११ ऑगस्ट, २०१८

"Anders Carlson-Wee engaged in nothing we moderns need slur as 'blackface.'"

"To wit, while we must evaluate each case on its own basis, to the extent that any white person’s depiction of Black English of whatever quality or diligence elicits rolling eyes at best and social media witch hunts at worst, we have lost step not only with linguistic science, but also with what most would consider norms of how human groups co-occupy social spaces and learn from one another."

Writes John McWhorter in "There’s Nothing Wrong With Black English/Accepting it as an alternative form of the language, and not a degraded one, requires being open to artists employing it in their work, even if they didn't grow up speaking it" (The Atlantic).

Anders Carlson-Wee is the white poet whose poem The Nation obsequiously apologized for publishing. We talked about it here.

McWhorter pushes back the writer/professor/editor/commentator Roxane Gay (who, like McWhorter, is African American):
[Roxane Gay] directs white writers to “know your lane,” and not depict the dialect.... Of course, if a Carlson-Wee depicted Black English gracelessly in terms of the grammar, it’d be time to call foul. But he got it right....

Gay... wrote on Twitter: “The reality is that when most white writers use [African American Vernacular English] they do so badly. They do so without understanding that it is a language with rules. Instead, they use AAVE to denote that there is a black character in their story because they understand blackness as a monolith. Framing blackness as monolithic is racist. It is lazy.” Indeed. But it isn’t clear to me that Carlson-Wee is guilty of either of these flubs....
This may be some solace to Carlson-Wee, but — for all McWhorter's linguistic expertise — Gay's message is the one that will stick. What white writer would read all this and decide anything other than just to stay in your lane as Gay instructed? You might get McWhorter's elevated, educated approval, but you'll only get that — is that enough?! — if you avoid "flubs" — what are all the possible flubs?! — and even then, I sense there's something more:
[W]hen a Carlson-Wee briefly explores the pain of a black homeless person and shows her using precisely the speech variety she actually would, or an Oscar Hammerstein knows that working-class black people in a parachute factory [in Carmen Jones] would not talk like the characters in his previous hits Oklahoma! or Carousel, it’s time for educated America to get past the cringe of seeing Black English depicted on the page by someone who didn’t grow up speaking it.
It seems the writer will also have to pass an empathy test and successfully inspire the belief that he's exploring the pain or showering knowledge of working class black people. But good literature doesn't make it that clear. How do we know this writer is not making fun of black people or criticizing them in some way? Even when he's not, you may think he is. I read Carlson-Wee's poem and I don't think it unambiguously or simply "explores the pain." As I wrote a few days ago:
The voice is that of a black person, talking to other black people, explaining how to to collect money from the white people who pass by... The key insight is that you get money by causing white people to think about who they are and to be motivated to give you money because they were made to think that the person who gives you money is the person they want to be. So you succeed if you essentially cease to be and transform yourself into the image of whatever it is that jogs them into feeling they need to be the person who helps you. That key insight follows a how-to list of ways to be that inauthentic person who gets white people to give you money.

Is the main problem that the white poet had the nerve to appropriate a black voice or is it that he portrayed black people as pathetic and conniving? Or is it that he portrayed white people helping black people as a matter of white narcissism?
That is, I suspect that the hostility to Carlson-Wee came not because he tried to embody a suffering black person, but because he had that black person criticize the kind of good white person The Nation's readers like to think they are. Didn't pass the political test. And I see McWhorter as carrying forward a political test, though he paid almost no attention to it.

I'd like to think McWhorter would approve of the politics of the Carlson-Wee poem that means what I said it means. But even if the McWhorter seal of approval is all a white writer would need to have permission to depict a black style of speech, who would take the risk? And what writer would choose a project that entails the incessant inhibition of gunning for that approval?

१०५ टिप्पण्या:

AllenS म्हणाले...

There's clickbait and then there's Crackbait.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Write all the ebonics you want, is the right rule.

On top of that, the ebonics people aren't reading it so empathy doesn't matter even if you wanted it to.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

McWhorter's right that ebonics isn't sloppy but as rule-driven as standard English is. It just carries the "I'm black" mark, which is a good reason not to trade on it if you want to get treated like white people.

The mark supplies information that is missing until more is found out.

Shouting Thomas म्हणाले...

There's clickbait and then there's Crackbait.

I was thinking the same thing.

Prepare yourself for a mini-novel of whining, scamming, begging, etc., authored by Crack.

The stereotype of black men, like all stereotypes, is mostly true.

Even the intellectual ones, like McWhorter, never do anything except play the "professionally black" scam.

Is there a black man who isn't hustling this con? And, what in the hell is it that white liberal lady teachers find so appealing about this con?

