Dear Mr. Coates,It's funny, I never thought of my accent as particularly thick, but I get this quite a bit. I don't post this to take offense, but to highlight a point of view that's often shared with me. I don't get the notion that a kid listening to me talk about my book, would decide that the primary message is to never learn standard English. I've never met a kid that stupid. But I guess they're out there. Somewhere.
Recently I heard you in an interview and finally found a comparison which explains to me why I object to your use of language. I come from a country where children speaking dialect have had a hard time in school, first because German orthography is pretty close to the spoken word and second for being discriminated against because they are considered to come from uneducated backgrounds
Having said that even though I love dialects for their often much more colorful way of expressing things than would be impossible in High (sic) German (i.e. standard German) there are some heavily accented German speakers I object to and others I do not - I keep asking myself, where's the difference and differences keep popping into my mind all the time - basically it all comes to it somehow does not match or sounds rebellious in a counter-productive way - when I saw that video of that poor black kid from Selma? who blew something, I forgot what, I realized how detrimental it must be for people like him if that kind of language is promoted by role models, people like you who have made it to a decent way of life.
Anyway, this idea that one should learn standard English in order to not be discriminated against is, from my perspective, poisonous. I think about my own kid, and I want him to learn standard English for the same reasons I'd want him to learn any language--because language is way of looking at the world, because it's a way of expressing yourself, because it builds bridges to people who aren't like you, and ultimately, because, put simply, it's good to be curious.
Therein lies the irony--the desire to patrol someone else's accent strikes me as deeply incurious. It is intelligence as artifice, a knowledge garnered to, at best, kowtow to equally incurious people or, at worst, preen over others who aren't as fortunate. Hmm, maybe I do take offense. Not because of anything said about me, but because I deeply resent ignorance that dresses itself up as wisdom.
My siblings, for the most part, came up like me. They mostly talk like me. But all of them also have--like a lot of black people--a kind of second voice, a rather nonthreatening, standardized style of speak. It's key to remove about a third of all bass. I don't dis that second voice--it is the language of their professional world and it should be recognized, and respected. The only reason I never developed one, was because my field never required it. In fact, in my work, it may good to be thought of as less intelligent. The proof, at the end of the day, is in the product.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
If no one spoke in marginal dialects, what would dialecticians study? Did this person think of the dialecticians when he wrote that note? No. No, he did not.
Here's another random reaction, as I seem prone to them. My first thought on reading the note from the German slightly echoes your perceptive observation: "the desire to patrol someone else's accent strikes me as deeply incurious." I recalled how I spent three years learning Russian in college before showing up in Moscow. Now, the problem was that I learned Russian from educated intelligentsia who spoke a particular brand of Russian that is rarely heard on the street when you ask for directions from passing working class folks or migrants; I was struck immediately by the diversity of variation in spoken Russian. After a few months of hanging out in Moscow with people from Africa, Asia and various non-ethnic Russians, I got pretty good at understanding a wide range of accents--even those I hadn't been exposed to very much. In some cases, I found myself explaining things to Americans who I knew spoke better "proper" Russian than I do.
Now that complete aside aside, do people really think of TNC as a role model? No offense, but why does every black man not in prison have to be a role model?
Wow. It was *such* a pleasure to hear you in that interview, so thoughtful, so articulate, so quick. It's striking to me that someone could come away from it focusing on your slight accent.
That said, this reminds me of an experience in grad school, where we had a speaker one day who is absolutely tops in the field; she gave her talk and I was shocked and dismayed to realize that I had a reflexive prejudice against the Bronx accent. Here she was, saying all these brilliant things so cogently, and it was just so dissonant with my expectations of how gifted someone with that accent could be.
In my case, I didn't think, "gee, she should really learn how to talk right" -- I thought, "wow, I guess I'm not free of stupid prejudices!"
And I realize this sounds like serious sucking up, but part of what I like about your blog is your uniqueness; you are who you are, a very interesting mix of elements one might consider disparate. The accent doesn't really matter one way or the other, but I enjoyed it. Like a faint, interesting spice adding piquancy to a great meal.
This conversation about race and dialect is one that I often hear. I am always taken by the fact that Black people seem to think that if you modify your style of speach to match the circumstances then you are being fake.
I have at least three speaking styles and switch between them without thinking. When I was younger I used even more voices because I was in a larger variety of situations. None of these voices is any less authenticaly me. The first time I noticed it was in basic training. My fellow soldiers pointed out to me that I spoke with a southern accent when I was talking to my parrents on the phone but not when talking to them.
I grew up moving arround and learned to pick up the local accent quickly to fit in with my peirs but at home I used the same accent that my family did to fit in there. My father was an executive with a car company and when he spoke to people he did business with he droped the southern accent because it will cause others who come from outside the south to percieve you as mentaly slow. This was not being fake it was modifying ones voice to effectively communicate.
Using ones local dialect in a setting where standard english is appropriate is only slightly less out of line with ones selfish best interest than taking the lord's name in vain in front of your grandmother.
I'm surprised you didn't use this post as an occasion to link the the Zadie Smith essay, Speaking in Tongues, that's been all over the internets recently. And if you haven't read it yet...well, you really should read it.
Dialect is definitely a product of your surroundings. If you're around standard English all the time, you'll start speaking that way unconsciously.
During the 2002 World Cup, the US had a goalkeeper, Brad Freidel, who played for a professional team in the north of England. He had lived there for so long that despite growing up in Ohio, playing for UCLA, and making return trips to the US to play for the national team, he spoke like a bloke. As David Letterman said at the time, "He's from Ohio!"
Anyone who thinks that dialect is a measure of intelligence is short-sighted.
I personally like the blend of high discourse with the so-called low dialect. I affect it myself, because I find it highly amusing to watch stuffy smart people trip. Also, it works like magic in a classroom.
Ebonics, learning standard English - it's all a nonstarter for me.
Very sad letter, as far as the Germans are concerned. The dialect I heard near the Noerdlinger Ries was probably the most interesting and beautiful I heard in Germany. I'd hate to think that it would fade out because the kids get a hard time in school over it.
I guess this tight-a$& wouldn't like to hear me speak either because I didn't even notice an accent when you spoke. And your brief lapses into what could be considered non-standard English made what you were saying seem more relevant and down to earth in my opinion.
It's key to remove about a third of all bass.
Wasn't there a joke about this in the first Bad Boys movie?
Put me down as someone with different voices depending on who I'm talking to. I used to be really self-conscious about my southern accent, especially as I made my way thru grad school, and I'm still convinced that it makes a difference in the way I'm perceived intellectually. But get me back with my Louisiana friends, and it all comes out. It's been an eye-opener as far as how I work on listening to what people say instead of how they say it.
