Here's an article appearing on my Twitter feed that basically says no one should ever use AAVE:
https://wearyourvoicemag.com/identit...opriating-aave
Here's what I find frustrating about this: "As a mixed race Asian-American growing up primarily in the United States, I acknowledge that I, too, have been part of the problem, and am guilty of appropriating AAVE—online and in person. However, I am actively trying to unlearn these habits because I believe they are harmful and disrespectful to Black folks, given my positionality within the racial hierarchy of the United States."
Okay...but why is this harmful? I'm genuinely confused how me using "hip" or "bae" is a problem. This isn't a person talking about "minstrelsy," this is a person concerned that "Over time, these innovations are appropriated into the dominant classes, after which their true origins are erased, forgotten, and reclaimed by the very groups who continue to oppress the original innovators." But we're talking about slang, and frankly the birth of such slang strikes me as more a class issue than a race one: wealthy people, particularly in the music industry, have taken words from the poor and popularized them for their own profit. When was the last time Beyoncé or Jay-Z had anything to do with the typical user of AAVE?
I find the arguments I've outlined above in previous posts compelling. Even if I think the whole Carlson-Wee incident might be overblown, I can see an intelligent disagreement; in this case I struggle because, as has been stated, the writer takes her position as obvious and doesn't deign to explain why using slang that may have originated in AAVE might cause actual harm.