#ebonics

WHY DO BLACK PEOPLE SAY “AUNTIE,” “UNCLE,” “BROTHER,” AND “SISTER”?

Here’s the REAL history and yes, it’s true.

During slavery and Jim Crow, Black people were not allowed to be called respectful titles like:

Mr.

Mrs.

Miss

Ma’am

Sir

White people used those titles only for themselves.

Black adults even elders were often called by their first names, or worse, “boy,” “girl,” “gal,” or other disrespectful terms.

Black people weren’t seen as worthy of honor.

So what did our ancestors do?

They created their own system of respect:

✨ Auntie

✨ Uncle

✨ Brother

✨ Sister

These weren’t just nicknames.

They were cultural armor.

They were how we honored each other when the world refused to.

They were how we rebuilt family when slavery ripped ours apart.

They were how we kept dignity alive when the system tried to crush it.

And these traditions come straight from our African roots, where community is family and elders are honored with kinship titles.

So when a Black person calls an older woman “Auntie,” or an older man “Uncle,” it’s not random.

It’s not disrespect.

It’s not strange.

It is love.

It is culture.

It is history.

It is survival.

A whole language created from pain turned into respect.

A whole people refusing to let anyone take our dignity.

And that’s why these words still live with us today. 🖤

Larry D. Roberts....

However, what I've noticed about folks who are very defensive of Ebonics as a language is that they seem to think that's the only way for it to be officially recognized. Like, when I say "Ebonics is a sociolect not a language" I get hit with "so you want to ban it? You racist", No, I'm arguing semantics, not whether Ebonics is a valid form of communication or not; you can advocate for Ebonics to be used in schools and professional settings without it being a language separate from white English

And I think it always comes down to Spanish being my first language, we have so many dialects, some practically incomprehensible, and we still agree it's all the same language, so wanting to create a distinction based on race sounds insane (and kinda racist).

Some people got a surprising result after taking an MIT dialect quiz. It was meant to guess what U.S. dialect the test taker spoke and the person's native language. As results started coming in, many Spanish speakers saw their English dialect had been marked as “U.S. Black Vernacular/Ebonics”

But what's the connection between speaking Spanish and U.S. Black Vernacular?

In the United States, dialects spoken by African Americans are sometimes referred to as Black English, African American Vernacular English, or even Ebonics. Though the terms have had different levels of popularity, having a specific name at all has given African Americans the ability to reclaim their language practices as a joyous part of their identity. 

But much less common are terms and discussions about Blackness and Black language beyond English. If Black English dialects exist, are there also Black forms of other languages due to colonization? For example, are there Black Spanishes and Black Portugueses, too? Read more here.

Source: Are there Black dialects of Spanish? by Aris M. Clemons

AAVE is English; it's distinctly different from White English, but it's English; you understand English, you understand AAVE