William म्हणाले...

Bloviate

Molly म्हणाले...

"Bess you is my woman now, you is you is."

Masscon म्हणाले...

I ain’t in no ways tired!

rhhardin म्हणाले...

I ain’t in no ways tired!

That's called code-switching and is actually common.

Oso Negro म्हणाले...

Roxane Gay should change her name to Roxane Severe. As for staying in one's lane, fuck dat yo!

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Perhaps black people could be represented by baby talk. Everybody was a baby once.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

I'd guess it's all about not noticing something by removing the words for it.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Noticing would be a good college major.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

Derrida was a virtuoso noticer.

stevew म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
stevew म्हणाले...

"the hostility to Carlson-Wee came not because he tried to embody a suffering black person, but because he had that black person criticize the kind of good white person The Nation's readers like to think they are."

If you are correct, and I think you are, then Carlson-Wee's poem should be celebrated, not derided, by the perpetually offended crowd. I suspect they aren't because they and those most critical of the poem are the same people.

-sw

wholelottasplainin म्हणाले...

Imagine the crushing rhetorical power of Dr. King's speeches if he had spoken in Black English:

"DAMN! I be DREAMIN'!!!"

Heartless Aztec म्हणाले...

Well that explains Huckleberry Finn being taken from libraries and figuratively burned on the pyre of SJW. I could write paragraphs but will spare everyone.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

"DAMN! I be DREAMIN'!!!"

Might be wrong. As I recall at a distance of 40 years, there's a habitual present and an actual present, and I think this is habitual. Maybe somebody can find the rules and rule on it.

rhhardin म्हणाले...

The absence of bible readings to start the public grade school day has led to ignorance of old-timey verb conjugation rules today.

tcrosse म्हणाले...

You are what you is.

Virgil Hilts म्हणाले...

Saturating the race communications playing field with invisible trip wires, punji stick-filled semantic sand traps and bouncing bettys is just the left's way of trying to help facilitate a meaningful one-way dialogue. Eric Holder was right when he called us a nation of cowards for avoiding the conversation. All you have to do is not say anything, shut up and listen.

Ralph L म्हणाले...

David Hackett Fischer claims in Albion's Seed that black English is not that different from the 17th century West Country English of many white settlers of the coastal South, i e their masters.

FIDO म्हणाले...

As the Academy more and more becomes the Racist SJWs, who bothers with their opinions, their ridicule, that which they celebrate?

By deploring the white majority, they forgot that they deplore their audience.

So Ebonics, Bubonics, whatever. I don't buy their magazines and I disparage their credentialism.

And if that leaves me a Philistine in their eyes, well, I have to care for that to sting, don't I?

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

"Even if the McWhorter seal of approval is all a white writer would need to have permission to depict a black style of speech, who would take the risk?"

McWhorter's Seal of Approval? That's wild.

Look, I've lost almost all my friends, and have been the victim of vicious attacks for the stands I've taken - a poor black guy has NO DEFENSES, against whatever the world decides it wants to do to us, except KEEP TALKING - to the point where I've moved away to where I'm completely unknown, don't regularly answer the phone, and rarely leave the house.

And I don't need anyone's approval to keep going - I just need the facts, on my side, which I've always had from the beginning.

Watching the world catch-up is fast becoming the other half of the fun of being alive.

Mike Sylwester म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
wildswan म्हणाले...

Present criticism centers on the presence of black characters in fiction.
Will future criticism center on the absence of black characters in fiction?
Or perhaps the two groups are in transit in relation to each other and fiction isn't really capturing the times, the present relation of two groups of middle class people to each other. If you look at groups in the 19C, Europeans including artists and revolutionaries wore suits and other groups were very colorfully clothed in a variety of traditional ways. By the late twentieth century Europeans, especially artists and revolutionaries, were colorfully clothed in a variety of traditional garbs from other lands while leaders and revolutionaries from those same lands wore European suits or athletic clothes. Think the Beatles or Antifa or Justin Trudeau in India versus General Secretary Xi or President Erdogan or the street mobs in Iran. Two middle class groups have changed how they dress and changed in relation to each other. But does the language reflect upon or just reflect this?

Mike Sylwester म्हणाले...

Song lyrics by Gus Kahn (1886 - 1941)

-----

All God's Chillun Got Rhythm

Chillun, listen here to me.
This is my philosophy
To see me through the day
To scare my cares away.

All God's chillun got rhythm,
All God's chillun got swing.
Maybe haven't got money,
Maybe haven't got shoes.

All God's chillun got rhythm
For to push away their blues.

All God's chillun got trouble.
Trouble don't mean a thing
When they start to go
Ho ho ho de ho.


