
African American Vernacular English Is Not Standard English with Mistakes (1999) [pdf] - hiq
https://web.stanford.edu/~zwicky/aave-is-not-se-with-mistakes.pdf
======
tptacek
This is a fantastic essay, and you're cheating yourself out of a great read if
you dismiss it as a political argument.

Geoffrey Pullum is a research professor specializing in the description of
English and a contributor to the always-excellent Language Log. He is, as a
friend of mine described him, an "Internet Linguistics Super Hero".

This is the nerdiest and most interesting piece on African-American dialect
you will ever read. Every Standard-English-speaking elite with an opinion on
AAVE is wrong about it! And when they're wrong about it, they're wrong in
funny ways! The payoff towards the end with William Raspberry trying to mimic
AAVE is worth all the build-up --- not that it needs to be, since I couldn't
stop reading that build-up either.

The central thesis of the essay is this: elites dismiss AAVE as simplified or
"street-talk" English. But it isn't: its rules are rigorous and intricate. You
can't simply simplify Standard English and arrive at AAVE. You have to learn
it, like any other dialect. Some of AAVE's rules are shared with other
dialects, like Cockney. Some of its more idiosyncratic rules, like double-
negatives, are mainstream features of other high-status languages. Whatever
your political affiliation is, it's hard to read this piece and come away
thinking anything other than AAVE should should take its place among all the
other well-accepted English dialects.

Having read the whole thread here, I'll take a second to point out what the
essay is _not_ about:

* It's not about "teaching AAVE at school". The only case it makes for AAVE's role in education is to suggest that _AAVE-aware_ instruction will improve outcomes for learning _Standard English_.

* It's not about whether we should take special efforts to preserve AAVE, which makes about as much sense as contriving a long argument about whether we should preserve Cockney or Quebecois.

* It's not about whether AAVE speakers should speak only AAVE. In fact, the essay heavily implies the opposite. Had it not been written before the mainstreaming of the term "code-switching", I imagine code-switching would factor heavily in the essay.

~~~
nickpsecurity
"But it isn't: its rules are rigorous and intricate. You can't simply simplify
Standard English and arrive at AAVE. "

I 100% agree about the quality of this paper and the quote above. It took me
_years_ of trial-and-error in black schools to learn to spot or speak correct
versions of their language. I won't even say I mastered it or anything: just
passable. I watched plenty of times when people transfered in, talked like
they're hood, slipped on some little rule, and had a whole room stare at them.
They almost always got called out then usually admitted they were faking it to
be cool or blend or whatever. Even the whites like me learned to spot what was
authentic or fake due to those intricate details you mention.

Fun to finally read a detailed analysis of it. One thing that _might_ be worth
more research and writeups is one of reasons even I resisted it to a degree:
changing words with a common meaning to mean the _total opposite_. It was
really hard to keep up with without watching shows or listening to music they
did... my guess at where many trends started. Confirmed it for some. I nearly
got into a fight over a guy I was told acted "so cold" to a specific woman I
was friends with not knowing they redefined it to mean something like
"awesome." Usually just awkward situations rather than violent but it did and
still seems like a foolish practice. Interestingly, they later made same
recommendation in a different form about rebel flag: had intrinsic,
established, and negative meaning that can't be erased by merely using it in
different meaning/context.

Rest was just how they talk far as I figured. The country whites had their own
form of English, too. There was the "true Southern" accent some upper-class
people had. People in from the cities in the North had theirs. Some whites and
blacks stayed speaking Standard English. My words and style are a combo of all
these as is probably obvious. Once exposed to enough styles, I never let
myself get to hating AAVE as it was clear many people just spoke differently.
More like just straining to keep up with its changing definitions so I could
seize a good opportunity or avoid an assault.

Note: Strange enough, this is also the first time I've ever heard "AAVE." I
don't follow linguistics or the debates in the papers since I figured it would
just be closet racism. I just listened to what people around me said since
they followed all that. The blacks themselves, including English teachers,
explained the AAVE concept in school by saying (1) it wasn't broken English,
(2) it was their own language/culture, and (3) it's called Ebonics. Reading
Pullum's education on that word was ironic and funny given blacks, not whites,
spent years hammering it into my head. Whites just said "talks/talked black"
with a few using "ebonics" for mockery. Now, I'm going to try to forget it in
favor of AAVE which is indeed a better term. Just can't believe I haven't seen
it or heard it so little from blacks that it went away with my memory.
Strange.

