[size=17pt]The debate over 'speaking white'[/size]


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-29449028




Kenyan Girl

Earlier this month Nefertiti Menoe had had enough of the phrase "You're speaking white." After she saw a meme on Facebook that ridiculed minorities who use proper English, she posted a short video to her own page.

"I don't know why we've gotten to a place where, as a culture, as a race, if you sound as though you have more than a fifth grade education, it's a bad thing," she said. "That really gets under my skin."

Menoe refers to the practice by some minorities of using slang to communicate, and the idea that members of each community, in her case African American, should identify with those same speech patterns.

In an interview with the BBC, Menoe said that when she moved to Long Island, NY, from Kenya, when she was 12, her classmates told her she spoke funny.

"I thought, 'How do I speak funny? Is this not English?' In middle school, I started hearing from my black and minority friends, 'You sound white.' I thought, does that mean black people in America don't speak this way?" Talking it out with her mother, Menoe says she gained the clarity to understand her skin colour wasn't a reason to alter her language.

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This is the Ignorant Arrogance i once wrote about. Western Society made BLACK into a class blacks went on to appropriate Ghetto subculture and made it into their class.

In an interview with the BBC, Menoe said that when she moved to Long Island, NY, from Kenya, when she was 12, her classmates told her she spoke funny.

Note the ignorant arrogance at play in the quoted above. They assume the Kenyan girl spoke funny and not they....

There is a way to speak white in the way, and that's intonation of words. Speaking perfect English is fine. That has nothing to do with speaking white. But when you change your accent or your name to try and be recognised by white people, it means you have a car e inferiority complex.

For example, a Nigerian woman changing her traditional name to Jennifer or Jessica or Stephanie. None of those are Nigerian or West African names based on our several cultures.

The funniest thing is when you can not tell a Nigerian woman apart from an American or British white girl when she is speaking...... Does that even make sense? A Nigerian woman is expected to have a different accent and culture from a white person. Too many idiots are ashamed of their respective African culture.

Fulaman198: There is a way to speak white in the way, and that's intonation of words. Speaking perfect English is fine. That has nothing to do with speaking white. But when you change your accent or your name to try and be recognised by white people, it means you have a car e inferiority complex.

For example, a Nigerian woman changing her traditional name to Jennifer or Jessica or Stephanie. None of those are Nigerian or West African names based on our several cultures.

The funniest thing is when you can not tell a Nigerian woman apart from an American or British white girl when she is speaking...... Does that even make sense? A Nigerian woman is expected to have a different accent and culture from a white person. Too many idiots are ashamed of their respective African culture.

Some of the points you raise are good but largely not what this is about.

You get blacks in the west ghettoizing themselves and despising those that don't share their decrepit worldview and lack of ambitions. Nigerians have lost their lives to people for the reasons above.

In Nigeria, if you don't speak white, you buy white peeps to come and present for you, once you speak white,our locals give you fat contracts I would rather speak white than slangs