-----

Sung by Judy Garland

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2ql47CiPtI

Heartless Aztec म्हणाले...

Dy-No-Mite!

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

Shouting Thomas said...

There's clickbait and then there's Crackbait.

"I was thinking the same thing."

A sure sign there's a couple of someone's who aren't the imaginative thinkers they fancy themselves to be.

Shouting Thomas म्हणाले...

Installment #1 in Crack's self-pity-athon.

Look, I've lost almost all my friends, and have been the victim of vicious attacks for the stands I've taken - a poor black guy has NO DEFENSES, against whatever the world decides it wants to do to us, except KEEP TALKING - to the point where I've moved away to where I'm completely unknown, don't regularly answer the phone, and rarely leave the house.

Boo hoo!

You've convinced me. Where do I send you all my money?

You want my pussy, too? You could pimp her out.

Tommy Duncan म्हणाले...

Must the world be seen only through the prism of pervasive racism?

If I wrote a novel with black characters and messed up the black dialog am I a racist? Or am I just bad at black vernacular? Or am I racist for even attempting to employ black vernacular?

Shouting Thomas म्हणाले...

Say something... really anything... Crack... that isn't the stereotypical black pimp con job.

Amadeus 48 म्हणाले...

Do we like All God’s Chillun Got Wings by Eugene O’Neill or not? Do we think he should have been able to write and present it in 1922? And what about Paul Robeson? I have never thought of him as a racial sell-out—quite the opposite.

Artists do what they do. They certainly should be discussed and criticized. What is weird about this controversy about the poem in the Nation is that it is so reductive and stupid, representing the spirit of our times.

Meade म्हणाले...

Shouting Thomas said...
"There's clickbait and then there's Crackbait.

I was thinking the same thing."

The best Crack bait is AllenS bait which then gives you your ShoutingThomas bait.

PROFIT!

Kate म्हणाले...

In my opinion, the Wee poem

That's all. I just really wanted to write that.

Oso Negro म्हणाले...

@ Kate - almost as good as writing the Wee folk. :)

tcrosse म्हणाले...

What about the Wee oeuvre, like, as a genre?

Phil 314 म्हणाले...

You all called it Crackbait yet it’s Rhardin who’s got the hook we’ll embedding in his cheek.

Who needs trolls anyway?

William म्हणाले...

It's probably best for any white writer interested in posterity to avoid writing about black people altogether. Henry James probably got a lot of things wrong about wealthy American expatriates, but who cares. He stayed in his lane. Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel was a contributing factor towards the Civil War and, according to some historians, the reason why England did not favor the Confederacy during that war. It was the most successful piece of agitprop ever written. Makes no difference. She didn't stay in her lane. Her hero, Uncle Tom, lacked Nat Turner's commitment to freedom and outrage at the wrongs he had suffered. To the dustbin for both you and your creation. Nat Turner is the only acceptable Negro slave, and only black writers can write about him.......Who knows? Maybe future generations will give more honor to Suge Knight than to Louis Armstrong. Stranger things have happened.

Hagar म्हणाले...

I take it that "Ol' Man River" is quite unacceptable now?

Ralph L म्हणाले...

The whole Showboat is, Hagar.

अनामित म्हणाले...

"Gay's message is the one that will stick. What white writer would read all this and decide anything other than just to stay in your lane as Gay instructed?"

A good one. No writer of talent who isn't a coward would be taking writing advice from a cliché-ejecting bug like Gay. ("Stay in your lane". The ability bugthinkers to make a metaphor go stale within 48 hours is impressive.)

"And what writer would choose a project that entails the incessant inhibition of gunning for that approval?"

One who had balls. You know, the courage to do that "challenging" thing that progs are always babbling on about when promoting mediocrities and purveyors of groupthink? One who isn't afraid to be provocative in the normal sense of the word, instead of just "provocative", in the prog sense.

Ralph L म्हणाले...

I ain’t in no ways tired!

If you don't get the incantation right, the spell won't work.
I don't feel no ways tired

Shouting Thomas म्हणाले...

. What white writer would read all this and decide anything other than just to stay in your lane as Gay instructed?"?

The writing biz, like all arts oriented biz, doesn't pay shit. You want to duke it out ferociously over no pay? Go to it.

Ralph L म्हणाले...

I read that every soloist but Pearl Bailey was dubbed in Carmen Jones. Even Belafonte couldn't hit the notes in the Flower Song. The movie is a good soft opening to opera.

Sam L. म्हणाले...

Cultural appropriation is abominable, horrible, no-good, and absolutely VERBOTEN to white people, or anyone who might look white. The HORROR!!!! The horror...

Fernandinande म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
HT म्हणाले...

