimate.
	There's a name for it.
	Ebonics became a political football.
	The idiocy isn't the dialect.
	It's the way society refused to understand it.
	And I promise you, this deserves a greater degree of discussion and conversation.
	When John...
	Kennedy speaks in that con-pone.
	May I call you comrade?
	You know that kind of thing?
	Oh, he's just a southern.
	But if somebody else does it, if a black person said that same thing, Republican, using AAVE, or dare I say a black accent?
	Oh, oh!
	Accent.
	I always have an interesting pun.
	What drives people crazy still is axe.
	Axe.
	Can I axe you a question?
	Oh!
	God!
	John Kennedy Jr.
	Axe not.
	What your country can do for your axe.
	Lizzie Borden took an axe.
	Oh!
	God!
	In New York.
	In New York.
	In the New York, there used to be a New York dialect I don't hear anymore, kind of like the Archie Bunker sound.
	Uptown, in particular, notice Uptown, you will hear Axe in African American, black New York, but also Latino, New Yorican, all of this.
	Axe is a very, it traverses.
	It traverses various races.
	But I promise you, if you were to hear someone trying to, in the appointment or the nomination process for Supreme Court justice, if a black nominee were to say, we must ask the question, that would be over.
	It would be done.
	It would be finished.
	Through!
	That, for some reason, that's the third rail.
	It's done.
	Finished.
	Forget it.
	It's over.
	So what I like to do is I find it fascinating.
	You can also hear, by the way, if you've ever lived with somebody, people who are married, you might be married to somebody from another country.
	Let's say your wife is from Honduras or, in my case, Jersey.
	I'm from Florida.
	Mine's a different thing because I'm kind of a bit of a chameleon.
	When people, when your smiles, your friends get mad or they react to me, you will hear it.
	You revert back to your purest self.
	It's like clearing your cache and all of your passwords are gone and everything.
	You find out, oh.
	Everybody has something.
	They have different ways of speaking.
	If all of a sudden you heard a Latino congressman say, and as far as I'm concerned regarding MS-13, I'd just say, hijo de gran puta!
	You wouldn't hear that.
	But you would say, oh, oh, I see.
	Okay, I got it, I got it.
	But if Jasmine Crockett were to say, child, you know that, excuse me?
	Because they hate her.
	Now, if you like the person, if Shirley Chisholm during her day, or Barbara Jordan who spoke with us.
	But if all of a sudden, out of this affection, somebody were to say the same thing, she's a child.
	You would say, isn't she wonderful?
	Isn't she wonderful?
	The way she reverts back to her show.
	So, it's a Rorschach test.
	It's a Rorschach test.
	But for those of us who are phonologists, who love accents, who love mimicry, who love to be able to hear...
	I mean, I am so much...
	I'm into lisping, tongue thrusting, saliva buildup, Jaw thrusting.
	I can watch Bruce Springsteen.
	Figure that accent out.
	We're going to go to the jaw.
	The famous jaw people.
	That is what kind of does it.
	Look at De Niro.
	When you are imitating De Niro, what are you doing?
	Are you imitating him?
	I don't know why you would, but you're also imitating vernacular and geographic.
	So anyway, A-A-V-E.
	You probably haven't heard of it, but if you did, you heard it here first.
	And it's nothing short of another fascinating look at this wonderful composite, this tapestry called the American cultural world.
	What do you think?
	How does that work for you?
	What do you think?
	Be honest with me.
	And if you are a black African American, does this make sense to you?
	Do you speak AAVE?
	Do you recognize it as a legitimate form of speech?
	In any event, thank you so much.
	Please make sure you like the video, subscribe to the channel, hit that little bell so you are aware of new videos and live streams.

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