The point is that people be able to understand what you're saying. Different voices and tones are necessary for different audiences--in that way, the spoken word is no different from the written word. TNC's written voice is quite similar to his spoken voice--to scrub his voice of his personality would sound fake. Still, TNC, I'm willing to bet you toss on that "Mr. Coates" voice when certain people call you on the phone. That's not being fake at all--that's just the ability to adjust.
Both of my parents are from the deep south, but they both spent their formative years in the north. They, too, have two voices: their vaguely southern accents, used for family and friends, and their public voices (what Dad calls "speaking Job Interview"). I was usually the ant in the sugarbowl in school, so most people hear my voice and mistake me for a white girl--but I, too, have my "family" and "home" voices. Both voices have value, and to tell me one is less "acceptable" than another is sort of bullshit.
No offense, but why does every black man not in prison have to be a role model?
We've set the bar so low for blacks, I can hardly see it.
First, accents are not the same as language......
Second, people, no matter the race/income bracket, need to know that you talk at home and amongst your friends differently than you would a work or in a social situation where you don't know people. The same thing applies to clothes. You don't wear shorts and flip flops to $1,000 plate dinner.
Let me push back a little on the idea that non-standard English "seems more authentic or real.". (Not TNC's point, bur raised in the comments.)
Isn't that really a cousin of anti-intellectualism? From the playbook that brought us Sarah Palin?
Again, I know TNC is discussing saying smart things in the speaker's natural way. But uncritically praising non-standard speech as more authentic leads you down a pretty steep slope.
It's useless to compare German and English, one is an analytical language and the other synthetic. Plus as your correspondent points out, spelling in German is pronunciationally meaningful, which it isn't in English. And there are class issues about language too, there, that we don't have to deal with.
On the subject of standard English, I'd be interested in TNC's reaction to David Foster Wallace's loooong essay about grammar, in which he takes up the touchy subject of trying to inculcate standard written English in a black student who is resistant to it. It's just as fraught as you might imagine. This page is a headache because of DFW's frequent footnotes (the original magazine/book versions are probably easier to read), but if you haven't seen it, it's worth a look: http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html
In some respects I agree with you that "this idea that one should learn standard English in order to not be discriminated against is...poisonous." At least if one phrases it in those terms and stops there. But there is another way to think about it. Linguists sometimes talk about what they call "communicative competence." The term refers to the ability to participate as a member of a speech community and do all the things with language that members of that community do. That includes talking about stuff (what is technically called "reference and predication"), but also a whole bunch of other stuff like signaling who you are, or who you are at the moment, or determining what kind of conversation you are having. One of the ways people commonly do this is by switching between different styles (registers) of speech. From this point of view, knowing "standard English" is about more than kowtowing to the incurious—the more styles of speech you are able to command the more you can do with language. Of course for this to be effective you have to know when use each style, and that's a whole lot more complicated than any sort of grammar or accent. One big difference between this point of view and your correspondent's is that one is equally handicapped by lack of command of either "standard" or "dialect."
Let me give some hypothetical examples, using the example of African American professionals moving between the two voices you talk about. I'm not one, so I may get the details of meaning wrong here, but this is the way this sort of thing works. One person (A) walks up to the desk of another (B) and greets them (we won't go into the whole issue of singular "they," as non-gender specific pronoun but let me just say I'm for it). Both are African American. A uses some elements of "ebonics" (also known as African American Vernacular English or AAVE) in their greeting, and they talk for a few minutes in a friendly way. At a certain point A switches to more of a "standard" voice, signaling that they in fact have a work related matter they want to talk about. B follows and the topic shifts, though at a certain point in the later conversation they switch back to AAVE for a phrase or two to make a comment about the relevance of racial identity to the way the business matter the are talking about impacts them. One can imagine other scenarios. B could initially respond to the greeting in AAVE with a greeting in standard, perhaps meaning to communicate "don't think you'll get a favor from me because we're both black." Or perhaps communicating that unintentionally. We could go on, but the point is that there is a complicated microcommunication going on around the use of different voices. I wrote this with gender neutral pronouns, but gender probably matters for the interpretation of this sort of shift in voice, and those sorts of shifts would have all sorts of other meanings across racial lines.
Don't get me started.
I laugh now, but years ago I was always taken aback at people's shock and dismay to learn that they have been in a 20 minute conversation with someone from the South, with no accent - who "speaks so well," sounds so intelligent. Although I still get a little pissy when I remember being told that I "talk white" when I was in middle school - ugh!
That voice is as real and authentic to me as the one I drop into unthinkingly with my family and friends.
Accents and ebonics are two different animals though. A Bronx or Southern accent does not ebonics speak make. I can speak in the thickest southern accent you ever heard and not use ebonics. A thick accent should not mean an individual is not thoughtful or intelligent.
And I can't believe we're still using that term, "ebonics." I move to bury this word as we did with the N-word.....nevermind, that didn't go too well...
On the DFW tip, in that page, the part that's more relevant here begins, "The real truth, of course, is that SWE is the dialect of the American elite."
In fact, in my work, it may good to be thought of as less intelligent.
Is this a joke I'm not quite getting?
Or are you saying that your apparent lack of intelligence lowers expectations, so that when the articles you write are actually good they seem even better?
My wife and I talked about your accent after the interview, but only in terms of regional and cultural origins. She thought it was similar to, for example, Chris Rock's accent, and so we talked about the how much your patterns of speech might have been influence by living in Harlem, as opposed to how much of your accent was Baltimore, and whether Chris Rock's accent was a Bed-Stuy thing, and how much it was influenced by other factors (including a certain amount of stagecraft).
Oddly enough, intelligence never really came up. Weird, huh?
Personally, I'm a big fan of accents, and have a couple of them myself, being able to switch up between redneck and standard midwest suburban speak. My wife can drop into any of at least three distinct accents, should the need arise.
I spent a year teaching freshman comp in a rural Missouri liberal arts school, and we had kids from all sorts of backgrounds, with all sorts of accents. When talking about voice with them, I liked to draw an analogy between language and table manners. What's appropriate at a 5-star restaurant would be comical in a McDonald's, and what works for eating pizza with your friends would seriously appall your prom date, or get you sent away from the table at Thanksgiving dinner.
We talked about famous writers who gained their fame writing dialect (Twain, Joyce, Faulkner just to name a few dead white guys), and the need to be able to write in more than one voice to succeed. The fact is, very few of us have that flat-affect midwestern accent that most Americans hear as "no accent", so all of us are faking it to some extent.