Life is short, and I am not going to get hung up on this debate. I know white writers who get it exactly right. I'm moving on.

Now, about Roxanne Gay -- For a long time, I’ve been wanting to read her book Hunger, and finally I did. Out of all those pages, there are perhaps 15 excellent paragraphs. The rest is repetitive and she was in bad need of an editor, herself. She definitely has something to say, but she also has a LOT more work to do. Seems she's shoving things out to market too quickly.

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

Tommy Duncan said...

"Must the world be seen only through the prism of pervasive racism?"

Ask whatever white ancestors set this regime up.

"If I wrote a novel with black characters and messed up the black dialog am I a racist? Or am I just bad at black vernacular?"

Probably the latter. Did you mess it up on purpose? To ridicule? Or are you just clueless or graceless? That's what tells the tale.

"Or am I racist for even attempting to employ black vernacular?"

Nah. There's white guys happily working the black side of the street, without all y'all's problems with it, with Louis CK's Pootie Tang coming to mind as an example of someone "white" (Louis CK, who's actually Mexican) making fun of how blacks talk, without offending a single black person I know. Bill Burr does it, too.

Y'all really have to ask YOURSELVES, not only what you're doing wrong, but why....

Meade म्हणाले...

"You all called it Crackbait yet it’s Rhardin who’s got the hook we’ll embedding in his cheek.

Wrong. This blog is strictly catch-and-release. Besides, one does not catch a wiley old lunker cat like rhhardin with a hook. It's strictly noodling or nothing.

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...
ही टिप्पणी लेखकाना हलविली आहे.
The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

Meade said...

"The best Crack bait is AllenS bait which then gives you your ShoutingThomas bait.

PROFIT!"

DING! DING! DING!

mockturtle म्हणाले...

Angle-Dyne at 8:33: Brilliantly stated. Your mind is like a samurai sword--sharp, swift and deadly.

Shouting Thomas म्हणाले...

Y'all really have to ask YOURSELVES, not only what you're doing wrong, but why....

I'm quite comfortably retired, I live in a three generation household on top of a beautiful mountain with my grandkids and my daugher and her husband, and I've started a new career as an accompanist backing classical choral groups.

Maybe you're a little confused about the very concept of "doing wrong." You're the guy who's miserable.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

"The reality is that when most black African Americans of Color use Standard American English they do so badly**. They do so without understanding that it is a language with rules. Instead, they use SAE to denote that they be a "scholar" of "studies" because they understand whiteness as a monolith. Framing whiteness as monolithic is racist. It is lazy and I am lazy."

**True fact!

Otto म्हणाले...

Ann with all the recent wayward racists comments at this site, why did you chose this subject?
You are just causing clickbait on racism.
Simple solution to all this bs on black language - have a group of black linguists experts write a reference book on proper black language usage.

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

Otto said...

"Simple solution to all this bs on black language - have a group of black linguists experts write a reference book on proper black language usage."

Great idea. I can't wait to see the entry for "Who do'd it?"

Jaq म्हणाले...

The Nation's readers, to their credit, objected to the apology in the comments, which are limited to subscribers.

William म्हणाले...

I recently read the Chernow biography of Washington. Washington owned a number of slaves. Some of them fled for freedom when they got the chance. Most of them did not. According to our present sentiments, we wish to honor those slaves who made the break and denigrate those who did not. I think we're reading too much of our own values onto denizens of a different era.....The moral value that most people honor with the greatest ferocity is their continued survival, but that's not the stuff of poetry. Many black people freely chose slavery because that option offered the great st chance of survival. Many white people served out their indenture for similar reasons......Ponder Billy Lee. He was Washington's personal valet and a slave. He was a man of considerable courage. He rode right beside Washington in some heated battles and never flinched. And yet, when the opportunity arose, he never once opted for freedom. If there's a spectrum with Uncle Tom at one end and Nat Turner at the other, Billy Lee would definitely be on the Uncle Tom end of that spectrum......Billy Lee according to the ethos of his era was a brave and honorable man. I just don't think it's possible for any writer, black or white, of our current moment to understand who Billy Lee truly was, and it's probably best to not even try.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

When Americans of pallor try to make links using google software, they do so badly: True fact!

Mike Sylwester म्हणाले...

The TCM cable channel recently showed the 1975 movie Mandingo. I had read most of the novel, and so I watched the movie with interest. I thought the move was quite good.

I wrote that I read only most of the novel, because it is very long and because all the dialogue is in the dialect spoken in Southern plantations before the Civil War.

The same dialect was spoken during the movie, and so I turned on the subtitles in order to understand all the dialogue.

The Mandingo story is interesting because it depicts Negro slave women wanting to have sexual relations with their Caucasian masters, who in turn are romantically fond of their female slaves.

