“No one should be judging and assuming that because I’m black, I have to speak in that hip-hop way. That’s something I prefer not to do.
This newsflash comes to us from Evin Cosby. (Because everyone gets to choose how they speak.) The Cosby scion, who’s trying really hard to make news about her new boutique which I will not publicize here, goes on to share the following gem:
“I always went to private schools – Bank Street elementary, Columbia Prep – so I was surrounded by people like me. Not so much African-American, but privileged. I don’t really have a connection to other people who didn’t have my lifestyle.”
It looks like she learned well at her father’s knee.
And this is the thing about privilege that bugs. It’s one thing to acknowledge your privilege. It’s quite another to wade in it, to splash in it, to swim in it. I’m privileged. I’m guessing everyone who reads this blog is. You have access to the Internet, don’t you? But that privilege isn’t something to be proud of. It doesn’t make you better. It makes you luckier. Privilege is the best reason to connect with people who don’t have the same opportunities. It’s called giving back. And while giving back and selling $500 polyester dresses aren’t mutually exclusive, I suspect they are in Ms. Cosby’s world.
Sigh. I could go on, but this is making me tired.
PB Update: I’ve since napped and gone back to reread what Evin had to say, and I’d just like to submit the following for your review.
“My own people used to say to me, ‘You speak like a white woman.'”
A small quibble: to which of your “own people” are you referring? The privileged white kids you went to private school with, or the hip-hop speaking blacks you don’t have a connection to?
And I call shenanigans on this ‘speaking like a white person’ business. I was one of two or three blacks in AP classes in my 11 percent black high school, and I went to an HBCU, and yet, I’ve never met a single black person who told me that my speaking plain English makes me sound like a white person.
Crossposted from The Neo.