I'm a reporter. I blog quite a bit--but my bread-and-butter is long form journalism. An interview is an intellectual exercise, a sparring match almost. It's sometimes helpful, in interviews, for people to not think you're all that sharp. They tend to talk more.
...a kind of second voice, a rather nonthreatening, standardized style of speak. It's key to remove about a third of all bass... it is the language of their professional world and it should be recognized, and respected.
Ah, how race and gender rule our world! Scaling back on the lower register and speaking in a higher, more breathy tone so you're not seen as a ball-busting threat? Yeah, been there, done that. :)
@ DBCooper
I didn't get that people were saying that using non-standard English was more authentic, most were saying that for them personally non-standard is just AS authentic as standard. Most black people switch between the two seamlessly, as so eloquently stated by Daniel above.
Palin painted herself as a victim of intellectuals because of her Alaskan accent. Which is not only insulting to Alaskans and others with heavy accents, but a diversion tactic. Her dialect was not the problem, her ignorant and divisive rhetoric was.
As a language professional, I was glad to see that Daniel Rosenblatt weighed in with that very useful comment above-- it leaves me with nothing to say except this--
One thing that had always impressed me about Barack Obama is his ability to use register (or different speaking styles) to his advantage. he is able to move easily between sounding like an educated lawyer to a more earthy version of AAVE (black English/ebonics). This allows him to tailor his message in a precise way, even as he moves minute by minute through his speeches. this is a great advantage to him.
But to do this well, you have to master all of the relevant dialects, including standard English, which is important in formal situations. If you don't, you will lose an important tool in your professional toolkit.
I think we need to back up a second. Are we talking about dialect or accent or both? As disaggregated pointed out, they're not the same thing...
Few people have only one voice. Social pressures and incentives in different situations lead people to adopt one or another voice, depending.
I do feel, however, that there is a reluctance in contemporary American society to adopt the voice of the fully competent and authoritative adult citizen with the standard accent who employs correct grammar. It is felt to be pompous and somewhat aggressive. To evade the officious tone of voice, I find myself slipping at various times into a slight New York Jewish accent, a vaguely Southern Balmore-Warshington drawl, saying "so..." and trailing off at the ends of sentences, and so forth. I imagine others are doing the same when they interpellate "like", end sentences with interrogative intonations, say "goes" rather than "says", etc. It stems at some level from a desire to be friendly and deferential, but I do often get the sense that this is a form of politeness which amounts to not fully showing up. If you see what I mean.
Whether black use of dialect or accent involves any of the same kinds of pressures and incentives, I have no idea.
I've never noticed he had any accent either and I'm from Nebraska where everyone sounds like a news anchor. Maybe it's just that outside of the US they assume the standard midwestern dialect is the only proper, educated American one because that's almost all they hear in the media and from Americans trained in public speaking?
I agree that everybody needs to be able to adjust their speaking style to make themselves understandable...but how is the kid who can't get his point across without using slang is any more crippled than the chess club nerd who keeps throwing the word "juxtaposition" around and has no time or patience for anybody who doesn't understand him?
The point of language is to make oneself understood, and to understand others. I think anybody who is still using it as a great class-sifting device is behind the times.
Also...I feel guilty for making fun of Sarah Palin's accent. Not for making fun of her though.
Palin painted herself as a victim of intellectuals because of her Alaskan accent.
I don't know what an Alaskan accent sounds like, but Palin's accent is almost indistinguishable from a Minnesota/North Dakota accent to my ears.
My dad - who is fluent in German - refused to teach it to me. Why? Because the German he knew was "Lower" German, and he wanted to be sure that I was never judged by speaking that dialect.
That made me furious. Better to have a second language - even if some consider it "street" - than no second language at all, am I right?
FWIW, "High" is the normal way to refer to the standard or literary German language. It does sound prejudicial (though its original meaning is supposedly geographical -- Alps rather than lowlands) but it's standard.
I listened to your NPR interview yesterday and it was the first time I'd heard you speak too. The way you talked made an immediate impression on me as well: I was impressed. I am so accustomed to hearing only two accents in media; since I have no background in linguistics, I'll just call them Northern and Southern. And most people work hard to adopt one of them when they speak publicly. Probably for similar reasons given by your email. So it was refreshing to hear someone speaking authentically, and it made me trust you and maybe listen more closely.
It's sometimes helpful, in interviews, for people to not think you're all that sharp. They tend to talk more.
Oh, that makes sense -- it didn't occur to me that you were referring to your interaction with people you were writing about not your co-workers and bosses.
So, you use the Columbo interviewing technique, huh?
I tend to pick up bits of accent and dialect from whomever I'm talking with after more than a couple of minutes' conversation - I'm always afraid it makes me sound fake, but I'm not doing it consciously. My accent's always been a bit fluid, maybe cause I learned English second and grew up in New York and Jersey around a few different accents and I was self-conscious about my own TV-announcer English (at the time now I sound central Jersey I'm told) growing up. I don't give accents or dialects much thought anymore - I heard the interview too, and Coates I thought you sounded perfectly intelligent. The German letter-writer is emphasizing the wrong thing - the disadvantages in life for the 'assumed poor' he's referring to don't come FROM the accent primarily; they're both the result of where the kids are from.
Furthermore, if anything kids who are from poor areas, especially Baltimore kids, will only be inspired by hearing somebody like you, somebody who talks like them but is obviously thoughtful and well-educated, being interviewed on NPR or wherever. Like, a local boy done good!
Even better than the Zadie Smith essay is the actual recording of her lecture at the New York Public Library, from which that essay was adapted. You can get it at the New York Review of Books' podcast on iTunes. It's really worth a listen
I am from the German speaking part of Switzerland where "High German" is the official language. Here, however, it is deemed to be elitist to speak a too sophisticated High German, so politicians for example are keen to make sure that their dialect is recongnized when they speak. They deliberately use "Helvetisms", i.e. words that refer to their Swiss orgins but are not proper High German. In Germany, as the commenter has noted, such a "provincial" way of speaking would be seen as a sign for the lack of education. The same is probably true for England. It is hard to imagine a prime minister with a thick mancunian accent.
The US, I think, is more like Switzerland. Southern politicians do not consider their accents as signs of intellectual incapacity. Perhaps, one reason might be that both Switzerland and the US are federalistic nations, probably the two most federalistic in the world.
Whereas your dialect indicates your regional origins other words or way of speakings might indicate your cultural origins. However, the expression "Be proud of where you come from" can apply to both. It is in my opinion a quality for country to have intellectuals like Mr. Coates who see no problem in using words they first heard in their neighbourhood to say something smart.