Ralph L म्हणाले...

why did you chose this subject?

To wear people out?

Shouting Thomas म्हणाले...

You're a fucking mess and you want to play Messiah, Crack.

This is not a syndrome that only afflicts black men. I have a nephew who lived for 20 years in my mom's basement. According to him, he was a misunderstood genius.

He finally landed a job when he was 45 and got the scratch together to move out of Mom's basement.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

To paraphrase Shaw, those who can, do. Those who can't, whine.

Breezy म्हणाले...

I am reminded of that Facebook ad touting some magical potion that, taken daily, deflates fat without changing any bad habit. The fat is the rich history of life gone before, the potion is the shaming of it, effectively reducing it and leaving us hollow.

Sebastian म्हणाले...

"What white writer would read all this and decide anything other than just to stay in your lane as Gay instructed?"

One of those brave, speak-truth-to-power kind of writers who thinks the purpose of art is to make people uncomfortable?

"The key insight is that you get money by causing white people to think about who they are and to be motivated to give you money because they were made to think that the person who gives you money is the person they want to be . . . Is the main problem that the white poet had the nerve to appropriate a black voice or is it that he portrayed black people as pathetic and conniving? Or is it that he portrayed white people helping black people as a matter of white narcissism?"

The poem allows for different answers. But the deeper reason for the hostility is that it exposes the logic of the shakedown at the heart of prog racial politics. It demeans all involved, it denigrates the dignity of the people who are being helped and of the people helping, it is fundamentally morally corrupt and commits both sides to moral corruption as a matter of principle. Of course, many white progs and blacks race-baiters can live with that--they have no souls to lose. But some do, and can't.

"who would take the risk? And what writer would choose a project that entails the incessant inhibition of gunning for that approval?"

A writer who doesn't give a damn about that approval. Maybe a Russian visitor.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

Otto said...Simple solution to all this bs on black language - have a group of black linguists experts write a reference book on proper black language usage.

Ax an' ye shall 'ceive!

The Linguistic Society of America, Unanimously Adopted:

"1. The variety known as "Ebonics," "African American Vernacular English" (AAVE), and "Vernacular Black English" and by other names is systematic and rule-governed like all natural speech varieties. In fact, all human linguistic systems -- spoken, signed, and written -- are fundamentally regular. The systematic and expressive nature of the grammar and pronunciation patterns of the African American vernacular has been established by numerous scientific studies over the past thirty years. Characterizations of Ebonics as "slang," "mutant," "lazy," "defective," "ungrammatical," or "broken English" are incorrect and demeaning."

2. The distinction between "languages" and "dialects" also has a whole buncha words.

3. As affirmed in the LSA Statement of Language Rights they talk about diversity and the rights of groups to talk bad English because it's not really bad if the right group is doing it. But not those other groups because diversity.

4. There is evidence from Sweden that Latvians don't talk good Ebonics or good Engrish either.

Ralph L म्हणाले...

one does not catch a wiley old lunker cat like rhhardin with a hook. It's strictly noodling or nothing.

I didn't think rhhardin and canoodling went together, but noodling is:

"A form of fishing in which a crazy person runs into a lake and searches for holes on the bottom with his foot. Then he inserts his finger into the hole and lets something bite it. Hopefully, it's a catfish. If so, he wrestles the catfish to the surface and drags it to shore. If its not a catfish, he may lose his finger to a snapping turtle or his life to a water moccasin." -- Urban dictionary, which then uses noodling with your dong in a sentence.

Meade म्हणाले...

"Simple solution to all this bs on black language - have a group of black linguists experts write a reference book on proper black language usage."

Great idea. I can't wait to see the entry for "Who do'd it?"

Heh.

"We Axed A Group Of Black Linguists Experts Who Do'd It. You Won't Believe The 11 Jive-Talk'n Answers They Came Back With!"

tcrosse म्हणाले...

De Gustibus ain't what it used to be.

Michael म्हणाले...

Years ago I taught in an historically black college in the Deep South. English. As an experiment I had a class put together a glossary of slang words they used. I had a friend on the West Coast teaching in a predominately black high school who asked his students to compile a glossary of their slang. We swapped glossaries. Neither group could translate the glossary of the other.

Fernandinande म्हणाले...

Fortunately these guys also have signs in Ebonics so normal people don't have unpleasant surprises:

"And a happy "Bááh ti kanì'ál'ìnì to you, too, sir!"

Ann Althouse म्हणाले...

