“NEGRO DIALECT”?

[halley]

“NEGRO DIALECT”?

No such thing exist now days. Reid must have been watching “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” When Blacks were legally able to learn to read and write English, “de” “dat” “dis” and “den”and “dem” disappeared. “Negro dialect” were the language of “Negroes” during slavery before they were allow to read and write. You do not hear reference like this unless used by white people living in the past. Like Reid.
Afro-Americans are light or dark skin, with nappy hair or “good hair” raised in the hood or not in the hood, educated and not educated and they all speak proper English and maybe in the hood among themselves speak the “language of the hood” that they have created and they only use it among their friends in the hood. There is no evidence that Obama ever lived in the hood and a “Negro dialect” was spoken in his home. For Reid to say Obama could speak with a “Negro dialect” if he wanted to is pure racist.
I was raised by a black women who was a teacher and spoke proper English and I learned proper English when I went to school. I have never heard anyone speak with a “Negro dialect” in my home or in the hood. I never heard the word “n-----” until I started to school. It was not a common word in my home or neighborhood.
Reid need to be re-educated on the Afro-American today. He is quite different from the black in slavery. Reid mis-spoke when the said Obama could speak with a “Negro dialect” if he wanted to, because Obama may not even know what he is talking about. “Negro dialect” was the only phrase Reid use that was offensive to me. And “honest injun” by Steele. Stereo typing Afro-americans is what Reid was doing and many white people do today. “Language of the hood” is not a “Negro dialect” but a language black youth created themselves.
Afro-americans lost the “dis” and “dat” generations ago. And it’s time the white man loses it.

[specter]

Damn well does too Halley. You lie! They speak in that uneducated, primitive way when they speak among themselves. You use it here when you want to (most of the time). You know better, because when you;'re called on it, you said you "know the difference", but you think "it sound better" (dropping the "s" is a part of it).

I've heard Osama Obama speak that way when he speak to HIS people. Are all liberals as dishonest as you and Confused? Answer: YES!

[Dan Popp]

So the "dialect" spoken by some "negroes" is not a "negro dialect."



Reid's meaning was clear - unlike many of your "fluent" posts, halley.

[halley]

Damn well does too Halley. You lie! They speak in that uneducated, primitive way when they speak among themselves. You use it here when you want to (most of the time). You know better, because when you;'re called on it, you said you "know the difference", but you think "it sound better" (dropping the "s" is a part of it).

I've heard Osama Obama speak that way when he speak to HIS people. Are all liberals as dishonest as you and Confused? Answer: YES!

YOU LIE. NO ONE SPEAK WITH A "NEGRO DIALECT" ANYMORE EXCEPT IN OLD UNCLE TOM MOVIES.
EVER WHAT YOU MAY CALL THE "UNEDUCATED" SPEAK ENGLISH, IT MAY NOT BE PERFECT BUT IT IS CERTAINLY NOT A "NEGRO DIALECT" NO SUCH THING EXIST EXCEPT GENERATIONS AGO. EBONIC IS NOT A "NEGRO DIALECT" AND YOU HAVE NEVER HEARD OBAMA SPEAK WITH A "NEGRO DIALECT". HE PROBABLY DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT IS.
I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A NEGRO DIALECT AND LANGUAGE OF THE HOOD.

[halley]

So the "dialect" spoken by some "negroes" is not a "negro dialect."


Reid's meaning was clear - unlike many of your "fluent" posts, halley.

I DO NOT SPEAK PROPER ENGLISH, BUT I DO NOT SPEAK WITH A NEGRO DIALECT EITHER OR LANGUAGE OF THE HOOD.
ABSOLUTELY NO AFRO-AMERICAN OR BLACK SPEAK WITH A NEGRO DIALECT.
DE, DEM, DIS, DAT AND DEM? NEGRO DIALECT OF ENGLISH WAS SPOKEN WHEN BLACKS DID NOT KNOW HOW TO READ OF WRITE.
YOU AND SPECTER HAVE BEEN WATCHING TOO MANY UNCLE TOM MOVIES.

[specter]

YOU LIE. NO ONE SPEAK WITH A "NEGRO DIALECT" ANYMORE....

I rest my case!

[halley]

YOU LIE. NO ONE SPEAK WITH A "NEGRO DIALECT" ANYMORE....

I rest my case!

speak and not speaks is evidence? It may be improper english but not a negro dialect.
I rest my case.