First, it's my belief that there is a difference between written and spoken language. The purpose of having a standard written language with standard conventions is that anyone reading that language can understand as precisely as possible the content and structure of the writer's thinking. That is, the purpose is to facilitate communication. Spoken language has a variety of other strategies to enhance communication that do not rely as much on the necessity for convention.
That said, anyone who thinks that American English, which is the Nile River of languages, could ever be reduced to a simple standard spoken language has to be kidding me. Of course, it is important that people bother to speak in complete sentences or at least in sentences that have the subject or predicate obviously implied, and because our vocabulary is so huge, it's nice when people provide the precise words they wish to communicate. But accents, slang, dialect--that is all flavor, and in America we prefer the flavors of fusion cooking. The contribution of ebonics to English is that it provides musical elisions that adapt to obvious phonetic tongue twisting and move the meanings of phrasings and word choice forward by playing with their possiblities, just as the Yiddish speaking immigrants of the first half of the 20th century added to the humor and meaning of sentences by reversals of English syntax that later made Seinfield a hit show for years. Spanglish in America is a way of life, not to mention palaver in old cowboy movies; instant karma by way of Liverpool is gonna get ya.
Many people analyzing the comics of the 30s noted that the Clark Kent/Superman identity was a very good model for teenage sons of immigrants. On one hand Clark in glasses and suit could make his way in an American metropolis; on the other he had all those cool ethnic powers when he allowed himself to wear that outlandish cape and tights with the big S splashed on his chest for whom no employer in America would do anything other than put his application into a circular file. But a nation of Clark Kents, can you imagine?
Like dv, I have the habit of slipping into the accent and/or dialect, rhythm, cadence, WHATEVER, of someone I'm speaking with, and it's unconscious. I resist it with everything I have because I'm afraid people will find it offensive, but that has never really been the case.
I don't have the excuse of learning English second. It just seems to me that the standard English way of speaking I learned is missing so much music and shades of meaning compared to whoever I'm speaking with, even though that probably isn't actually true.
What is beautiful to me is that except in extreme cases, even the most non-standard version of a language can be understood nearly instantly in spoken communication. Even in extreme cases a little exposure usually does the trick. To me it just opens up the possibilities of meaning so much more widely than standard English, which is, after all, standard.
Heh. When I was in the Air Force I had a friend from Arkansas who used to lay the southern on extra thick at work so he could take his sweet time finishing projects because "nobody expects much from you when they think you're dumb".
how is the kid who can't get his point across without using slang is any more crippled than the chess club nerd
Who is more likely to be able to communicate with co-workers at a good job?
"Be proud of where you come from"
Interesting side note to this, FWIW... Back in 2001, the President of Germany, Johannes Rau, caused a bit of a stir when he said that it was impossible to be proud of being a German. His rationale was that you can only be proud of what you do, not of something that you have no control over. (This does seem a little silly to me as an American - by choosing not to emigrate, he's made a decision to be German).
Like dv, I have the habit of slipping into the accent and/or dialect, rhythm, cadence, WHATEVER, of someone I'm speaking with, and it's unconscious. I resist it with everything I have because I'm afraid people will find it offensive, but that has never really been the case.
Me too.
My husband is a master code-switcher, and until he married me didn't even realize he did it. With me and our, er, classier friends he sounds pretty close to mid-Atantic, but put him in with his family and you'll hear the Northern New England loud and clear.
Who is more likely to be able to communicate with co-workers at a good job?
Depends on the job and how you'll need to communicate. Rappers (to use an extreme example) need a different skill set from programmers from receptionists. Ideally, children should be exposed to a lot of styles of communication, so they can handle multiple situations. At least that's my take.
"Who is more likely to be able to communicate with co-workers at a good job?"
It depends on the job, I suppose. I know a lot of people from either extreme who haven't made much of themselves. At least in my experience, it's the people who can switch off between different ways of speaking that have the most options available to them.
@edawq, Yes the Zadie Smith piece is provocative and timely, especially with a President (as was already mentioned by a few posters) who has the remarkable ability to switch between various distinct voices -- all in the same speech. I recommend that all read it.
I -- an AF-AM woman, who was usually only one of three blacks in my class -- speak with two voices -- my home voice and my professional work voice. I think, on some level, we all have different voices that we employ based on the circumstances that we find ourself in.
I had no idea how easy or subtle (subversive? in a positive way?) that picking up a dialect could be. It wasn't until I had a biz partner back in 00 who had a very slight, I mean hardly noticeable, Canadian accent. But there was a slight accent, compared to my USA Pacific NW english, with some of the words he used. It wasn't long into that partnership that I caught myself speaking those particular words in the same way he had.
@Hill Rat -
There's a reason Palin's accent sounds like a North Dakota accent: it is one. S'where she's from, current governorship notwithstanding. Alaskans definitely don't talk like that. Well, the ones from North Dakota do.
@brooksfoe -
"I find myself slipping at various times into a slight New York Jewish accent, a vaguely Southern Balmore-Warshington drawl, saying "so..." and trailing off at the ends of sentences, and so forth."
This rings eerily true for me, too, being a Jew from Maryland currently living in North Carolina. I find myself doing... the exact same thing (when I'm not slipping into Academic High Pedantry).
Speaking of which: there's a landmark sociology paper from 1996, "From Snob to Omnivore" [PDF] talking about how changes in society have led to high-brow tastes being not exclusionary but more universalist, in music. I'm not sure if the exact same dynamic is at work here, but something like that is part of what's going on with the changing media landscape: an acceptance of voices other than "official neutral newspaper reporter" as ways to convey important information about the world around us.
By the time of their divorce, my dad, a long island working-class irishman, sounded more Bostonian than my Lincoln-MA bred WASP mother. And yes, that held implications (mostly perceptions about class)for their marriage and its eventual failure.
I've never heard your voice. But as an Af-Am male who came up in Balmer, in the great state of Murrlin, I bet you've had lots of folks draw conclusions based on your accent, in addition to your dialect.
Er, black people have been codeswitching before we even knew there was a term for it. In any case, that letter is nonsense.
"I don't get the notion that a kid listening to me talk about my book, would decide that the primary message is to never learn standard English. I've never met a kid that stupid. But I guess they're out there. Somewhere."
The kids aren't stupid. The language they speak is the language they hear most of the time. Whatever it is, that is Standard English for them.
And therein lies the problem. I'm a researcher in K-12 education, and what I see constantly is black children, smart kids, failing really easy (e.g. Texas) state tests. The example I use all the time is this one: A child who hears "Is you" from the second they are born and pretty much only "Is you", does not know that the "right" answer on the state test is "Are you".