@Angle-Dyne, Angelic Buzzard 8:33

You're answering my questions with abstractions that are essentially restatements of my questions. Yes, obviously, I already said it would take a lot of courage. But show me the actual person who makes this choice. Even if you are an excellent writer and completely brave and a big risk taker, why would you, if you are white, choose to depict black characters that spoke in AAVE? You'd have to have a strong desire to pick this topic and believe that it was important for you — you and not someone else — to write it and to want to write that instead of something else that's more related to your life. Who is in that category now?

I think if the pressure were different and white writers were being urged to be inclusive and to show black people who are distinctly different from white people, then excellent writers would try to do it even if it took nerve because you might do it badly, you might have some "flubs." But where white writers are told not to do it, now what is the motivation? Maybe the fear that you'll be told you just write about white people, but we're positing a courageous writer. With courage, you can just write what you know, write about yourself.

Lloyd W. Robertson म्हणाले...

John Kennedy Toole, in his great New Orleans novel, "A Confederacy of Dunces," has an African-American character, Burma Jones, who speaks dialect, pointing out the injustice of his situation yet getting laughs. The only excerpt I can find online:

“Hey! All you peoples draggin along here. Stop and come stick your ass on a Night of Joy stool," he started again. "Night of Joy got genuine color peoples workin below the minimal wage. Whoa! Guarantee plantation atmosphere, got cotton growin right on the stage right in front your eyeball, got a civil right worker gettin his ass beat up between show. Hey!”

This says something negative about white people who enjoy being entertained by low-paid blacks; it has something in common with the "Nation" poem. There is even something about the fashionable or progressive attempt at authenticity without appropriation.

Evelyn Waugh did something similar with a (white) country bumpkin in "Scoop." There is a clear superiority of the writer and audience over the "dialect" character: I don't envy this person, and he would be the first to say: you'd be a fool to envy me. Yet they have something to say--probably even a wisdom that the superior people don't have. The fear of "appropriation" may lead to a discouragement of the belief that people in different "bubbles" can learn from each other.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

John Kennedy Toole, in his great New Orleans novel, "A Confederacy of Dunces," has an African-American character, Burma Jones, who speaks dialect, pointing out the injustice of his situation yet getting laughs.

Great novel. Really, IMO, one of the great American novels. And not even a tinge of political propagandizing. Just brilliant writing and a really weird plot.

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

Meade said...

"We Axed..."

ROTFLMAO!!!!

HT म्हणाले...

Hated CoD. Hated it. Does not ring true, atall.

Ann, perhaps black writers are doing what you are asking, these days, not white.

Mike Sylwester म्हणाले...

A lot of old movies have scenes where Caucasians perform songs in blackface.

In particular, a lot of the movies starring Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney feature such performances. The characters prepare a song-and-dance show and then perform it at the movie's end. The show includes the Caucasians characters doing a blackface performance.

The blackface performances were respectful of Negro artistry. The reasoning was:

* We Whites cannot do Negro song and dance as well as Negros can do it

* We do not have any Negroes available to perform this number in our amateur show

* We Whites will approximate Negro music and dance as well as we can

* The blackface makeup demonstrates that we obviously are just Whites approximating Negroes, whose artistry we respect.

That was how movie audiences understood the blackface performances. They understood that the blackface was not mockery, but rather was respectful.

Keep in mind that American society was segregated even in the North. If some teenagers (e.g. Garland and Rooney) wanted to put on an amateur show, they did not have any Negro entertainers available to include in their amateur show. In those circumstances, the best that the Caucasian teenagers could do was to perform a number in blackface.

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com म्हणाले...

I think this black english thing is bullshit.

I lived and worked closely with a number of black guys in the late 60s and early 70s in the Navy. A cross section from all over the US. I remember a lot of different accents and ways of talking but I remember that of the white guys too. I do not remember "black english". I remember them speaking within the range of normal English.

Living in Puerto Rico I don't have a lot of daily contact with blacks (black Puerto Ricans are common but speak Spanish) I do spend time in industrial plants across the country and at trade shows so I do see and interact with a number of blacks at various levels from operator to executive. I don't notice anything out of the ordinary with their English, either.

I've met white people from the deep, rural, south and they seem to speak much like the black English. Less now due to TV's homogenization of language in the US but it used to be more pronounced.

If you listen to black performers, Motown artists for example, in interviews from the 60s they spoke normal English. Yes, I know that Gordy trained them in how to appear and so on but still...

It seems to me that black English and the promotion of black English is a tool to keep blacks on the fascist plantation. It is not particularly useful for communicating much more than fairly simple ideas. If one wants to participate in society, one must be able to communicate with society. If one can't talk, and write, one can't communicate.

This keeps them on the plantation where they can be chow for the poverty pimps and do-gooders and the whole grievance industry. That may be a reason for the fear of President Trump. Get these folks working and they not going to need these parasites anymore.