[halley]

YOU PEOPLE WANT TO USE IMPROPER ENGLISH AS A NEGRO DIALECT BUT YOU ARE WRONG. ANY RACE CAN USE INPROPER ENGLISH AND WHAT WOULD YOU CALL THE LANGUAGE JAMAICAN'S SPEAK? NEGRO DIALECT?

[halley]

Harry Reid, read my lips: There's no such thing as 'Negro dialect'
By Michael Meyers
Special to NYDailyNews.com

Tuesday, January 12th 2010, 3:48 PM
Related NewsReid to Obama: Sorry for 'no Negro dialect' remark VH1's 'Pep' show is the new 'Sex'City shakes up industry with plan for salt reduction in food'Game Change' portrays Palin as unstable ignoramusCindy Crawford: Model-turned-domestic goddessSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid really put his foot in his mouth when, last year, he told two reporters that white voters would vote for Barack Obama because Obama was a "light-skinned" African-American who did not speak "Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

He's since apologized - to Barack Obama and to every "African-American" in his Rolodex.

But he's sorry for the wrong reasons.

Reid has only backed off of his word choice; he has yet to express regret for the substance of his remarks.

The truth is, what he said was insensitive and wrong because it reduced an able and politically astute presidential candidate to a racial caricature.

Second - and this one is even more important - there is no such thing as "Negro dialect." Like "the Negro" itself, so-called "Negro dialect" is a fiction created to assign qualities and habits and deficits to a "race" of people. But blacks are not a "race"; we're people who happen to have darker skin than whites. We are individuals who belong to the same race as do whites and "Hispanics" and Asians.

If, as individuals, we speak less than standard or perfect English, then that is a personal failing and a challenge - not a racial character trait. Indeed, as many American blacks were coming up and out of enslavement, they learned broken English from their overseers because many whites then and now (and not just in the South) don't know the rules, much less the syntax and grammar, of the English language.
Dialects, accents and regional differences in language are fluid and not always fluent, but are never "racial." Some immigrants have been singled out for their slovenly English; others learn and speak sparkling English. Those of all hues who inhabit a New York borough are sometimes said to speak "Brooklyn-ese" or "Bronx" - but plenty of times we speak Standard American English.

The world is a complicated place, where individuals consistently overwhelm types.

Swirling prejudices about which groups learn and speak Standard English have been passed on from generation to generation - and have even been adopted by America's race industry, which proudly and falsely proclaims that blacks are "different" from whites in values and mannerisms and the language we speak.

This is the notion of which Reid needed to be disabused. Yet not one of our race leaders broke ranks to tell Harry Reid the plain truth when he called upon them for absolution. Not one of them said to him, "Harry, read my lips: There is no such thing as 'Negro dialect.' "


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/201 ... z0cVcZO72b



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/201 ... z0cVbjGlST

[halley]

(Page 2 of 2)

Indeed, the hyphenated African-American leadership is as condescending and patronizing toward some black people as many prejudiced whites.

Hence, Reid felt very at ease talking to two white guys about his delight and wonderment that Obama could actually win the presidency because Obama was a "light-skinned" black guy - white enough for white America, through Reid's simplistic racial lens. Extra bonus: Obama also could talk "white."

That is sheer racial idiocy. Is it racism? Perhaps not - a better word is "racialism." But it's still a sin.

I remember what my mentor Kenneth Clark, the psychologist, said about blacks and whites who simply can't see past a person's skin color. They see culture as synonymous with race - when in truth there is no such thing as "white" or "black" culture. Black nationalists who promulgate such myths as "black English," Clark added, are engaged in a kind of "self-hatred" - and it is a part of "the pattern of pretense and posturing, including a suicidal eagerness to ascribe all middle-class values, including learning and speaking English properly, to "being white."

"Black English" is seen by racialists as standard fare of "black people" - except, conveniently, for the so-called exceptions to the race, such as Obama. Blacks get for their predominant or exclusive use the uncouth and the vulgar, including masking broken English as "black."

Reid's defenders might say he wasn't thinking these thoughts himself; he was simply describing how America, including whites, many of whom might be uncomfortable pulling the lever for a particular "kind" of black candidate, would react more favorably to Obama.

Yeah, right. Reid could only describe this phenomenon so precisely because it was happening in his own mind. He may not be a racist who sees black people as inferior - but he has revealed himself to be another American who views darker skinned people primarily through the prism of race.

