There is no question that Black culture heavily influences
On Saturday night, a skit performed on the long-running comedy sketch show
Saturday Night Live (SNL) didn’t go over well with Black folks on social media. The routine was an ill-attempt at using African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) and ascribing it to Generation Z.
Reactions from Twitter ranged from disgust to an all-out lesson on why AAVE existed in the first place.
AAVE is a creolized version of American English created by enslaved Africans brought to the Western Hemisphere.
“Creolization is a common process that results from lots of people who speak different languages needing a common means to communicate and mixing their languages together to make one,” The Messenger reported.
Although academia criticizes AAVE, it is a viable and flowing language that continues to expand even after its inception over 500 years ago.
In 2018, The Atlantic
reported that “most speakers of African-American English do learn to code-switch naturally.”Ultimately, the preservation of AAVE revolves around gatekeeping Blackness. And skits like those portrayed on SNL should be dragged.