What if Reid had said "Southern" dialect instead of "Negro" dialect?

[Winterblues]

Would there still be calls for him to step down. Southern is not a derogatory term but it appears Republicans are saying Negro is one..Are they truly7 that stupid?

[tekisui]

1. What is a Negro dialect? I know what a Southern dialect is.

It was a stupid thing to say. Let's try to move on, instead of defending stupidity.

[Captain Hilts]

2. It's a subset of a Southern dialect. nt

[alsame]

8. Professor Dyson just said exactly that on MSNBC. nt

[Captain Hilts]

9. It's added so much to our language. "You go, girl!" for example. nt

[Romulox]

10. So what "dialect" do African Americans in Detroit speak? Detroit isn't "Southern"...

:shrug: :hi:

[Captain Hilts]

11. Correct, but so many Southerners moved to Detroit during WWII to work in the

factories. So, they're fairly recent immigrants there, and were resented for diluting the workforce.

There were horrible racial riots in Detroit over access to housing during WWII. That just doesn't get mentioned in the history books.

Katharine Hepburn, for example, is a Yankee, but her father was from VA, so her language had a lot of Southernisms.

[Romulox]

12. OK. But I think it's more complicated than that.

"So, they're fairly recent immigrants there"

Absolutely no more so than the more numerous white cohort which made the same move at the same time (from which I myself descend...) And yet nobody suggests that the way I speak is a "Southern Dialect". What's different?

"Katharine Hepburn, for example, is a Yankee, but her father was from VA, so her language had a lot of Southernisms."

A running joke here in Michigan is to append "tucky" (as in Kentucky) on the end of city names to signify the number of "rednecks" who live there--e.g. "Taylor-tucky".

So I am aware of what you speak. Still, I think calling "Ebonics" or "African American Vernacular" a "Southern Dialect" is too simplistic--it simply doesn't fit the fact that a critical mass of the speakers of this dialect haven't set foot in the South for 2 or 3 generations.

[Captain Hilts]

13. I agree with that. It's a generalization that doesn't work so well any more. David Aldrich

said on the Kornheiser show very much the same thing. He said it's a dated way to think and an offshoot of "they all look alike."

[KamaAina]

20. Did you hear about the hillbillies who drove up to Hazel Park?

They saw a sign that said "Hazel Park: Left".

So they turned around and went back to Kentucky. :P

[Bucky]

7. You say "stupidity" but linguists say "African American Vernacular English"

from some professor's website

What is AAVE?

AAVE is a form of American English spoken primarily by African Americans. Although an AAVE speaker's dialect may exhibit regional variation, there are still many salient features. The speaker's ideolect could contain all or only a few of these features.

Where did it come from?

There are two main hypotheses about the origin of AAVE. One is the dialect hypothesis and the other is the creole hypothesis. The dialect hypothesis is the belief that African slaves, upon arriving in the United States, picked up English very slowly and learned it incorrectly, and that these mistakes have been passed down through generations. In other words, AAVE is just "bad English." The creole hypothesis, however, maintains that modern AAVE is the result of a creole derived from English and various West African Languages. Slaves, who spoke many different West African languages, were often thrown together during their passage to the New World. To be able to communicate in some fashion they developed a pidgin by applying English and some West African vocabulary to the familiar grammar rules of their native tongue. This pidgin was passed on to future generations, and as soon as it became the primary language of it's speakers it is classified as a creole. Over the years AAVE has gone through the process of decreolization and is beginning to sound more like Standard English.

What's wrong with AAVE?

Absolutely nothing. The biggest problem that AAVE speakers face is prejudice. Most people believe that AAVE is sub-standard to SE for some reason. AAVE is just as legitimate as American English. Because of this prejudice there is a big push in the African American community to be bidialectal -- fluent in both Standard English and AAVE.

This, in a nutshell, is what Harry Reid was talking about. Of course he did it stupidly, but there's a legitimate concern about prejudiced backlash from voters.

[Captain Hilts]

3. It's so stupid on so many levels I have to take off my shoes to count them. nt

[Enrique]

4. Sen. Voinovich did say that, recently

I can tell you how I reacted, I laughed my ass off. "errrr, errrr" :rofl:

http://blog.dispatch.com/dailybriefing/2009/07/look_out_gov_the_exgov_is_comi.shtml

-The GOP’s biggest problem? “We got too many Jim DeMints (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburns (R-Ok.). It’s the southerners. They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr.' People hear them and say, ‘These people, they’re southerners. The party’s being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?’ ”

[JVS]

6. Sweet!

[katyinhaiti]

17. Racist vs Non-Racist

These days, it’s difficult for normal people to determine what counts as a racist remark and what doesn’t. (For instance, the preferred PC term for a non-white individual is “person of color,” but if you accidentally transpose the words and say “colored person,” you’re racist.) Therefore, in the wake of the Harry Reid flap, I’ve decided to provide my readers with a handy racist vs. not-racist chart.

Not racist: Reid saying Barack Obama was an appealing black candidate because of his “light skin” and his lack of a “negro dialect.” Fellow Democrats have rallied around him, and Obama accepted Reid’s apology, citing his commitment to “social justice.”

Racist: Hillary Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro saying Obama was a more appealing candidate because he is black. In the face of relentless hectoring from liberals and black activists, Ferraro resigned from the Clinton campaign. (And she didn’t even use the word “negro.”)

