Akosua Osei

Writing For the Social Sciences 21002

Alyssa Yankwitt

5/4/22

Hood Rat

As a young Black woman in today’s America, there are many things in which I can and cannot do. I can walk outside freely but must watch the way I walk and carry myself so that no one will feel threatened by my presence and call the police. As a Ghanaian American living in New York, I find myself being wary of telling people where I come from to avoid stereotypical slurs. As someone who has an accent and uses AAVE (African American Vernacular English), I often find myself code-switching to avoid judgement and being denied opportunities. Not being able to speak what people would describe as Standard American English should not be a reason as to why a person should be stereotyped. Because of the prevalence of AAVE in this country, it’s acknowledgment as an official language is overdue and necessary.

Exposed

As a Black woman growing up in America, my mom always reminded me that I am different from my peers at school, majority being white, upper-class children of well to do families. Coming from a Ghanaian home, I was familiarized to hearing both Twi (the language that my tribe/family speaks) and English, I wasn’t exposed to AAVE. Examples of AAVE in America’s society are found in Melanie Hines Knapp’s dissertation “African American Vernacular English (AAVE) In the Classroom: The Attitudes and Ideologies of Urban Educators Toward AAVE”, “Dropping the third person singular s, as in he do for he does. Some of the phonological features include the absence of r-, such as doe for door and the absence of -g, as in goin’ for going (Rickford & Rickford, 2000).” (Knapp, 2015) My parents hated hearing it with the assumption that only “gangstas”, “ghetto” people, people who don’t come from good homes or “hood rats” spoke like this and did not want their daughter to speak like that. This however is not just something that my parents and family members believed in but is a common belief across America. In their article ““Sounding Black”: Speech Stereotypicality Activates Racial Stereotypes and Expectations About Appearance”, Kurinec and Weaver spoke about AAVE and the discrimination that the speakers face in America. “Speakers of AAVE are seen as less competent, less sociable, less professional, less educated, and of poorer character than speakers of more standard American English…individuals show a greater implicit association between weapons and AAVE speakers than more standard speakers (Rosen, 2017), suggesting that stereotypes about criminality and violence, often associated with Black Americans, are also linked to AAVE speakers” (Kurinec and Weaver, 2021). When I was in the 5^th grade, there was a sharp increase of Black students enrolling in my school. It felt good to have people who resembled me but realized that they had contradicting traits. I realized that my Black peers spoke like the “the “hood rat” people my parents despised and from there, I was exposed.

In the Dark

My white classmates and I had attended private schools before enrolling into what people called “an Ivy public school” whilst my “hood rat” peers either came from poorer school districts and have recently moved or went to school on the other side of town which was the opposite of our school: unkept and disregarded. “Race, Class, and Disproportionality: Reevaluating the Relationship between Poverty and Special Education Placement” by Carla O’Connor and Sonia DeLuca talked about discrimination against students from socioeconomic status and speakers of AAVE reporting that white middle-class children are the standard of what a child should perform and behave in school which is structured so that they would get the upper hand whilst disadvantaged minority kids are monitored and demonstrate academic problems (DeLuca and O’Connor, 2006). It was normalized that at my school that every new student who fit the criteria of a “hood rat” was subjected to redundant testing and scrutinization. As the “hood rats” assimilated into our school, teachers began to view my “hood rat friends” and I in a negative way because of the way we spoke. Subtle microaggressions took place in our classroom with teachers asking us do we think we can get into college or being left out of classes which were “high-performing students” when we were more than capable of handling the work, which affected our grades and how we perceived ourselves. After years of being told that I was a talented and brilliant student, I was now being told that my performance was mediocre, and I can certainly do better. Reports from Salih’s dissertation on AAVE and the achievement gap revealed that AAVE-speaking students were painted in a negative light by their teachers and if a teacher perceives a student’s language negatively, this can also affect the student’s performance and self-esteem (Salih, 2019).

 

Time for a change

With all of this, I do think AAVE should be accepted as a language in society and          should be integrated into America’s educational system. Not only does it enable Black students to feel more comfortable in the way that they speak, but it can also help bridge the gap of students who are academically underperforming. DeLuca and O’Connor elaborated on this point in “Race, Class, and Disproportionality: Reevaluating the Relationship between Poverty and Special Education Placement”, stating that “Thus, for example, if African American Vernacular English became the standard discourse in U.S. schools…proficient speakers of AAVE would find themselves recharacterized as academically competent and highly literate.” (DeLuca and O’Connor, 2006).  This would help millions of Black students who are seen as less intelligent than their white counterparts.

 

Conclusion

            What me and my peers experienced at our tender ages is not something anyone should experience regardless of their age and because of the way that they talk. Language is anything but a barrier and should not be used as tool for intelligence. With the acknowledgment and acceptance of the misunderstood dialect of AAVE, it can lead a path of equality into our society that the people have been begging for.