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Apr 15, 2021 · According to AAVE Card, if you are white or a non-black person of colour, you should not use any of the above phrases. This is because, according to the author of the page, by using these words means more than to simply imitate expressions. “It is a dialect, with its own structure, and there are many other issues that come along with it, for ...
- "Thug"
- "Inner City"
- "Ghetto"
- "Oreo"
- "Uppity"
- "You People"
- "Shady" Or "Sketchy"
Many decades ago, the word "thug" referenced people who engaged in organized crime. But in more recent years, especially in the wake of the murders of Trayvon Martin and even Brown, many whites and others dismissively use the word to describe young, black people — especially black men — implying that they're violent, irrational and shouldn't be tak...
On the surface, this phrase seems like a casual reference to one type of community, similar to urban, suburban or rural. But beneath the niceties, a typical discussion about people from the "inner city" is actually coded language for African-Americans. The term reinforces the concept of "white flight," wherein moving to the suburbs functions as an ...
Originally used as a reference to neighborhoods where members of a minority group reside — mostly due to social, political or economic pressure — the term "ghetto" has since become a racist and classist pejorative. In reality, only people who have lived in these areas can really say what's "ghetto" and what's not. But that's not what usually happen...
It may seem like a harmless joke, but there's nothing sweet about "Oreo" in this context, which is used by some to describe someone who is "black on the outside but white on the inside." Other than an unfortunate food comparison, "Oreo" reinforces the assumption that there's absolute qualities to being black or being white, regardless of a black pe...
It's not very often that blacks are in relative positions of power and prestige when compared to their white peers. Some others may not have enough income to afford a suit for a job interview or dine out with their family. Racial disparities limit equal access to opportunityacross America. Yet when blacks do present themselves as poised, composed i...
As if blacks needed any more reminders that white privilege rules American society, the phrase "you people" makes the balance of power abundantly clear, in any given interaction. Take, for instance, a 2012 interview where Good Morning America's Robin Roberts asked Ann Romney about her husband's apparent reluctance to publicly disclose his tax retur...
Both terms have long referred to neighborhoods with heavily black or brown populations, promoting the stereotype that these communities are inherently unsafe and unwelcoming because of high crime and because of the area's racial makeup. The recently launched SketchFactorappwas created by an all-white team of entrepreneurs to help users avoid "sketc...
- Derrick Clifton
- Sesali Bowen
- Respek. When Cash Money founder and former rapper Birdman showed up to the popular radio show The Breakfast Club, he had an agenda. He wanted the three hosts (pronounced in Birdman fashion as 'tree') to essentially be a little nicer when talking about him.
- Bae. First of all, bae is not an acronym. I don’t care what your younger sibling told you. I don’t care what urbandictionary.com says. Bae is a direct result of African American vernacular.
- Fleek. While I’m sometimes annoyed with how quickly Black culture is exported to the masses on social media, even I could acknowledge that the world needed to know Kayla Newman, also known as Peaches.
- The gag is... Keke Palmer has doomed this phrase with her overuse of it on every platform. It’s especially tragic since the word was never hers, to begin with.
African American slang is formed by words and phrases that are regarded as informal. It involves combining, shifting, shortening, blending, borrowing, and creating new words. African American slang possess all of the same lexical qualities and linguistic mechanisms as any other language.
- Lawd. "Lawd" is an alternative spelling of the word "lord" and an expression often associated with Black churchgoers. It is used to express a range of emotions, from sadness to excitement.
- Brazy. "Brazy" is another word for "crazy," replacing the "c" with a "b." It can also be used to describe someone with great skill or who has accomplished something seemingly impossible.
- Yass. "Yass" means "yes" and expresses excitement or agreement; on X, it is celebratory slang. Despite its fame on the internet, the expression "yass" has existed since the 1890s, when writer George W. Cable captured a slice of Creole New Orleans in his book "John March, Southerner."
- Tea. "Tea" is slang for gossip, a juicy scoop, or other personal information. Its first printed use came as early as 1991 in William G. Hawkeswood's "One of the Children: An Ethnography of Identity and Gay Black Men," wherein one of the subjects used the word "tea" to mean "gossip."
Feb 6, 2020 · African American Vernacular English is part and parcel of Black identity. Its distinctive linguistic features are — wrongly — denigrated.
Jun 21, 2021 · White people – on social media and in real life – regularly appropriate African American Vernacular English, or AAVE, like "slay" and "sis" without thinking, and some of these phrases come...
