The Right Reverend Wright is Wrong on Dialect

This morning I heard Jeremiah Wright on TV saying that a lot of people from different parts of the country use bad English but only black people get criticized for their bad English. Say whut?

He mimicked Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in some of their more transport moments as an example. He amused me and I'm sure his audience thought it was hilarious. But like a lot of successful entertainers' material, it is simply not true. White people from Boston and Texas are constantly ridiculed for the way they talk. White people from Maine and Indiana are ridiculed for the way they talk. People from one region are always making fun of people from another region because they talk funny -- black or white. Blacks from the North make fun of blacks from the South and vice versa.

I remember when a colleague and I were on a business trip to Boston about thirty years ago. My colleague was from Mississippi and I'm a Florida Cracker. When my colleague started to order dinner one evening the waiter stopped him and called out to the other restaurant staff to "come listen to this dude talk." We both thought, "these people think we talk funny?"

I've said in this blog that John Edwards, a fellow Southerner, talks like his mouth is full of grits. There are a lot of dialects in this country -- among whites and blacks. Most blacks that I know talk more like me and other whites in the area than like the hip-hop generation in the big cities.

The point of the criticism that Wright is alluding to is that if, for example, a young black man wants to become a TV commentator he will have a better chance of success if he learns to speak standard English. This of course applies to a young white man as well.

Fresh out of college I went to work at Eglin Air Force Base. It was culture shock from the outset. Even though the base is only thirty miles from where I grew up, many of the people I had to work with were from different locales and backgrounds. I saw right away that I had to listen and learn and adapt. Most of the blacks working there were in the same boat with me, and they adapted too.

There's a lot of talk about uniting the country these days. One way to do that is to maintain a common language. How can we have a nationwide conversation on race if we can't understand one another?

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