Making sure she understands that "Are you" is the answer to check requires constant "correction" if it's not what she hears on a daily basis. She hears "Are you" only in school which she began 5 or 6 years (depending on the state) after language acquisition started at birth. (teachers who say "Is you" are a whole different issue)
After so many years of failing the test, she goes to special education, which most students do not leave once they're in. Once she's in that system it's highly unlikely that 1) she'll graduate and 2) if she does graduate, she'll be ready for college or any kind of skilled career.
It might be incurious to not appreciate the way this child, and her community, speaks or want to control the way another person speaks, but if we don't help her know that "You are" is the answer to check, we are severely handicapping her for the rest of her life.
How to get around that? Not have tests? How do I appreciate languages, (accents, dialects) that the various people have made from all their different languages without, yet still make sure she knows to check "Are you"? After
Sime,
Interesting observation about Switzerland. Does the same happen throughout Switzerland -- do politicians in French areas feel compelled to pepper their speeches with Savoyard phrases? And what do people do when they "cross over" linguistically? If an Italian-speaking Swiss were to go to a German-speaking area, would it be inappropriate for her to speak Schweizerdeutsch, like she was claiming membership in a club she's not really invited into?
Another example I'll throw out there: Quebecois French is very different from standard French. Do tourists ever try to speak Quebecois instead of French? Do locals think it's funny/insulting/incomprehensible when they do?
I need to point out the logical fallacy of the letter writer: He seems to want to argue that TNC is sending a false message to impressionable youth that they can be successful, like him, even if they talk black. A thesis that is demonstrably true, not false.
On accents: Lots of white southern professionals will be just as good at effortlessly switching between accents based on audience as any black with a professional and a casual voice. One voice for the locker room, one for the boardroom, sometimes you bring in the former to the latter for effect.
SEME:
"Perhaps, one reason might be that both Switzerland and the US are federalistic nations, probably the two most federalistic in the world."
Of course part of the issue here is that the idea of AAVE as a 'state' language has been deeply subversive...
@ Larry
This conversation about race and dialect is one that I often hear. I am always taken by the fact that Black people seem to think that if you modify your style of speach to match the circumstances then you are being fake.
You know, I think that there are many reasons why this is often the case. One major reason that comes to my mind is that the whole "whatever-black-people-do is-automatically-substandard-and-less-civilized" baggage that some black folks may be reacting to. Then there's the whole history of black folks who were physically able to do so "passing" and so forth. I don't think these things can be isolated from our sensitivity to modifying aspects of our culture (in this case, language) to fit in. The fact that there is an unbalanced power relationship and that it permeates other areas of life besides language all play a role, at least to my mind. And it's something that I am sensitive to, even as someone who definitely has split personalities when it comes to language, as most people do. I understand full well the need to be appropriate according to the situation, but at the same time I feel resentful of the fact that the linguistic standard that is chosen is tied up in racial and power struggles; it is not neutral nor was it chosen by consensus. It is imposed on the less powerful by those who have historically been more powerful.
There has historically been an expectation that black folks would modify in various areas of life to be accepted, we have to talk a certain way, look a certain way, for example black women being able to wear their hair natural in the office is a relatively recent phenomenon(say, 30 years or more ago it was much more difficult), something that people actually had to go to court for.
Add to that the fact that black vernacular is generally never discussed in terms of being merely "different", but "lesser", "ignorant", or otherwise problematic. I had never heard my natural way of speaking studied and honored as legitimate in its own right until I reached college and majored in linguistics. And outside of those circles, it's still rare to hear nonstandard dialects honored in that way. Language and its usage is very much tied up in our social and political structures, so its no wonder that people get defensive sometimes.
I don't know much about TNC's accent in particular, but the ability to code-switch is extremely important for a whole host of activities. Standard English is simply what is spoken by many of the most powerful people in the world, and, although I wouldn't summarily label it 'discrimination', too much variance from the way such people speak makes it difficult to be taken seriously. I'm not suggesting that we should eliminate dialects, not at all, but Standard English is important for EVERYONE to know. And TNC, you DO know Standard English, you write it on your blog every single day. Sure, there's an extra comma here, or a little slang there, but it's not like you're using redundant pronouns or other hallmarks of SBE (Standard Black English).
By the way, I'm a white dude in LA, and I love to go play basketball down south of Jefferson, where I am often the only white guy. And I walk a very fine linguistic line when I do, trying to use enough SBE tropes not to stand out, but not use so much that I make a mistake and embarrass myself or, worse yet, sound patronizing. We all code-switch, and should all hone our ability to do so.
"Who is more likely to be able to communicate with co-workers at a good job?"
I don't think "ain't" (to use the most cliche example) ever got in the way of anybody's understanding anything. I've met people, though, who go through life with a "it's in the dictionary, look it up" attitude towards anybody who's not familiar with a term they use, or who become exasperated or condescending. Not exactly conducive to good communication.
I'm with Julia on this one:It might be incurious to not appreciate the way this child, and her community, speaks or want to control the way another person speaks, but if we don't help her know that "You are" is the answer to check, we are severely handicapping her for the rest of her life.
While I disagree with the letter-writer on the whole "role model" aspect, I must also disagree with TNC's assertion that teaching children (especially children of color, though also children with other non-standard dialects and/or pronounced accents) that knowing standard English will help them avoid being discriminated against is "poisonous." Rather, I'd say it is arming them with the truth.
It's good to be curious about everything and by all means, folks should incorporate as many voices as they can/want into their communicative arsenal, but there is a reason that we refer to a particular form of English as "standard" (and a particular form of German as "high" for that matter) and it's because most of the folks who are likely to be holding the cards -- either in person at a job interview or before you ever get that far on the standardized tests -- speak that way and consider it normatively better than dialect.
Maybe it's not the way it ought to be, but it is the way it is.
@Julia
This is where early education programs like HeadStart can be effective, but they must include education for parents. Most black parents of my parents generation taught their children that to be successful they must write and speak Standard English at school and at work. This was a everyday occurrence in my house. Every time I said ain't, I would get "the look" from my mother. Today, some parents don't understand this and need to be taught.
Re TNC's point about not being discriminated against standard English-well, in the real world, people just do discriminate, and that's the end of it, just like they discriminate on names. That's why blacks have to code-switch.
Now as julia pointed out, some blacks just never get exposed to standard English pre-Ist grade.AAVE is all they know, so they fail the standard Tests ("tesses" in their dialect) because they never learn the standard English. Maybe a super-Head Start program?
BTW, it's not just a problem for AAs. Blacks from the Caribbean and Hispanics have a lot of the same problems.
