"My own people used to say to me, 'You speak like a white woman.'"

“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.

Latest posts by Shani (see all)

  • LH

    I reckon that Evin Cosby was referring to black people, as our good friend Lawrence Otis Graham is the only black person I’m aware of who claims people based on socioeconomic status.

    That said, I have to call shenanigans on you. Even if you’ve never met them, you know that there are black people who associate certain cadences and intonations with “speaking white.” White people do the same, as evidenced by the existence of the valley girl and the surfer dude. I noticed that you said “plain English,” which suggests that you made the distinction.

    If your high school was 11 per cent black, I’m guessing –and I could be wrong here– that the majority of the black students grew up in an integrated, middle- to upper-middle class community and sounded pretty much the same. Who would say you sounded white?

    Do you really believe that had you attended, say, Cardoza or Ballou high schools in D.C., that none of the kids there would’ve said you sounded white?

    As for your collegiate experience, stop playin’. You attended among the bourgiest of HBCUs. Even the students who didn’t sound white had likely been exposed to blacks who did. It wouldn’t be anything forgeign to them, but beyond that, they probably wouldn’t associate sounding white with something negative–as many blacks seem to based on my anecdotal experience.

    We’ve all seen or heard about the 20/20 that showed the different treatment apartment seekers who sound black receive versus the treatment that apartment seekers who sound white receive, which is to say that people know what sounding black and sounding white means when they hear it.

    There’s no one who read Cosby’s comments who didn’t know what she meant. Now whether or not they liked it is a different story altogether, and one that goes to class resentment.

  • LH: My school had about 175 black kids, but maybe 10 of them were in advanced classes. I’m from a mid-sized, overwhelmingly lower-class city in California. My very overpopulated school (built for 1100, stuffed with 1600+) was designated as an inner-city school. In other words, unlike myself, most of the black people I went to school with weren’t well-off or from families with two professional parents. Most of them were, at best, working class. The rest of the population was pretty much Mexican and newly-emigrated South Asians. Basically, more poor folks.

    I can only speak for myself and my personal experience. I have never been told I sounded white. You might be right about HU.

    However, have you been told you sound white? ‘Cuz ya do.

    And class resentment? Oh, come on. My essential point is this: being rich is fine. Being willfully ignorant isn’t.

  • LH

    My apologies for assuming.

    But, uh … how do you know how I sound? :-) I’ve been told I sound like Craig David, but I reckon that’s because the people who said that couldn’t think of any other black Brits, not because I do, in fact, sound like Craig David.

    I didn’t mean to suggest that you, in particular, suffer from class resentment, but I do believe that much of the animus that’s been directed toward Evin Cosby is rooted in that very resentment. Well, that and the special place in hell reserved for her father.

    If she attended Bank Street, it’s true that she’d be hard put to relate to blacks who’d say that she sounds white (as a critcism). I want to know who criticises the people who say these things? But goodness forbid someone from the Jack & Jill set be quoted as saying that a black person sounded black. Not cool.

  • quadmoniker

    As a complete side note, it’s interesting that you would note that access to the Internet is a marker of privilege. There are people working to redefine markers of poverty – currently, it’s based on the price of a basket of goods that are mostly basic foods – and are wondering whether lacking tools such as access to the Internet should be included. And when you think about it, access to the Internet is kinda important these days. Anyway, I know that has nothing to do with the point of your post. It just struck me.

  • ladyfresshh

    Because everyone gets to choose how they speak.)

    Now you sound just as ignorant as she does. Many of us do choose how we speak. The terms “inside voice” and “outside voice” come to mind. If you are referring to slang or curse words… again this is cleaned up for job interviews by everyone again for the most part (there is a small segment who think cursing is acceptable in all places and those who simply have turrets)
    . As for dialectthis proves to be a bit more difficult but know everyone makes an effort at standard english for job interviews which to me indicates a fallacy in that comment

    Now, I’ve had the priviledge of meeting the woman a while back on several occassions. I did not realize who she was because she’s quite an unassuming individual. No flashy attitude of hauter, nada. Now this may have changed in the years since i’ve conversed with her and introduced her to my mother on one occassion but i doubt it. I think her comments were taken in a manner in which she didn’t mean them combined with her father’s speeches i can see where the affront comes into play but still i think peoples reaction were a quick draw.

  • LF: “Now you sound just as ignorant as she does. Many of us do choose how we speak. The terms “inside voice” and “outside voice” come to mind. If you are referring to slang or curse words… again this is cleaned up for job interviews by everyone again for the most part

    Come again? The ability to code-switch is not ingrained; it’s learned. A lot of people don’t ‘clean up’ their language for job interviews, because they don’t know their language isn’t ‘clean.’ To be able to do so means that you have access to different social contexts, and access is about privilege. And obviously, the valuing of one form of speaking over another is necessarily about privilege.

