She’s didn’t go as far as “mofo’s be gettin’ they ass’ capped”. It wasn’t really Black English nor Black Thuglish - somewhere in between.
Switching in and out of different modes of speech is our natural approach to language.
www.nytimes.com
”Many Black Americans switch in and out of Black English in the same way, using it as a kind of seasoning.”
She’s actually doing something quite presidential.
www.nytimes.com
”Recently, Republicans have taken to accusing Kamala Harris of using fake accents while on the campaign trail. In this episode of “The Opinions,” John McWhorter, an Opinion writer and linguist, argues the vice president is simply revealing a piece of herself by slipping into “Black English,” a form of code switching that is actually quite presidential.”
A young Black fellow, a Sophomore at St Anselm’s majoring in Politics, was at WMUR for Kelly Ayotte’s Conversation with the Candidate last week, and we chatted a while before we went into the studio. He was raised in Dorchester but went to Phillp’s Academy in Andover, where he all but erased his Black Dorchester accent, except for a few of those “f”s instead of “th”s (wiff instead of with).
We had a young NH-native 1st year law student in our chat, who had just graduated from StA’s in Politics, and I asked if the Black kid if he was going to write the experience up for an assignment. He said no, that he was there “on his own” and didn’t want any academic advantage from the event. The other kid and I glanced at each other briefly, and he said he thought it would make a great paper. I said if he wasn’t going to take advantage of fair opportunities, maybe Politics might not be the right field for him. We all laughed, but knew we were dancing around the issue of how a young Black kid from Dorchester gets into Phillip’s Academy.