The Problem with The Appropriation of AAVE: A Thread

For anyone who doesn’t know, AAVE stands for African-American Vernacular English. If you haven’t heard the term, you’ve heard the language. It’s the slang you called hood and ghetto your entire life. Words like sis, Chile, tea, shade, etc are all direct products of AAVE.

AAVE (typically the portion created by black women) is largely appropriated by gay men, and then spreads outwards because black and gay people have a large influence on trends and the things that become popularized

This is the way things work, this is the way things have always worked. Oppressed groups are often not allowed to “fit in” and don’t really waste time trying, so instead they break the mold and the world hates first, and then follows suit once a few brave allies dip their toes in

But, I digress. We can clearly see this line of events by recalling black TV with predominantly female energy; Real Housewives of Atlanta, for example, is THE BLUEPRINT for the portion of AAVE that has been appropriated by gay men and so forth.

So boom— appropriation occurs. Now, are we angry about the appropriation itself? No. Not really. We’re pretty much used to it at this point. We get it, we’re poppin’

The issue is, though, black women don’t aggressively use these words and see them as a novelty, because we created them. We just see them as an every day part of our language. So when these words get appropriated, they spread like wildfire, and it’s easy for us to be forgotten.

ESPECIALLY with the rise of stan culture, which has a huge overlap with the LGBTQ+ community. It’s really like when someone next to you tells your joke louder and gets all the credit

Not to mention, when words aren’t apart of your natural speech patterns and dialect, they’re incredibly hard to say correctly. Black people created the words and phrases that fit with our inflections and dialectal fingerprint, so they literally just sound right coming from us.

This is like someone trying to use a key for a lock that just isn’t made for it. Or like when your mom says “grassy-ass” to the waitor/waitress at the local Mexican restaurant.

( @aavegonewrong does an amazing job of calling these situations out)

So we have to watch our words get tossed around and diluted without credit by people who don’t even know how to properly use them.

The OTHER issue is that AAVE is typically talked about as being “ghetto” and looked at as if it’s a sole indicator of other factors like lower levels of education and socioeconomic status. When we say it, it’s ghetto. But when it’s stolen and popularized, it’s trendy.

This is not much unlike anything else black people do, it’s the same concept as dreads that are “unprofessional” on us but “free-spirited” on white people, or skin colors that make us look “burnt” but are somehow “tan and delicious” on white folk

The reason I’m even writing this thread is because someone on Facebook said that it doesn’t matter that “gay lingo” is really just AAVE because it’s now widely accepted as gay lingo and I almost lost it. You can’t deny appropriation because of reception

So, in short, give credit where credit is due. Use AAVE at your own risk— don’t blame us when you look goofy. And maybe don’t look down upon black people for the way we talk. How you gon’ hate from outside of the club when you can’t even get in?