I have to concur with some others who have written about the code switching that almost everyone does. As a gay white male gamer geek who is also a CPA, I have a multitude of voices. I speak business English and write standard written English at work - as does everyone else at my firm, regardless of ethnic or socioeconomic background. That's not to say that it is 'better' than other forms - it is simply how a group of people from across the U.S, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia can sit in a room, or on a conference call, and communicate in a way understandable by all.
But there's an entirely different vernacular used when I'm just around 'the gays' that would leave most of my coworkers confused. I can read, write, and speak in fluent "leet" when communicating in gamer-related environments that would be considered a sign of lesser intelligence in professional circles. Around my family, like most families, there are certain linguistic shortcuts that have developed over the years that are incomprehensible to outsiders.
I guess my point is that everyone engages in code-switching to some extent. Being able to speak and write in professional / business / standard English doesn't render the others "lesser," but not being able to communicate in a professional environment is going to reduce your opportunities for success.
George W. Bush, who was born into a New England patrician family and educated at Yale for goodness sake, found it convenient to speak to people as if his audience were on it's second six pack of beer at a barbque in the Texas hill country. Nothing wrong with that; insofar as anyone who has ever been to such an affair knows, the communication at such events is purely about good natured swagger and comradeliness. A guffaw is the perfect exclamation point, especially massaged by big jewleried women's voices slowly elongating their dipthongs and flashing great mouths full of teeth.
Now he took no end of equally good natured poking about his verbal tics, and liberals certainly made a case of what a stupid sounding cretin our President was, but none of them said, look here George, you're a poor role model for the young white population who will think they can talk like an ignorant fool and one day become the President of the United States. Nor did they bother to point out to him that it's one thing to talk like that with a huge chunk of brisket in your mouth, beer in hand, under a big bright sky full of stars and quite another to address your boss at the office that way.
It may be that because Sarah Palin was a woman and lacked the Yale bonafides, people cut her less slack than W, but there again, no one couched a critique of her on the basis of what a bad role model she was for young women. Indeed, her status as a role model for young women was often lauded even by those who found her in every other way despicable.
It strikes me as a white person communicating with other white people that one code we need to be aware of is how we continuously communicate to African Americans that we think of them as a special sort of other whom we feel far more comfortable to ask toe the line than ourselves.
I call that the non-condescendification code. I must confess that I break it myself to my own shame, nonetheless: to conversate, or conversely, run on at the mouth, that is the question. When I get frustrated that people misunderstand me and I them, I think of my friend Modero from the Congo who grew up speaking three different African languages, a dialect of one, and French. Whatever language was served up first was the one everyone took up, and no one thought much about it--multilingualism is a fact of life.
@Curious George
Now that I think about it the same thing actualy happens to PWT (Poor White Trash). The least educated of them talk about those who left the farm accent on the farm having 'forgotten where they came from'. There are many dialects among the poor but the higher you go in social class the fewer their are. As with many other issues some of the differences we attribute to race are actualy differences of class.
People who make assumptions from dialect deserve the often nasty results. Somebody decided my step-fathers Arkansas hills dialect meant he'd be glad to receive the Southern White Citizens Council newsletter. Had he discovered who did it he was prepared to do physical damage to insure they never made that mistake again.
"(This does seem a little silly to me as an American - by choosing not to emigrate, he's made a decision to be German).
Posted by Tel | February 19, 2009 12:31 PM"
This is a quibbling point, but in response to the above. There is a considerable difference between being a German (or Georgian, or Grenadian) CITIZEN and feeling that one is "German" (or "Georgian", or "Grenadian") The cultural, psychological, and emotional history and attachment to the idea of "German-ness" (or "Georgian-ness", or "Grenadian-ness") is different from having a passport.
Love this discussion, by the way.
I find the subject of dialect fascinating. I grew up in a small town in the lower Midwest during the 1960's/70's. We're talking a 90-minute drive to Kentucky and nearly 6 hours to Chicago.
There was a sharp dialect divide. German and/or Irish descended people whose families had traveled over time due west from Pennsylvania through Ohio then Indiana to reach our little patch of rural Illinois (farmers, mostly) spoke "proper" English. This, even though most of us said "ruf" for "roof," "thur" for "there/their" and routinely dropped the "g" from all gerunds. That's the short list.
The "bad" English speakers were descended from Scotch/Irish families that had in the early 20th century migrated north from mining communities in states south and southeast of Illinois. They said "yins" to signify "you" plural, "warsh" for "wash," "seen" for "saw" and routinely dropped the "g" from all gerunds.
Anybody visiting our town from someplace more populated would have considered us all, in terms of language, a uniform bunch of hicks. Within our small community, these variations of speech constituted a class divide.
"While I disagree with the letter-writer on the whole "role model" aspect, I must also disagree with TNC's assertion that teaching children (especially children of color, though also children with other non-standard dialects and/or pronounced accents) that knowing standard English will help them avoid being discriminated against is "poisonous." Rather, I'd say it is arming them with the truth."
But that isn't what I said. Here is the sentence in question:
"Anyway, this idea that one should learn standard English in order to not be discriminated against is, from my perspective, poisonous."
Telling someone that knowing standard English will "help them avoid being discriminated against" is very different than telling someone they "should learn standard in order to not be discriminated against." This may seem small but it isn't. One implies a possible effect of acquiring knowledge. The other describes the very reason to acquire knowledge in the first place.
People discriminate for all sorts of reasons, and taking this reasoning to its logical end--all black women should get perms, Asian-Americans should get eyelid surgery, Southerners should never speak in their native accent, and so on.
You have no idea what people will hold against you. The reason to learn standard English is simple--more knowledge, makes you more competitive. And in America, standard English is the trade language, meaning that knowledge of standard English is a huge asset. It's that simple.
CitizenE:
Regarding Palin's voice, I think (and I have no empirical evidence to back this up) that a sharp, nasally northern Palin accent grates on more people in the US than a casual, drawling, southern Bush accent.
Look at movies: The Southerner is always the nice guy, or gal, the folksy, down-home draw-up-a-chair-ah-got-biscuits-on-the-griddle friend, or sometimes the persuasive lawyer, or whatever. Southern accents show up EVERYWHERE, from war movies set in all periods to dramas and comedies of all types.
Northerners in movies? WIth accents like Palin? I just think Fargo. That's all I can think of. Wonderful. Oh - and Bobby's mom from Bobby's World (dontcha know). I've been conditioned to react to Southern voices in a certain way--to expect a certain type of person (trustworthy, or at someone you can talk to) when I hear that voice.