~~~
WalterBright
Meaning reversal has a long history in English, at least back to the 1800's
when 'nasty' often meant its opposite.

~~~
justinpombrio
'Wicked' is in transition.

~~~
mikeash
As is "literally," much as it pains me.

~~~
WalterBright
"inflammable" grinds my gears.

~~~
mikeash
Inflammable means flammable? What a country!

~~~
quesera
I know you're memeing a quote, but the etymology of "flammable" is kind of
awesome.

Flammable is a word, invented several times over history (most recently in the
1940s), to mean that same thing as "inflammable" (able to become inflamed)
because it's important to get correct and the _in-_ prefix confuses people
into thinking it means the opposite.

French and Italian apparently have words beginning _ininflam-_ which mean
"not-inflammable". Americans prefer an the less ambiguous concoction: "non-
flammable".

~~~
mikeash
Yeah, it's a great topic, funny and interesting. _And_ it's about fire and
explosions. What could be better?

------
LyndsySimon
As someone who grew up in the rural South, most of the distinguishing
characteristics of AAVE listed on Wiki are present in my speech when I'm
speaking to people who live where I grew up (Arkansas).

It's mostly unconscious. If I'm in Memphis, TN and someone on the street asks
for me change, I'd probably respond "I ain't got none." If I were in Richmond,
VA and someone asks me for change, I'd probably respond "I don't have any."

I learned "proper" English quickly because the dialect spoken in my home
wasn't far removed from it, and a result I had a much easier time with grammar
than my peers. I also have far less trouble communicating with a broader
audience online.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-
switching](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code-switching)

------
Throwaway23412
I think the problem is the flimsy line between dialect and language. I
remember getting into an argument years ago about this, that dialects can be
so thick that you might as well as be listening to someone speaking another
language.

A friend argued that it's still the same language, so you can understand what
others are saying even with a different dialect. Please. The average person
can't understand all of Scouse, AAVE, Southern American, Geordie, cockney,
Hiberno‐English, etc. I still find myself rewinding dialogue in shows like
Peaky Blinders.

The only reason people have a problem with AAVE is some sort of racial
pretentiousness. Even the use of the phrase "Standard English" in this article
is pretentious. Standard to whom? Brits certainly have a different perspective
of what "Standard English" is from Americans.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Dialects Can indeed do this. My aunt is british: Her mother's dialect was so
thick I could hardly understand her as a child. Fast forward to adult life,
and I moved to Norway. Spoken dialects here can have just a few hundred
people, though writing is more standardized. To confound it all, there are two
official forms of Norwegian. Norwegians are expected to understand not only
both forms of the language, but most dialects... along with Swedish and Danish
(Swedish sounds similar, danish is written similarly).

Yet... There are instances where two Norwegians simply cannot understand each
other. They are more likely to switch to english or try very very hard to
stick to plain language.

I have less luck with the dialects - I can understand some with a few
alterations.

On the other hand, I now understand different dialects of English much better.

~~~
deviate_X
Indeed, Norweigen, Swedish and Danish are actually the same language,
linguistically.

In this situation, it is said: a language is a dialect with an army and navy

[http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3328218-the-story-of-
huma...](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3328218-the-story-of-human-
language) \- is a great and enlightening read

~~~
nradov
Or for another example, Serbo-Croatian used to be considered a _language_ with
Serbian and Croatian being just dialects. Then after Yugoslavia split apart
into separate nation states, the Serbian and Croatian governments started
insisting that they actually had separate languages. They even went to the
extent of changing some words to increase the differences.

~~~
dragandj
And yet, not only all speakers of one can understand perfectly the other,
everyone can _speak_ it effortlessly, and even understand localized accents
and subtleties.

------
clentaminator
The essay "Authority and American Usage" [1] is an essay concerning
prescriptivism vs. descriptivism and the relations between grammar and
class/power which (somewhat) masquerades as a review of Bryan Garner's A
Dictionary of Modern American Usage [2].

This topic naturally includes discussion about the use of Standard Written
English (SWE) at university/college level.

In one chapter the author talks about how he teaches a remedial English class
to instruct students in Standard Written English (SWE), and always begins by
stating that while there is nothing incorrect about their own dialects, the
fact is (and whether they are happy about it or not) SWE is the only way to
communicate on a level playing field, and if they were even to consider trying
to change this fact they'd have to argue their points through SWE in the first
place in order to be taken seriously.

[1]
[http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsag...](http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsage.pdf)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garner%27s_Modern_English_Usag...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garner%27s_Modern_English_Usage)

~~~
tptacek
Thanks for posting this. I'd read it before, but re-reading it after reading
Pullum's essay gave me an interesting new perspective on what DFW and Garner
are talking about.

