MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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"It Wasn’t ‘Verbal Blackface.’ AOC Was Code-Switching"
By artappraiser on Tue, 04/09/2019 - 11:09pm |By John McWhorter @ TheAtlantic.com, April 9
Her critics are misreading the linguistic reality of America’s big cities.
JOHN MCWHORTER teaches linguistics at Columbia University. He is the author of The Power of Babel, Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue, What Language Is, The Language Hoax, and Talking Back, Talking Black.
URL:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-code-switches-black-english/586723/
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Comments
This is all such BS. When in college visiting a roommate in Ireland he had to tell me to stop sounding Irish (whether good or bad), that they wanted a good ol' american boy accent. We imitate, we try to fit in, we adapt. listen to white & black dudes in the trailer park and they all start to sound alike. Babies learn to look, listen & mimic as their major task their first 2 years in life. It used to be going to Texas you'd put on a twang just to be friendly on their turf. We have sitcoms poking fun at white people trying to sound hip and coming out corny, but even that - they're at least listening and trying to approach, vs. people who have no appreciation for other cultures.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 04/10/2019 - 4:10am
As we all know there was a time when white people, both rich and poor, would amble along the city streets and the glades of the English countryside discoursing on subjects both great and small in iambic pentameter. If discussing the weather one might say, Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines, or Often is his gold complexion dimm'd. Shakespeare's plays were just a reflection of the common tongue of the times. How the quality of white speech has declined over the years. I would support the conservatives desire to make English the official language if the focus was on traditional English and white people were required to speak in iambic pentameter.
by ocean-kat on Wed, 04/10/2019 - 12:28pm
Posh - that Johnny-come-lately upstart, always putting his Willy in it, if you know what I mean. No coincidence he came from the region where they spawned that door-to-door scam - Stratford-upon-Avon calling? indeed, rather not answer. The language hasn't been the same since the days of Beowulf - oh those odes to the Mighty Hrothgar - or at least Chaucer - there was a lad who knew how to pile on ribald humor in eloquent prose.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 04/10/2019 - 1:51pm
I first had the reaction you did--such bullshit--it's what's aggravating about the social sciences when they take some human behavior that everyone knows about and try to label it and make it "scientific."
But it at least made me think about it some. I immediately thought of how when I was a little kid I would see my father (with the college education) talk funny when he was with his white trash relatives at the rare big family gathering. He'd lapse into this lingo where he said "deese" and "dose" instead of "these" and "those" and "I went down dere" instead of "I went over there" and "aina hey!" instead of "isn't that the truth!" I also noticed that he seemed unusually happy and relaxed doing it, laughing a lot, not uptight as usual, as if no one was judging him and he didn't have to put on the daily mask that made him so uptight.
Then I thought of my spouse who actually developed the habit of imitating the patois of those he either admired or wanted to connect with. He was an anglophile so if he was talking with a Brit you could see him change his manner of speaking. And he especially seemed to like Brit Empire accented Indian English, there he would really talk different and imitate quite a lot. Then he came from a football coaching family so he knew how to talk "bro" language, so if he interacted with like a doorman or parking attendant who clearly was of that subculture, he would lapse into that lingo.
And as spouse's do, I would just pretend I wasn't seeing him do this, even though some times I felt it either embarassing or ineffective or inauthentic pandering. Then one day out of the blue, he said to me "I've got to stop pretending I talk like other people, as they sometimes find it offensive." And I go: you don't say, huh, yeah maybe you should think about it
So after I thought of both these instances and now putting it in the context of your comment, I think: this cultural exchange thing is a very careful intricate dance where it sometimes happens that people go too far and get offended and other times people stress themselves trying to change themselves to fit in and probably all other manner of complications. So complicated that they invented something called Linguistics to figure out what's going on with that...and guess what, after inventing that "science", they found out that as cultures interact that languages have changed over time from that interaction...
by artappraiser on Wed, 04/10/2019 - 2:41pm
So let me get this straight - since I'm educated, I should lay off my "in your gumbo" patois, instead focusing on something erudite, such as Linguistics. Yeah, that's gonna work... already cut out politics, religion, LGBTQ matters, Europe, the military, music, vegetarian and unusual ethnic food, pot (no, I don't smoke, but tolerance is a flash point)...
