Black and White

            If you look up Mariah Carey on allmusic.com you will find that she is a follower of ---in other words, her music is influenced by--Aretha Franklin. Yes, the very blonde and very milky-toned singer’s music is a hodgepodge of African American influence. Soul and jazz are both musical genres that owe their prominence and existence to the African Americans in the mid-1900s who created that in the course of keeping their culture. But that, of course, is nothing new, seeing as those genres and their origins are a very well-known fact in current society. But whites don’t just owe the blacks for their contribution to music, “ the same goes for white American language and culture.”

            African American English was thought as “lazy and ungrammatical” once upon a time, and come to think of it, even nowadays some people are pretty un-fond of the style some use nowadays. But their ways of speaking are “not corruptions, but different varieties.” And I agree completely. There is no right way to speak English. It’s like the public-school English thought to be the pillar of sophistication in early Britain, while other dialects were seen as low class. They are just different versions and interpretations of the language, none of which are ‘wrong.’ If the whites used to think such negative thoughts of said manner of speech, they’d be truly aghast at the knowledge that “even the upper class Charleston accent has an unmistakable creole flavour.” The roots of black American English are seen in various places, especially in churches with the “reverence for the magic of speech” where they celebrate “Negro spirituals” of the slavery days. I just thought of the typical church in those movies like “Sister Act” where they all stand up and dance and sing with such powerful voices and say the all-too-common “praise the Lord!” I thought those were mere Hollywood exaggerations but I guess I was mistaken.

            See, the black American English traces back to the main rivers of Africa like in Sierra Leone, were English was passed to the middlemen as well as to the slaves. They depended on a more simplified language called Pidgin (which comes from the Chinese’s mispronunciation of ‘business’) which later on became plantation creole. This type of English is known for its syntax seen in phrases like “they gone” and “she fat,” and for the jargon such as “joint, beat, groovey, hip, hype, jam, mellow, rift,” and “too much.” I actually see the remains of the syntax today, what with lil’Wayne’s “we be chillin” and “I don’t see nobody else.” I was not biased in my selection of example. At all. But the truth of the matter is that black American English is still seen today and has had a huge influence on American society. According to the documentary, one would normally see Irish and British influences in their [the American people] talk, later Southern musicians were the big influence.

            But even though it is a common variety of speech and accepted for the most part, blacks that climb high in society make an effort to “sound more white” and when this documentary was made most of the middle class had no accent at all. A man currently (in the documentary) the mayor of a town came from a poor black family and he took language classes to standardize his speech before he ran for mayor. I find that so sad, to think that people even do that, to feel ashamed of the way they talk even if it’s a part of their culture. But that just goes to show society’s unwritten rules and screwed-up standards that manage to grasp most of the population in their unfair claws.

            But I digress. They were the ones that managed to contribute to break dancing, something of which I am so incapable of and so I was mesmerized when it was displayed on the documentary. That got to me. If I were to ever make a wish, it would to be to be an amazing breakdancer, flying into the air with casual flips and very coordinated body thrusts. Nah, that comes after my wish to obtain blue eyes (weird obsession of mine, don’t judge me). But it comes quite close. Also, the words “fresh” and “chill out” make a great part of my everyday aggravated vocabulary so I have them to thank. If you want to hear a guy say these words while telling a story about a Friday night fight in the minute 7:49, be my guest. Just do try to understand it without reading the subtitles. If you’re not up to the challenge then you be deeply unwelcome, hommie. Peace.

The Story of English: An English Speaking World. William Cran. 1986.Documentary. PBS.1986.