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"You Sound White."


Ever been accused of sounding like a whole different race because of the way you speak? No, not like you have a slight British, or English accent and people confuse your nationality, but a completely different race. Something I’ve noticed a few years back is that blacks/hispanics in the US have a culture of when a black/hispanic person speaks proper English, he is often told that he sounds white as a compliment.

Well, it's really not a compliment. Here's a couple reasons why. 1. Proper English doesn’t belong to any one race. Telling a person he sounds white because of the way he speaks not only suggests that only white people speak proper English, but it also makes it seems like that individual is trying to distance himself from his own race. Because why else would he try to sound white? [rhetorical question]. Why can’t a black or latino person speak well and just stay black or latino?

2. It reinforces a negative stereotype → People in urban neighborhoods love using slang. I believe that their is nothing wrong with using it, and actually, I argue that it’s pretty creative. However, for the most part, our society still associates slang with lower-class and lower education. And because a disproportionate amount of minorities are living in poverty in the US…..well, I think you should be able to connect the dots now.

B. It also reinforces it internationally! We all know that in the past, the media in the US hasn’t always been kind to the minorities. So just imagine the ideas that have been planted in the minds of the people who have seen these misleading films, tv shows and news. And of course, that includes the portrayal in the manner in which minorities speak (loud, aggressive, etc).

I’ve witness this personally. In September 2017, I left the US to study Mandarin in Taiwan for nine months.I remember more than one Taiwanese friend asked me why I don’t speak like the other black people back in the US. Some asked me if slang was only used by the people with a lower education or people from the “hood” because that it what they were taught to believe. One of them tells me that although slang is associated with less education, he thought it would be cool to learn and asked me to teach him. Another friend thought I lived in the suburbs and not the inner cities.I will never forget this one friend during a taxi ride seriously ask me what does mean Snoop Dogg when he says " Fo-shizzle, my nizzle," haha!

[S/N: They we’re all from a honest place asked about the stereotypes they were introduced to and they did their due diligence by asking me to set things straight.]

3. I honestly believe this is toxic to the black community as a whole overall. Think deeply about this for a second. What exactly are you trying to say about the black culture, when you tell a brother that? Brothers and sisters can’t be known for speaking well? It seems to me that we’re telling ourselves that if your want to obtain a certain level of high level form of communication, you must try to sound white?

Just for clarification, I believe it’s okay for people to share similarities or compare between races. However, my personal beef with this is that compliment, is that it’s rooted in a negative stereotype for minorities. And of course, there is a deeper historical reasons as to how these stereotype came about, but my goal in this post is just to draw the attention of the folks who have used this “compliment” in the past to think twice before they reuse it again.

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