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 04/10/2019 - 6:16pm
just for you, from the new NYTimes interactive piece on Dem voters:
by artappraiser on Wed, 04/10/2019 - 10:39pm
Conservatives are comfortable with Trump’s racism. They are silent on Steven Miller. They then wonder why they are not taken seriously when they complain about a drawl from AOC. Conservatives use the same playbook. There was Conservative outrage when Hillary used a drawl in South Carolina when she ran against Obama, Black people in the audience were not offended.
Conservatives would be criticized for effecting a drawl because most of the time they are silent on issues of race or actually promote racial bias (see voter suppression). Conservatives carry the baggage of seeing blacks as sources of humor when it comes to politics. Watch how gleeful Conservatives are to promote the Amos ‘N Andy routine of Diamond & Silk. Look at how Conservatives neutered Michael Steele when he headed the RNC.
Republicans are the more racially biased of the two political groups. Yesterday, Conservatives brought Candace Owens to a Congressional hearing on white supremacy to tell us that white supremacy and acts of terrorism by white supremacists didn’t exist.
Owns claim to fame is the following:
https://crooksandliars.com/2019/04/candace-owens-confronted-hate-hearing-her
All Hitler did in the confines of Germany was exterminate Jews
AOC was not doing verbal blackface. Actual blackface was done by Trump supporter Rev. Mark Burns who posted a picture of Hillary depicted in blackface by a white artist.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/08/29/politics/mark-burns-clinton-blackface-cartoon-trump/index.html
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 04/10/2019 - 8:23am
Can we not replicate same discussion under multiple threads?
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 04/10/2019 - 9:32am
I thought that the reference was applicable here.
Edit to add:
I didn’t see a problem. When Omar made her statement about Israel, there was discussion in in multiple threads. But you’re the admin, so OK
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 04/10/2019 - 10:54am
Hitler & Germany's fine for 1 thread, methinks - he's been dead some 75 years.
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 04/10/2019 - 1:53pm
Here it strikes me that hijacking a discussion away from complexity and towards a simplistic political or manichean good vs. evil is the whole principal of Godwin's Law. Stops the discussion, no use to go on.
Those who are passionate partisans about one thing, i.e., "one track mind" are driven to do it. And what they don't realize is that trying to drag people into passionate partisanship and framing everything, everything possible, within their one track message is offensive to those who are interested in complex discussion and nuance. Because: it's insulting to the intelligence, that they would fall for framing everything as a simple political "us vs. them". So the especially weird part of it all: it's so counterproductive to their goal! They are not convincing anyone of the righteousness of their cause but rather making themselves suspect by attempting to always spin things as simplistic proof of their passion.
In this particular instance of the whole maddening tendency, I note the absurdity of how we have trouble figuring out a label for the group of people who is to be despised. In this case: supposed racists. We bounce around from "conservative" to "Republican" and can't settle on one precisely because: the labeling can always be decimated by whatabboutism. I.E.To the use of the conservative label: well what about Max Boot or Andrew Sullivan or George Will? Are they racists? To the use of the Republican label: well what about Jeff Flake or McCain or Rick Wilson or Frank Luntz? Are they racists? To the use of the "Trump voter" label, what about Obama/Trump voters, etc....
For a website about current events there is always the clash between those who want to be advocates of political activism for a cause and those who what to intellectually analyze. It's like mixing oil with water. The former wants to spin things and get dittoes for their spin, to rile emotions and divide into simple "us vs. them" ideological tribes. The latter wants to decode spin. Hence Godwin's Law. It is always why I was once very disturbed by Josh Marshall's stated intent of wanting to include "political activism" as one of his activities for his TPMCafe site which was originally created to offer a place to have quality discussions about current events as an alternative to the lowest common denominator offerings out there on blogs.
by artappraiser on Wed, 04/10/2019 - 3:07pm
My favorite line from the movie Grapes of Wrath just popped into my head because it nails the syndrome.
Tom Joad asks
What is these 'Reds' anyway? Every time ya turn around, somebody callin' somebody else a Red. What is these 'Reds' anyway?
(His question is ignored, he doesn't get an answer.)
by artappraiser on Wed, 04/10/2019 - 3:19pm