Gen Z appropriating AAVE and turning it mainstream is probably one of the most annoying things I have to deal with as a black person. Like, yeah, I shouldn’t gatekeep language, but can they at least give credit?
This has always happened. It’s just the story of Rock and Roll all over again. And funk. And hip-hop. And rap. Also the story of “american” food.
Now, as a cishet, rather privileged white guy in america, I can understand the appropriative nature of all of this. We do it to every culture we see. It’s what we’ve done with anime and Japanese culture and cuisine. It’s what we’ve done with Mexican food, Indian food, and every possible form of East Asian spiritualism. It seems to me, from the inside, like the white american identity is basically just “I see this, and I think it would look/sound/taste really good on my wall/radio/plate, but it needs to be tailored to my preferences”
But I do wonder, as a genuine question:
Wouldn’t that be more okay, from the perspective of those whose contributions to world heritage have been appropriated, if the white person didn’t immediately turn around and say “I made this”?
Like, I am in my 30s, and it wasn’t until I first watched a Madea movie last year that I realized that “finna” was not a modern intentional misspelling of “gonna” courtesy of the snapgramheads, but literally an elision of AAVE “fixin’ to”, which I’ve been hearing my whole life. I agree that people should know from where they get their sayings, whether they’re saying “finna” or <fakes british accent> “please sir, can I have some more?” (A student quoted this yesterday in an after-school club and I bet another teacher that the student didn’t even know the context of the quote, let alone what they were quoting. If we had been betting money, I would have left a dollar richer)
But I’d be interested to hear your take on how best to educate people on the origins of these terms. I’ve had to talk to my spanish-speaking students several times about how saying “mongolo” for ‘idiot’ is SUPER offensive, because it’s derived from a double slur against people with down syndrome and people of Asian descent. How can I, as a teacher, or we, as citizens of the internet, properly assign understanding, credit, or significance to the words these kids are spewing without any concept of what they actually mean, let alone where they came from?
I mean all that I ask really is for people to know the meaning and where those terms came from, not just repeat them like it’s some sort of trendy thing to say.
Gen Z appropriating AAVE and turning it mainstream is probably one of the most annoying things I have to deal with as a black person. Like, yeah, I shouldn’t gatekeep language, but can they at least give credit?
This has always happened. It’s just the story of Rock and Roll all over again. And funk. And hip-hop. And rap. Also the story of “american” food.
Now, as a cishet, rather privileged white guy in america, I can understand the appropriative nature of all of this. We do it to every culture we see. It’s what we’ve done with anime and Japanese culture and cuisine. It’s what we’ve done with Mexican food, Indian food, and every possible form of East Asian spiritualism. It seems to me, from the inside, like the white american identity is basically just “I see this, and I think it would look/sound/taste really good on my wall/radio/plate, but it needs to be tailored to my preferences”
But I do wonder, as a genuine question:
Wouldn’t that be more okay, from the perspective of those whose contributions to world heritage have been appropriated, if the white person didn’t immediately turn around and say “I made this”?
Like, I am in my 30s, and it wasn’t until I first watched a Madea movie last year that I realized that “finna” was not a modern intentional misspelling of “gonna” courtesy of the snapgramheads, but literally an elision of AAVE “fixin’ to”, which I’ve been hearing my whole life. I agree that people should know from where they get their sayings, whether they’re saying “finna” or <fakes british accent> “please sir, can I have some more?” (A student quoted this yesterday in an after-school club and I bet another teacher that the student didn’t even know the context of the quote, let alone what they were quoting. If we had been betting money, I would have left a dollar richer)
But I’d be interested to hear your take on how best to educate people on the origins of these terms. I’ve had to talk to my spanish-speaking students several times about how saying “mongolo” for ‘idiot’ is SUPER offensive, because it’s derived from a double slur against people with down syndrome and people of Asian descent. How can I, as a teacher, or we, as citizens of the internet, properly assign understanding, credit, or significance to the words these kids are spewing without any concept of what they actually mean, let alone where they came from?
I mean all that I ask really is for people to know the meaning and where those terms came from, not just repeat them like it’s some sort of trendy thing to say.