Not racist: Chris Dodd praising fellow Democrat and former Klansmen Robert Byrd, saying he “would have been a great senator at any moment”--including, presumably, when he was running around West Virginia in a white hood. Dodd apologized for his “poor choice of words,” and with that, the subject was dropped.

Racist: Trent Lott praising fellow Republican and former segregationist Strom Thurmond, saying if Thurmond had been President, America wouldn’t have had “all these problems.” Lott was forced to resign as Senate majority leader despite his repeated apologies.

Not racist: The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee obtaining a copy of black Republican Michael Steele’s credit report. (Because all black people have bad credit, didn’t you know?) Although the Democrats denied race had anything to do with it, Steele was the only candidate targeted.

Racist: A Republican ad in which a ditzy white woman says she met biracial Democrat Harold Ford “at the Playboy party.” Ford admitted to attending the party, and no normal person could figure out why the ad was racist. But according to liberals, Americans have a deep-seated fear of biracial men dating white women…or something.

Not racist: Cartoonists depicting Condoleezza Rice as a slave, a “house ni**a,” and a parakeet perched on Bush’s shoulder—often with stereotypical dialect and exaggerated black lips.

Racist: Cartoonist Sean Delonas comparing Obama to a chimpanzee.

Not racist: The media pointlessly obsessing over the skin tone of Republican governor and Indian-American Bobby Jindal—although the jury was out on whether he was “moderately dark-skinned” (The Associated Press) or just plain old “dark-skinned” (The LA Times).

Racist: Republican Senate candidate George Allen calling a liberal heckler a “macaca.” This is supposedly a disparaging term for blacks in Europe—although no American had ever heard the word, much less been insulted by it. Oh, and the heckler was Indian, not black.

As we can see, the liberal criteria for “racist” depends not on what a person says and does, but whom they associate with. If you have an “R” after your name, you’re a bigot. If you have a “D” after your name, you can praise former Klansmen, publicly obsess over your opponents’ skin tone, and drone on about “negro dialects.” And when it comes to especially hated Republicans like Condi Rice, you can even use the n-word.

It’s all good.

[BolivarianHero]

5. He's a Mor(m)on...

Racist attitudes are enshrined in the Mor(m)on mentality.

[99 Percent Sure]

14. Still wouldn't have worked; 'tis a difference in a

Southern 'drawl,' which anyone in or from the South can possess, and southern dialects particular to the Negro people, like gullah in Louisiana.

Being one from the Negro era, having sprung from colored parentage in 1954 -- it's on my BC x2 -- in the heart of dixie, I can tell you that the Negro dialect of which Hapless Harry of the Milquetoast Majority wrote of, and which he admitted the president turns on/off in speech, is alive and well for some of us and we ain't got no problems slipping into it. Even we edumacated Negroes.

I can still sing the lyrics and hum the Negro National Anthem, Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing, which I was taught in the 6th grade, so y'all know I ain't playing, just sayin'. :)

However ...

My cynicism contributes to my belief that this is all much ado about nothing, the usual 'meh' distraction whipped into a frenzy by the messed up media before the lousy Congress critters reconvene.

I mean, it's not as if the book just materialized out of thin air. My take is they all knew this would be published eventually, and some ones probably reviewed galleys prior to publication. In fact, I saw the authors on a panel just after the election, maybe on C-Span2.

OTOH, this could be a less than straight-forward way of dumping the worst Dem majority leader in the history of the US House of Lords -- oops, I mean the US Senate. He's struggling in his state and the struggle's been constant.

:think: But, hey, what do I know?

[EFerrari]

18. I agree with that. The timing is odiferous.

But what do I know, either!

lol

[slackmaster]

15. The two terms don't mean the same thing

My ex-wife speaks in a Southern dialect, and nobody would mistake her for African-American.

[Winterblues]

22. That was not the intent of the post, of course they don't mean the same thing

The intent of the post was, just when did the term Negro become a derogatory term...Can we no longer use that term? No more Negro College Funds, or Negro Spirituals. I wasn't comparing the two by their meaning but by their acceptance.

[slackmaster]

23. It's obviously not an inherently derogatory term - Context is everything

The United Negro College Fund thanks you for your generous donation.

http://www.uncf.org/

[SoCalDem]

16. What if Reid had just STFU altogether

especially when within earshot of gossipy "writers", or people who report to gossipy "writers"?

One would hope that a guy who had been around as long as he has been, would have learned that we live in a PC world..and I don't mean personal computers.

When our side is famous for calling out irresponsible right wingers for the crazy shit they say all the time, we had better be careful what our own representatives say as well..

[TheKentuckian]

19. Just because the Confederates are beyond hypocrites

Doesn't make the remarks okay or any less utterly out of touch.

Should we play their game? No, but Harry proves time and time again that he isn't really up for Leader and should be replaced next term in any even because he is weak and way out of touch with America. I don't think he is a huge bigot or a racist but he is a numbnuts and thats bad enough.

[Winterblues]

21. What makes the term "Negro" derogatory?

When did it become so and does that mean we can never use that term again? No more Negro Spirituals, or Negro college funds?

[TheKentuckian]

24. Don't ask me, I didn't frame it that way. I said out of touch and dense

But the United Negro College fund did change their name, just in case you didn't know.