A Black womyn grows up developing a hatred for the language accessed by the majority of Black men. I’ve heard about many occasions where the Black man has no chance with a womyn of certain standards using his familiar dialect. They know the call-outs very well; “ay lil mama” separates the scrubs from the eligible. We haven’t even considered the appearance of these men that drive the daughters of the slave trade away, but the focus on pick-up lines reveals enough. To the extent that approaches like “excuse me miss, my name is (blank)”—in other words, comments that use “proper” English—are a bare minimum for relationships, these womyn in particular want a man that’s white.

 

Black slang signals something that particular Black womyn must escape. Those that I’ve talked to recognize the fact that successful people speak impeccable English, White English. Indeed, the language is not ours, so we do not determine the acceptable sentence structures outside our own communities. No one can blame Black folks for wanting to be apart of the other community, especially when ours doesn’t have the prestige and wealth of Lincoln Park or Gold Coast. However, that prestige is not worth stifling and devaluing our creativity. African American womyn completely disown a portion of Black culture and submissively adopt White values when they uncritically dismiss men that talk “ghetto”.