Of course, the essay doesn't disagree (or agree) with DFW's prescription for
SWE; it mostly just concerns itself with what AAVE actually is.

~~~
devishard
> Of course, the essay doesn't disagree (or agree) with DFW's prescription for
> SWE; it mostly just concerns itself with what AAVE actually is.

I think that the fundamental idea that AAVE and SWE are distinct things with
their own prescriptions is pretty strong agreement.

------
zackelan
For anyone interested in this topic, I'd recommend the Lexicon Valley podcast
[0] in general, and two episodes in particular.

 _What Does It Mean to Sound Black?_ [1] featured Columbia professor John
McWhorter as a guest, and discussed the "black accent" in terms of phonemes as
well as AAVE.

 _Rules Are Made to Be Spoken_ [2] with John McWhorter now guest-hosting,
covers "variationist sociolinguistics", the study of how linguistic cues are
interpreted as a signifier of class and socioeconomic status.

0:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley.html](http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley.html)

1:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2016/0...](http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2016/05/blaccent_is_there_such_a_thing_as_sounding_black.html)

2:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2016/0...](http://www.slate.com/articles/podcasts/lexicon_valley/2016/06/sali_tagliamonte_on_the_unruly_nature_of_the_english_language.html)

------
hodgesrm
Not to take anything away from this article, but the proposition that AAVE is
a dialect is self-evident to anyone with a background in a language with
strong dialects. German and UK English come lightly to mind.

The politics of the debate were interesting and should not be ignored. For
many people around Oakland the question of whether Ebonics is a dialect was a
canard. At least for me the real issue was that the Oakland schools were doing
an awful job providing basic education to their students. The Ebonics debate
was a distraction from fixing real problems. Oakland schools ended up being
taken over by the state a few years later [1].

[1]
[http://www.eastbaytimes.com/ci_12753927](http://www.eastbaytimes.com/ci_12753927)

------
deviate_X
Haha! and a Shakespearean play is better understood by French in France than
the English in England because its is there properly translated into language
they can understand.

~~~
DanBC
Shakespeare is full of stuff that doesn't make much sense unless you have the
historic context.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/cZHd4yrC7DV2sdyndn3...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/cZHd4yrC7DV2sdyndn372K/transcript-
shakespeares-restless-world-programme-8)

> [...] all little indicators of social difference quickly become
> incomprehensible. If, for instance, a theatre director today put a middle-
> aged man on stage wearing low-slung jeans, everybody in the audience would
> know it was both inappropriate and funny. In 50 years time they probably
> won't understand it at all and the object I'm looking at now carries just
> such a social meaning, self-evident to an Elizabethan, hard for us to read
> today. It's an English woollen cap of the 16th century, a sort of flat
> chocolatey brown beret, and it was found about 150 years ago at Moorfields
> in London. It was probably worn by a young man.

[...]

> Our hat unlocks a whole language of social difference and a whole structure
> of social control, both expressed through clothes and sometimes enforced by
> law. A Parliamentary statute of 1571 stipulated that every male over the age
> of six had to wear a woollen cap like this one on Sundays and holidays. The
> law was a shrewd device for supporting the English wool industry, but it was
> also designed to reinforce social divisions by making them visible.

~~~
TillE
Yes, the language itself you should be able to get used to after a while, but
the historical context needs to actually be studied.

No Fear Shakespeare is really great, though. Not comprehensive, but the best
free resource for quickly understanding Shakespeare. Once you understand the
meaning, you'll appreciate the poetry of the original language.

[http://nfs.sparknotes.com/](http://nfs.sparknotes.com/)

------
jmcm
Obviously. -Linguist

~~~
AimHere
Indeed. But sadly, its very much non-obvious to an overlarge proportion of the
population.

In fact, plenty of nonexperts think it's obviously _not_ the case. I reckon
this is because people speak language throughout their lives and therefore
believe themselves to be experts, and by extension, any linguistic judgments
they make (which almost always line up with some old fashioned
racial/regional/class- or even gender-based bigotry) are facts. So it goes.

~~~
ebfbsf
Except AAVE gets this treatment much, much more heavily. It's racism plain and
simple. Every time this topic comes up on HN the response is totally
predictable.