  • ladyfresshh

    The ability to code-switch is not ingrained; it’s learned. A lot of people don’t ‘clean up’ their language for job interviews, because they don’t know their language isn’t ‘clean.’ To be able to do so means that you have access to different social contexts, and access is about privilege. And obviously, the valuing of one form of speaking over another is necessarily about privilege.

    This is a disservice to many people in this country who do and have learned to do so. An automatic assumption that people from a certain background cannot or will not ‘code switch’ is a bad one. ‘Code switching’ has been learned by black people since slavery times come on now act like you know. Immigrants pick up quite quickly the mores of our country. So who are you referring to with this failure to code switch. This attitude of ‘oh those poor folk they just don’t know any better’. is just as bad as hers

  • LF: An automatic assumption that people from a certain background cannot or will not ‘code switch’ is a bad one.

    Why should they, though? If Evin Cosby can’t relate to poor people, then why should poor people relate to middle-class or rich people? It’s not about poor folk not “knowing better.” That’s an elitist assumption (that code-switching is better than not code-switching). I think what G.D. is getting at is that people who don’t learn to code-switch aren’t doing it by choice. They simply don’t have the opportunity or access to that sort of privilege.

    And your analogy about immigrants is flawed, as most immigrants coming to this country are relatively well-educated, compared to the poor folks living in the inner city.

  • LF: did you read what i wrote or are you referring to something you read somewhere else?

    But i’ll bite. if code-switching were so easy to do, why doesn’t everyone do it? Wouldn’t there be a tremendous social advantage for folks who could just get their subject-verb agreement on whenever they wanted to? You may take it as a given because you do it, but that’s sorta how privilege works: assuming that what is true for you and affirmed by the larger society — the ability to speak ‘cleanly’ — is everyone else’s default as well.

    (Also, the implication here is that African American vernacular English —AAVE or Ebonics — is not a valid dialect.)

    And on the immigrant point? No… Just no. You’re ignoring the many, many second-generation children who act as their parents’ interpreters because their parents never learned to speak English. It is extremely difficult to learn English, and like any language, there are myriad dialects — and among those dialects, some are privileged over others. (Think of how often Southern accents are coded in entertainment media to hint at the stupidity/backwardness of the speaker.)

    The simple fact that those second-generation children speak English necessarily means they have a different relationship with the larger American society. And yeah, their ability to speak English means they are privileged in a country that still does most of its business in that language and thus privileges English speakers.

  • shani: i wouldn’t say ‘most immigrants are relatively well-educated’…but there *are* countries that export large numbers of their professional classes to the U.S. This is particularly true of Caribbeans and West Africans.

  • G.D. Right you probably are. I’m also thinking of Indians, some Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, S. Korean), and Filipinos.

  • ladyfresshh

    Why should they, though? If Evin Cosby can’t relate to poor people, then why should poor people relate to middle-class or rich people? It’s not about poor folk not “knowing better.” That’s an elitist assumption (that code-switching is better than not code-switching).

    Fact of life is they do. Many many people do, simply to get a job to gain access to different aspects of society. Not everyone has to no and it is as asset for certain careers (acting) but to question that people have done so for centuries to create a new priviledge platform to place her on, nah man. I’m not denying she’s priviledged and the root of her comments come from that background but it very much seems like excuses to resent her. She’s speaking from her perspective which is sadly still not considered the norm in our society describing (albit poorly) what is the norm for her.

  • quadmoniker

    LF: I’m with G.D. and Shani-o on this one. I grew up in the deep south, and even some teachers spoke incorrectly – “We was” instead of “We are” and the like. I didn’t know the word “iron” wasn’t pronounced “arn” until I was in college outside of Philadelphia. So plenty of people in America don’t code-switch because they don’t even know there’s a code. And that includes plenty of my well educated contemporaries still in Arkansas. The English that many of this country’s elites think of as standard just is not the English that many others speak. The ability to use it grants people access and shuts others out. And frankly, it’s been that way for awhile, when country’s started to think of themselves as a common nations that crossed regional differences. The English we speak isn’t Welsh or Cornish, is the English of power, centered in middle England. The Spanish spoken in 21 countries is Castilian Spanish. Language is just more complicated than that.

  • Won

    I’ve never met a single black person who told me that my speaking plain English makes me sound like a white person….

    Someone else, probably touched on this…but. Whatever. Really? People ALWAYS ask me, why do I speak “White”. Yeah, Whites,Blacks Hispanics..EVVEERYYONE. Can’t escape that damn phrase, and I’m only 17.

  • LaDonna

    Incredibly late but I’ve also been told my entire life that I sound like a white person. I’m from Ohio.