Coming to terms with my blackness

First let me start off by saying, Happy Black History Month my people!

To begin Black History Month I wanted to take a moment and write about a subject I know all about, being black. I haven’t always been ok with my black skin. Mainly from bullying during my childhood, and I think every black person goes through a period of questioning themselves and their skin color. Regardless of how much pride our parents may have instilled, we still question ourselves. I found myself doing this a lot in 8th and 9th grade.

I was often ridiculed for speaking well. Unbeknownst to me, that has nothing to do with your skin color. But after hearing “you talk white” for the 87th million time you begin to question things, mainly who you really are. I distinctly remember in 9th grade sitting in the cafeteria listening to other students talk so that I could add new “slang” words to my vocabulary. In hindsight, it was only a quick fix and didn’t really help the teasing because knowing a slang word and using it in the same vernacular are two different things.

Just recently I had a convo with my therapist about how my grammar and articulation doesn’t correlate with my cultural identity.

I can be a black woman and speak well. The ignorance that accompanies the statement “you talk white” is alarming. There’s no such thing as “talking white”. I can’t talk like a race. I can articulate well. But that has nothing to do with grammar, but rather the culture I grew up in.

This trend of “policing language” is one of the main things I fight everyday in my regular life. Within the black community I’ve noticed there’s this constant infighting over language. There has been a language division among Black Americans for decades over African American Vernacular English (AAVE) vs. Standard American English (SAE). AAVE is a dialect used by Black people commonly in social settings or learned culturally, while SAE is the dialect generally taught in schools. And that’s what keeps us from our liberation. We tend to be more likely to listen to the well spoken black person over the one who uses slang, but they’re both saying the same thing.

My hope is in this month of unity we not only continue to reflect on our history but also come to terms with it. When our ancestors were brought here in the belly of slave ships they had their languages and dialects stripped and beaten from them. We should be embracing the use of our own vernacular and language as our ancestors once did. But also not ridiculing those who don’t use it.

Happy Black History Month.