John Henry

bagoh20 म्हणाले...

Those lanes were not laid down by God, but by men, and maybe men of limited vision. If nobody ever left their lane, we would only have one. It would be crowded and worn out. Be brave enough to break out on a new path, and humble enough to turn back if it leads to the abyss. The rest of us need your new wonderful paths. Welcome all to share your path without restriction by race or some other phony divider.

I'm looking for the path to the gun range, where all men of good will are welcome.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

I'm looking for the path to the gun range, where all men of good will are welcome.

And women, too, I hope. ;-)

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent म्हणाले...

The White Left has always believed that Blacks are children. It’s hardly surprising that they’ve convinced (well, bribed) a certain number of Blacks to echo the insistence that they remain children.

buwaya म्हणाले...

An interest in other societies, as in an active, popular interest, is very much a "white" European thing. There has been very little of it in Asia even now, and in the past was limited to scholarly circles - the exception is quite recent, in the copying of western technology and systems in order to achieve modernity.

In Japan there has been some romanticisation of Europe recently, you see quite a lot of it in Miyazaki, but that is very new.

But any other thing - no.

Its not often noted, that from very early on the colonialists were interested in documenting languages, creating dictionaries, collecting and preserving literature of every human group they could. The ammassed material is tremendous, and is why its usually necessary to go somewhere in Europe to research this stuff. In many cases the colonialists laid the groundwork for native language written literatures, by creating a written form of the language in the first place.

A piece of literature trying to depict an alien person accurately is a western thing. The first case may be in Cervantes, where he famously has his bellicose Basque speak in dialect.

अनामित म्हणाले...

AA: You're answering my questions with abstractions that are essentially restatements of my questions. Yes, obviously, I already said it would take a lot of courage.

You already said "take a lot of courage" *in the context* of "the class of writers who take the culture-policers seriously". But there's nothing more, let alone interesting, to say about any writer in that context. What I said wasn't an abstraction, it was a straightforward, correct answer to yours. You're going round and round as if there was something interesting and complex to say about "the motivations" of American writers c. 2018 operating under the stultifying dictates of the sub-mediocre minds of the culture-policers. There's nothing interesting going on until one of 'em (with talent and something to say) is "motivated" enough to ignore them. That writer exists or he doesn't.

But show me the actual person who makes this choice.Even if you are an excellent writer and completely brave and a big risk taker, why would you, if you are white, choose to depict black characters that spoke in AAVE? You'd have to have a strong desire to pick this topic and believe that it was important for you — you and not someone else — to write it and to want to write that instead of something else that's more related to your life.

Well, duh, Althouse. It's all an abstraction until somebody does it. "It" being a talented writer with something to say that requires the use of "AAVE" to get it said.

And I have no idea what you mean by "more related to [that writer's life]". Are you saying that the use of black characters by white writers automatically indicates that he's writing about something that isn't "related to [his own] life", that there is nothing "important to [him]" that necessarily involves the use of black characters?

I think if the pressure were different and white writers were being urged to be inclusive and to show black people who are distinctly different from white people, then excellent writers would try to do it even if it took nerve because you might do it badly, you might have some "flubs." But where white writers are told not to do it, now what is the motivation?

There isn't one, for white writers who obey when they are "told not to do it". There isn't one, for good writers who don't really have anything to say that would require writing black characters who use "AAVE". There isn't one, for good writers who do, but who don't have the balls to do it.

These aren't complicated questions.

अनामित म्हणाले...

mock @8:50 AM:

Thanks for the nice compliment. Time to change my username to "Angle-Dyne, Samurai Buzzard".

mockturtle म्हणाले...

Thanks for the nice compliment. Time to change my username to "Angle-Dyne, Samurai Buzzard".

Hai! BTW, have you read any of those books yet? Taiko was my favorite--one of the most engrossing books of any kind I've ever read.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

Buwaya asserts: There has been very little of it in Asia even now, and in the past was limited to scholarly circles - the exception is quite recent, in the copying of western technology and systems in order to achieve modernity.

There was some interest by feudal Japan in European inventions, especially weaponry. The philosophy was to take what was useful without adopting the culture. A sensible attitude, I would say.

Lloyd W. Robertson म्हणाले...

Then there's Richard Pryor playing a number of different white people in "Live on the Sunset Strip." He plays himself as shiftless, speaking at least some dialect, looking to get laid. The white people are cold, methodical, doing things like medium and long-term planning. His white wife says "Richard," saying no to sex like the Ice Queen. His memory of a mobster when he was a kid includes mirthless laughter--the cold guy, probably Italian, could easily commit a murder at any time. Sarah Jeong is an 11-year old girl at summer camp by comparison.