All of which is a long way of saying that I don't think the Bush/Palin accent reaction discrepancy is because she's "a woman and lacked the Yale bonafides." At least, I think the main reason is that most Americans automatically react differently to their two different types of accents. I couldn't care less about her lack of Yale education (I sure don't have one), and I have absolutely no complaints about her womanhood. But her accent! Agh, my ears, they bleed.
I don't mean to disrespect anyone, but having to alter one's dialect in formal settings is not unique to African Americans. Believe me, I don't use words like "synergy" when I'm bullshitting with my friends at the bar. Everyone has to "talk the talk" at work or when trying to impress.
TNC - Ignore the email. He's German. They have rules for fucking everything. I'm surprised they allow idioms and accents at all in German.
Jack - Palin's accent is annoying because it is fake. She's a female Inspector Clousou in so many ways...
We constantly hear that if children speak a dialect they will be unsuccessful. Yet I wonder about this. English speakers from the Caribbean are some of the most successful immigrants to the U.S. Yet you only have to hang out with them in Brooklyn to know that their every day speech is hardly standard English.
A similar phenomena can be seen in Scotland. Your average Scot uses so many non-standard English words that it can sometimes be hard to understand what they are saying. Yet the Scots do just fine when they emigrate to England, Australia and other English speaking countries.
So is the problem using the vernacular or is the problem discrimination.
Ta-Nehisi, I heard you on Fresh Air yesterday. I thought it was wonderful. I grew up in the '60s and as a white "old leftist" had many contacts with the Chicago and Indianapolis Panthers. I thought them to be articulate, honest, and friendly because they were secure in their worldview and, if you get me, had nothing to fear. I've ordered your book.
Deleted. Read the piece before you write.
Deleted. Think before you write.
An interesting piece, and I agree for the most part. However, there are problems where accent DOES negatively affect one's ability to effectively communicate.
An example: Fifty. Many pronounce the word as "fitty", and I don't really have a problem with that, as I understand it to be related to accent. On the counter, because it has become commonly acceptable to be pronounced "fitty", many younger people do write it as "fity" or "fitty" instead of the proper way, "fifty."
I agree that it is intellectual school-yard bullying to look down at someone with an accent as intellectually inferior. Just so, it is ludicrous to presume someone sans-accent is naturally highly intelligent.
The previously mentioned "fifty" vs "fity" is just merely one example. The high amount of slang, double-negatives, and bizarre sentence structures are often reflective of how that individual's accent shapes their speech. That speech then tarnishes their written ability, which completely minimizes their credibility and perception to others.
As other commentators have noted, an accent is one thing, an inability to speak properly is another. When the former begins to negatively affect the latter, I would suggest that the individual think about trying to tone down their accent.
Deleted. Think before you write.
To me this is the same discussion as "I speak X language. Should my children be forced to learn grammatical english when they speak X perfectly well.", its simply to a lesser degree.
I'm from the south. And I am lucky enough to have little or no southern accent. I say lucky enough because there is a very real stereotype of the dumb southerner, that many people buy into. The reason I have little accent is because my parents were very vigorous in policing my language so that I used proper grammar. Knowing full well about the stereotype.
The ability to blend into work environments and to move between social strata is a gatekeeper for advancement in many situations. Humanity likes homegeneity. Its in the hardware. Get over it.
One of the things employers ask from schools is to turn out employable citizens. Part of that is someone who can move from Baltimore to Seattle without sounding completely wierd.
Up to a certain point, accents are colorful (with a little stigma attached if its an 'uncool' one). After that point, they become handicaps.
Martin,
My Bavarian wife (I'm from Southern California) says that when she hears an acquaintance from the northern city of Kiel speak, she thinks "fish."
The effect is similar to hearing someone with a strong blue-collar Boston or Long Island accent, she says.
Bavarians have their own special words for just about everything and even saying hello. Swabians and Saxonians have their own distinctive accents.
Edmund Stoiber, who was governor of Bavaria and the conservative chancellor candidate in the most recent election, had an obvious Bavarian accent. This was a handicap for him in the most recent election, just as it was for Franz Josef Strauss in the 1970s.
Apparently enough of the rest of the country was not ready to accept a Bavarian.
Contrast this with Americans' ability to accept presidents with various regional accents.
Sorry, Stoiber wasn't the candidate in the most recent election. He was in the one before that.
And it was weird, I put his name into Google and the "autocomplete" engine gave one search option as:
"edmund stoiber antichrist".
English speakers are very tolerant of linguistic diversity compared to speakers of most other languages, and Americans are among the most tolerant among English speakers.
Generally, we accept almost any accent that we can understand. But we do need a common understanding and people make assumptions based on what they hear. As much as we hate to admit it, those assumptions are generalizations based on experience. They may not be fair, but they are purvasic because they work.
Now consider that I misspelled that word pervasive. That mistake lowered your opinion about what you were reading. You couldn’t help it.
A person learns to do what works in various situations. Some behaviors work better than others in particular situations. I recently served with the Marines in Iraq. The language and speech patterns I used there was different from the language I use back in the office. Neither type of speech, BTW, is my native dialect. I had to give that up when I went to college so that people would listen to WHAT I said and not how I said it.
Finally, don’t give me that BS crying about having to put on a “non-threatening “accent. All of us have second and third voices. We all have to do that and if you talk to me I will demand that of you as you will of me. Being non-threatening is a price we all pay for civilization. If you have avoided doing that all this time, good for you and we probably won’t be talking to each other very long.
Aural prejudice is not restricted to Southerners.
I learned to speak Awfully Educated Eastern in self-defense, because my native Wisconsin accent, deployed in zip codes 08540 and 10021, so clearly made tristate provincials take me for an idiot. But after thirty years in exile, New York cab drivers still ask, "So, how long have you been in the States? Enjoying your visit?"
Oh, ja, sure, you betcha.
First things first: this is a great discussion and a great blog. I can't imagine getting such rich thoughts from any other medium especially on such a topic.
This said, I've always felt sort of ambiguous on TNC's street slang. Since I don't know him at all aside from his writing, it seemed kind of clumsy mixing the highbrow thoughts and the street speak - sort of like playing Kind of Blue on a kazoo or an empty box of Boston Baked Beans.
The question that means the most to me right now as a parent of two young boys is what will improve their odds of making having as good or better life outcomes of their parents? Taking racism as a given and given their multiracial makeup, taking away one more excuse for discrimination is a good tactic - especially against those upstanding bigots who are unaware of said status. It may be unprincipled or selling out but if it gets you a good house on a good street then maybe it's a good strategy.