And for that, he should be sorry.

Meyers is executive director of the New York Civil Rights Coalition.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/201 ... z0cVcyhvTE


I REST ME CASE.

[Dan Popp]

Obviously there is a "dialect" spoken by some "negroes" (you can turn on MTV and hear it any time of the day). It is clear that this is what Reid meant. Whether negroes originally had a different dialect is irrelevant. The dialects spoken in England today are not the same as they were 200 years ago - but we recognize them as various "British dialects."

To say that there is no dialect used by African Americans today - or that this dialect, though sometimes spoken by beiges, isn't related to identity - is ludicrous. To say that we may not call the dialect spoken by negroes a "negro dialect" is another exercise in political correctness; i.e. absurdity.

The word "ebonics" was coined to legitimize the "negro dialect." There is no need to legitimize something that doesn't exist.

[davehines]

Indeed, the hyphenated African-American leadership is as condescending and patronizing toward some black people as many prejudiced whites.

Not "as condescending and patronizing"; rather, more so. I may treat Halley as if she is ignorant -- because she is. I don't assume that blacks are ignorant; the likes of Jesse Jackson do. I don't tell them what I believe to be untrue because I think they're likely to buy it; Jackson does. Jackson et al are prejudiced, not me. Halley is prejudiced, not Dan Popp.

Is it insensitive to assess the chances of a woman candidate? A divorcee? A proven philanderer? A height-challenged candidate? Reid was making a comment about electability. To ignore factors in electoral politics isn't considered a good idea inside the Beltway. And Reid is surely an inside-the-Beltway creature. That's the way such beasts think. They consider your sensitivities only insofar as it impacts elections.

Dan is correct: If usage of a language is non-standard, it is by definition a dialect. Afro-Americans certainly separate their dialect from the standard; the prohibition on whites and acceptance by blacks of the "N" word is but one example of "enforced dialect". Arguing otherwise, Halley, is plumb ridiculous.

[Dan Popp]

Dave, thank you.

Dialect and electability has been an issue before: a lot of people thought Lyndon's Johnson was a "hick" because of the way he spoke. And folk from my neck of the woods sure do think John Kerry and them other yay-hoos from Massachusetts talk too highfalutin. People outside Minnesota have said that Sarah Palin's dialect grates on them.

Even deaf people didn't like Jimmy Carter's manner of speech: he barely moves his lips while talking, making lip-reading difficult.

On the other hand, a candidate that speaks too precisely can seem like he's not "a man of the people," if not positively "robot-like."

Everyone from George Bernard Shaw to Bill Cosby have recognized that speaking the dialect of the educated opens more doors for better opportunities than speaking like a "gutter snipe."

[halley]

Indeed, the hyphenated African-American leadership is as condescending and patronizing toward some black people as many prejudiced whites.

Not "as condescending and patronizing"; rather, more so. I may treat Halley as if she is ignorant -- because she is. I don't assume that blacks are ignorant; the likes of Jesse Jackson do. I don't tell them what I believe to be untrue because I think they're likely to buy it; Jackson does. Jackson et al are prejudiced, not me. Halley is prejudiced, not Dan Popp.

WHY WOULD I CARE WHAT THE LIKES OF YOU OR ANY OF YOU THINK?

Is it insensitive to assess the chances of a woman candidate? A divorcee? A proven philanderer? A height-challenged candidate? Reid was making a comment about electability. To ignore factors in electoral politics isn't considered a good idea inside the Beltway. And Reid is surely an inside-the-Beltway creature. That's the way such beasts think. They consider your sensitivities only insofar as it impacts elections.

Dan is correct: If usage of a language is non-standard, it is by definition a dialect. Afro-Americans certainly separate their dialect from the standard; the prohibition on whites and acceptance by blacks of the "N" word is but one example of "enforced dialect". Arguing otherwise, Halley, is plumb ridiculous.

WHAT I AM HEARING IS THAT [b]ALL BLACKS ARE THE SAME AND THEY SPEAK ALIKE AND A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE THAN ANY OTHERS WHO SPEAK ENGLISH?[/b]

[halley]

TALK ABOUT ANGRY WHITE MEN. I MUST HAVE HIT A RAW NERVE.
UNADULTERATED TRUTH REALLY DOES HURT. UH?