Paco Wové म्हणाले...

"from very early on the colonialists were interested in documenting languages, creating dictionaries"

I was bummed I didn't snag my dad's copy of Hobson-Jobson when he passed on. Fascinating stuff.

Michael म्हणाले...

I don't believe Alan Jay Lerner grew up in Cockney London. Was it therefore somehow wrong for him to use the dialect in "My Fair Lady?"

The Crack Emcee म्हणाले...

PuertoRicoSpaceport.com said...

"I think this black english thing is bullshit.

I lived and worked closely with a number of black guys in the late 60s and early 70s in the Navy. A cross section from all over the US. I remember a lot of different accents and ways of talking but I remember that of the white guys too. I do not remember "black english". I remember them speaking within the range of normal English. "

That's probably because you saw them out in public. In the 60s and 70s, blacks were still highly aware of our public behavior. But the difference in private is striking.

Now that blacks are less into greeting the respectability demand with acquiescence, you're likely to hear any damn thing anywhere.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

I'm white and was married to a black man in the 60's and, unlike most urban blacks, his accent and vernacular most resembled that of Texas where he was born and raised. He was a fine horseback rider, loved fishing and was stubbornly apolitical.

William म्हणाले...

Dickens was lucky in that nearly all the people he wrote about were white. Can you imagine the flack he would catch if Bill Sykes was a black man? Or maybe Bill Sykes, instead of being the villain, would be repurposed as the hero of the story. The Nat Turner figure.....Dickens does take some lumps for Fagin, but I think the historical character on whom Fagin was based on was a great deal more evil than the character in Dickens story.

Ralph L म्हणाले...

Now that blacks are less into greeting the respectability demand with acquiescence, you're likely to hear any damn thing anywhere.

You can expand that to everyone, or are you claiming only blacks once acquiesced?

On Thursday, I tried to explain to the young owner of an auto forum site why I was bothered by his snide, condescending replies to other commenters. I usually Scroll On By (SOB) it here.

HT म्हणाले...

I mentioned to a friend from Nigeria that Teddy Roosevelt's oft-repeated mantra - speak softly and carry a big stick - was supposedly a West African saying, and he just looks at me blankly and goes, "What?" It hit no known neuron pathway in his brain.

There's so many interesting things about the various dialects in our country. African Americans, especially males, when in conversation together are not exactly speaking softly!

ccscientist म्हणाले...

So where does a poet go to get his work officially approved as "woke"? Especially when so many critics can't read properly and don't know history. If the use of authentic dialog in Mark Twain is forbidden and one may not portray another race...

Henry म्हणाले...

“know your lane,”

Swimming is kind of White. Over to you, Michael Phelps.

Henry म्हणाले...

know your lane

Henry म्हणाले...

I was making fun, but the swim lane is exactly what Roxane Gay is requesting:

Swim Lanes are a workflow diagram segmented by role responsibility. Each role is assigned a vertical column — a “swim lane” — that extends to the end of a process flow. The completion of many tasks is dependent on multiple roles performing their activity in the proper sequence, and a Swim Lane diagram can reveal a flaw in a process. Swim Lane diagrams typically are initiated in the upper left of the document and end at the lower right. The swim lanes columns assigned to roles should be allocated left to right to facilitate this orderly flow.

Who needs poetry when you have usability?

mockturtle म्हणाले...

I will continue to feel free to appropriate whatever culture I choose to appropriate in whatever manner I wish. There is no patent on culture.

Gahrie म्हणाले...

I think this black english thing is bullshit.

Ebonics is not Black English. It is merely a form of slang used by a population to reject mainstream values. It is just one of a whole slew of poor choices made by the Black community in the last 50 years.

HT म्हणाले...

"Ebonics is not Black English. It is merely a form of slang used by a population to reject mainstream values."

Now that there, that's bullshit.

mockturtle म्हणाले...

The term 'Black community' is as ridiculous as 'White community'. Or 'The Women's Vote'. While it is true that some will exploit their, or other's, ethnic/racial/gender identity for political gain, there are many more who do not. The media ignore them, of course.

Marcus म्हणाले...

Althouse: With courage, you can just write what you know, write about yourself.

I am a writer. Are you telling me to stay in my lane? That's cowardice, not courage. I don't need to know everything about a subject to write about it in something we call FICTION.

Martin म्हणाले...

This is the death of art.

The only thing that might be safe is a photo of our face with no makeup or jewelry, because clothes, makeup, or other adornment will be seen by someone as cultural appropriation, and nudity (no conebody, somewhere.

Music is always cultural appropriation, you just have to squint enough and it'll be there.

No literature, no music, no plastic art, no nothing. All that's left is a photo of your unadorned face, without any comment.