Coming from a military family, nothing was romanticized in our household - especially not language. The teachers said X, the parents said Y and our role was to learn X+Y. Nothing was fair but it was unfair for everyone regardless of race: we were the sons and daughters of war, and what's fair about that?
At school, of course, things were not so clean or ordered. Speaking "white" and showing some success with books was a sure road to harassment from very authentic black kids demonstrably tougher than the bookish sap, I. Of course, one got it from the tough white boys, too. Hard to be a dweeb, always.
So, the street slang doesn't do much for me (I associate it with an impending kick in the butt) but the gems of the content are marvelous. He's getting paid and having fun. If more people had that combo, I really wouldn't care at all what came out of their mouths...or their pens.
The black dialect in America is partly affected through insecurity, which is what I see among our young black men who exhibit the strongest accents. But when two African-Americans who know each other and speak to each other without surrounding peers, they neutralize their accents.
I don't know if anyone has studied this, but I think someone should.
When I heard Mr. Coates in a video discussing subjects with his father I was struck by the difference in their accents and wondered how that had come about. Mr. Coates senior spoke standard English but his son pronounced his "t's" as "d's," among other differences. The younger Mr. Coates's essay on Michelle Obama in The Atlantic had seemed quite sophisticated to me, but when I heard him speak I thought, unfortunately, that an editor had probably done a lot of re-writing for him. My estimation of his abilities was diminished by his non-standard English pronunciation, alas. Is this the impression he really wants to create with his non-standard spoken English?
The accent is only a problem when it becomes incomprehensible (go to Aberdeen and you'll hear what I mean). The problem with dialect is that if you don't have that base of standard received English to work from you'll have difficulty in understanding other dialects.
One of my professors told me a story that when he was at Harvard in the 1950s, the students in one of his classes complained because they couldn't understand the instructor's accent. The instructor was from Missouri.
It is good to be able to communicate with others...
gbear, I noticed the discrepancy as well. I wonder where TNC's dad was raised -- growing up in working class Baltimore quite different from moving there as an adult, as far as speech pattern are concerned. (And let's not ignore the influence of hip-hop slang on some men of more recent generations.)
I have a certain initial prejudice against the semi-incoherence of "street" mannerisms, as I do against a strong redneck drawl, but demonstrated knowledge and thoughtfulness will win me over fairly quickly. One example -- the smart kid with cornrows (Wallace, I believe) from "The Wire".
Alot of this debate has to do with nonverbal behavior. Having recently finished a master's seminar on the topic, this discussion seems very familiar. As many here have picked up on, accent and dialect can be used as nonverbal signals by those intelligent/skillful enough to do so, such as President Obama. (Yes, they are "vocal" cues but still "nonverbal.") Some people are stuck in one accent and either do not have the intellignce or inclination to master other ways of speaking. Either way they are sending a message. Some other elements pertaining to nonverbal communication noted here:
re: "I tend to pick up bits of accent and dialect from whomever I'm talking with after more than a couple of minutes' conversation..." - it's not pretentious, it's called mirroring and you are undoubtedly sending an array of nonverbal cues as well that tell this person you are accepting them and that you can be trusted, such as standing the way they stand, using their eye contact rhythms, observing their social distance, etc.
re: "a kind of second voice, a rather nonthreatening, standardized style of speak. It's key to remove about a third of all bass...", and
"Ah, how race and gender rule our world! Scaling back on the lower register and speaking in a higher, more breathy tone so you're not seen as a ball-busting threat..."
-This has not so much to do with race and gender as it does with our status as primate mammals. Almost universally across human cultures, the superior person speaks in a more direct, lower voice, even females do this when they are in charge. The subordinate inflects their voice in a higher pitch so as to signal their nonthreatening status to their boss. It's true of chimps, dogs, and us. Deal with it, and get that chip off your shoulder, you human animal. Accent falls squarely in the nonverbal communication patterns. Dialect can cross over into this arena depending on the situation; whether a signal, conscious or unconscious, is being sent. For instance, the dialect used by Phil Gramm and George Bush was an affectation and purposely employed.
gbear writes: "The younger Mr. Coates's essay on Michelle Obama in The Atlantic had seemed quite sophisticated to me, but when I heard him speak I thought, unfortunately, that an editor had probably done a lot of re-writing for him."
What's especially ironic about this comment is that it's in response to TNC's original post here: "Therein lies the irony--the desire to patrol someone else's accent strikes me as deeply incurious. It is intelligence as artifice..."
gbear, what's up? Are you serious? How much of TNC's stuff did you read before making such a lame and ignorant comment (on TNC's blog no less)?
Mason writes: "I have a certain initial prejudice against the semi-incoherence of "street" mannerisms, as I do against a strong redneck drawl, but demonstrated knowledge and thoughtfulness will win me over fairly quickly. One example -- the smart kid with cornrows (Wallace, I believe) from "The Wire".
Kudos for being honest. I think most people are guilty of this same "prejudice", as you call it. I just hope that you're not looking to TV shows for examples that confound the stereotypes.
I heard the interview on the radio and was very impressed, although I found your accent to be unremarkable, though your speaking style was refreshingly easy, unselfconscious and free of affect. (honestly I though that while listening to the interview)
It seems to me that perhaps our German friend doesn't have quite the understanding of American language and culture that he thinks he does. Although if your accent makes him feel a certain way he is entitled to his feelings.
You hit the nail on the head when you say that you take offense to his lack of curiosity. An aversion to distinctive accents is more of a problem for a child's development in this country than the possession of such an accent would be. In my opinion.
From a non-linguist:
Accent is the surface of spoken language. Its significance is in how it identifies where we came from, or maybe our social class. The same sentence can be said in any of dozens of accents.
Differences in vocabulary and phraeseology go deeper; there's now a chance for misunderstanding even if the accent is mild and most words are understood, because of the presence of unfamiliar words or words used with unfamiliar meanings.
Differences in grammar are deeper still. As long as the differences are consistent, there's still a way for standard English and variant English speakers (or speakers of two different variants) to come to understand each other -- happens all the time -- my husband's Finnish-descended relatives, especially the elderly, sound different in accent, vocabulary, and some aspects of grammar, to me.
When a dialect (variant) carries a big load of boundary-making, however, there's the danger that the dialect will start to be more useful as a solidarity-producer or social glue (for its users) than as a way of communicating practical thoughts and carrying out tasks. I think this is part of what bothers some people about Ebonics (even more so than BSE, which is not really the same dialect). For some, (definitely not all) young people who use Ebonics and who at the same time don't speak Standard English, you worry that solidarity is trumping functionality in their use of language. Our history of racism sure does make it clear why that might happen, but you still worry.