African American attitudes toward AAVE
Within the African American community, discussions around AAVE seem
to embody some of the most difficult and painful issues of identity and
solidarity. To begin with, it must be stated that it is hard to find any
African American, regardless of profession, politics or personal belief,
who would deny the practical necessity of bidialectalism and selective
assimilation to *SAE norms. The fact that African American children with
aspirations outside their own communities must learn a language of wider
communication (Smitherman 1995b) is acknowledged as a fact of life.
Opinions on this range from sober utilitarianism and resignation to
righteous anger:^16
Pragmatic reality forces the burden of adjustment on groups who are
outside positions of influence and power. It does little good to claim
that street speech is a valid dialect – which it is – when the social cost
of linguistic and other differences can be so high.
(John Baugh, linguist)[O]ur position is quite clear. We believe that for people to excel they
must acquire and use to their advantage the language of power and
the language of finance. Standard American English is that. I admit it
is not fair, but I did not create those rules. We only assist people in
working their way up through them.
(Dr. Bernadette Anderson, accent reduction therapist)The worst of all possible things that could happen would be to lose
that language. There are certain things I cannot say without recourse
to my language. It’s terrible to think that a child with five different
present tenses comes to school to be faced with those books that are
less than his own language. And then to be told things about his
language, which is him, that are sometimes permanently damaging ...
This is a really cruel fallout of racism. I know the Standard English. I
want to use it to help restore the other language, the lingua franca.
(Toni Morrison, author, poet, Nobel Prize winner)Language is political. That’s why you and me, my Brother and Sister,
that’s why we sposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying,