Black people talk differently at work than at home

I get it. In your work environment, you have a standard of English that you expect all people to live up to. I am from Brooklyn and spent my entire High School experience trying to talk “white”. Notice I did not say proper English, I said “white.” Why did I say white? White is what we called it in our culture during the time of the 80s. It was not a derogatory term, but it was the way it was.

Both of my parents were school teachers with the Board of Education for 30 years until they retired. My mother taught English (31 years) and my Father taught Special Education (30 years). They talked perfect English in class and broken English at home. Sometimes, I speak well. Sometimes, I do not.

Many of us black people live in a world of identity switching.

We have to know what to say when encountering a police officer. We have to know how to speak at an interview, so we can blend in. We have to know what to say when we hear racial and offensive jargon in our workplace meetings, restrooms, and lunchrooms. I marvel that you do not.

I add this context for you, not for me. As a black man, our guard is always up. We find it imperative to add context before any point we wish to make, and it shouldn’t be. What you and some others are missing from this wonderful article is understanding.

For example, many of my friends from Nigeria migrate to America, write and speak better English. Why? Because they were not descendants of slaves in this country and denied formal education. However, Nigerians English is a dialect of their native language and English. During the period of pre-and-post colonialism, they were taught by European missionaries the king’s English. But even in their teaching, Nigerians native languages cause adjustments on their phonological variables. Words like boys are pronounced as boyz. Words like expect are pronounced as expext. Similar to ask vs. ax. I suggest that unbeknownst to us, the pronunciation of ask/ax is an underlying spiritual outpouring of African American’s native heritage (like on Pentecost — ok, I am a theologian too).

Oh, here he goes with an excuse for bad English. (I studied Kione Greek while in seminary, and Mark’s Gospel, is a broken dialect of Greek. The translators did wonders on cleaning up his Greek language and we still read it today.)

Much of our dialect as black people is due to what we have heard in our family through oral tradition. My grandmother didn’t finish 3rd grade. I can talk about her because she recently died. We cannot act like the effects of slavery, systemic racism, and educational inequality was so long ago that it does not still have an impact.

Everywhere I went people said, you talk good English. Why, because I sounded white. When I went to my family reunions and at family gatherings, my family would say, you talk “white”.

So where does a black person who speaks well fit in, without being told you speak well or white?

I do not take it as a compliment on any front because it takes a lot of effort to do it everyday at work due to my oral tradition. I have not heard in my professional corporate career someone say to a white person, “you speak well”.

As soon as black people begin to let their guard down, oral tradition kicks in. The most common complaint or correction from white people is our pronunciation of the word “ask”. For further reading, here is an article that explains why our “ask” sounds like “ax” in the black community.

I share this for understanding, not for condemnation.

A quote from the article:

“Yet nothing can stop people from hearing “ax” as illiterate, which makes the word a small tragedy in its way. When a black speaker gets the most comfortable, the most articulate, the most herself — that is exactly when she is likely to slide in an “ax” for “ask.” Immediately she sounds ignorant to any nonblack person who hears her, not to mention to quite a few black ones.”

I understand why you are cringing, and a chill goes through your spine. Take a moment to understand culture. It is not your place to correct our oral tradition unless your ways are higher than our ways. Why does it make you uncomfortable? Is it because we should be like you? Should our schools have taught us better? Did we have your teachers in the classroom, in the home, in our family? I think not.

Oh, but if I could just use better English, I would get the promotion. Wonder why black people hardly open up unless provoked? It takes a lot of work to maintain corporate white English(or to be “on”) all day at work. As soon as we get a little relaxed or caught off guard, you will hear an “ax” slip out instead of an ask.

I will continue to struggle with my internal tension of sounding “white,” not because I am trying to fit in, but because I am trying to open a door for those who did not have the luxury of being taught by two educators in the house. When I go to my church, ahh, I can exhale. The head of the usher board, Ms. Berry is a school teacher and she corrects my English from time to time. How does she do it? She does it with love and grace. She is not dangling a promotion over my head, nor threating my job. She knows when to and when not to do it. She has a keen sense of discernment. On Sunday’s however, the majority of the time, she takes her teacher hat off, and we talk as freely, broken and authentic as we want.

I am used to switching up, so tomorrow at my job, I will be on my game 100%. Well, not 100, maybe 85. No one should have to switch identities in small linguistic matters unless they want to. If a black person likes you and they slip an ax instead of ask, take it as a compliment. You might be on a friend level.

This is an expanded response to Tom who cringed when a black employee (in this article), pronounced the word “ask” like “ax.”