~~~
AimHere
Sure. That's probably a comment on the level of racism against African
Americans (and the distinctness of the dialect) compared to the other forms of
bigotry out there.

------
PaulRobinson
This is fascinating to me. In the UK the words we use to describe every day
times is so diverse and unique to an area that to call one term "correct" and
the other "incorrect" would lead to a huge argument. It's accepted that
different areas with their differing backgrounds and cultures have different
names.

For example, what would you call a small piece of break baked in a broadly
spherical shape? The University of Manchester decided to find out:
[http://projects.alc.manchester.ac.uk/ukdialectmaps/lexical-v...](http://projects.alc.manchester.ac.uk/ukdialectmaps/lexical-
variation/bread/)

Your evening meal, what do you call that? That varies, too:
[http://projects.alc.manchester.ac.uk/ukdialectmaps/lexical-v...](http://projects.alc.manchester.ac.uk/ukdialectmaps/lexical-
variation/evening-meal/)

What about grammatical "errors", such as "The dress what I bought"? They
looked at that too:
[http://projects.alc.manchester.ac.uk/ukdialectmaps/syntactic...](http://projects.alc.manchester.ac.uk/ukdialectmaps/syntactic-
variation/the-dress-what-i-bought/)

I encourage people to explore the menus on that site. It's fascinating,
genuinely.

English is a dynamic language, particularly in its first birthplace,
structured as it is after multiple invasions from Latin speakers,
Germanic/Anglo-Saxon speakers, Vikings, the French, and more recently African,
Caribbean, Sri Lankan and Indian/Asian migration from the former empire and
commonwealth.

It is why we can turn anything into an adverb and immediately make it
rude/suspect ("I am so going to have a good penguining tonight"), or
delightfully ambiguous on the one hand, but the intent obvious on the other
("This track is so brick, mate, you should listen to it").

English is not French. There is no official version of it. We talk about
"proper" English as being "The [King/Queen]'s English", perhaps, but only to
identify it as being distinct from the English used by many others. People
aspire to use it as royalty does for obvious reasons, but it is churlish to
dismiss variations.

The fact that this issue happened in Oakland, that it was an issue relating to
African American children in particular, that it is divorced from the reality
of English and its traditions, all of this makes me suspicious the underlying
cause was a form of implicit/subconscious racism. It may even have been
explicit.

That said, I've noticed America in particular has held onto a form of English
and developed it in a way that is quite divorced from the UK. It's thought
that the modern New York accent and vernacular is not wholly dissimilar to
18th-century English South West, for reasons perhaps obvious to those who
understand a little of the history of New York and its earliest settlers.
Likewise, Canadian accents have more than a hint of Scottish in many parts:
1950s Canadian films to me sound almost 100% Scottish.

What is the point I'm making? It's a language for all of us. Yes there is a
standard English. But those who seek to deny its development within sub-
cultures and regional variations are not just denying its tradition and
history, but avoiding a possibly very beautiful future.

~~~
sevenless
"A language is a dialect with a navy" \- Max Weinreich

~~~
_petronius
Properly: "A language is a dialect with an army and navy."

But I like the original Yiddish, because it illustrates the point rather
clearly (transcribed to the latin alphabet): "a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an
armey un flot"

There's a nice, relevant discussion of the origin of the quote on the
Wikipedia page:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy)

~~~
mikeash
This seems to be unfairly biased against landlocked countries. Kazakh and Lao
are languages too!

~~~
pluma
I think that's intentional. As I understand it Jewish humour is typically
self-deprecating, which explains the irony of saying that about language _in
Yiddish_ ; a language which has neither a navy, an army nor a country (except
for a short time during the Soviet era), and was generally dismissed as "just
broken German" similarly to AAVE.

Considering the history of the quote it's probably a direct dismissal of the
"just broken German" assertion (because German had an army and a navy but
Yiddish obviously did not).

~~~
mikeash
Makes sense to me. It just struck me as funny, as I've always just heard it as
"with an army," and the implications of adding "and a navy" were amusing.

------
noonespecial
The mistake seems to be carrying this bit of culture in an iron box in the
mind into another culture and then insisting (even if subconsciously) that
they are "doing it wrong".

From "educating the ignorant natives" to "keepin' it real" we all seem to make
this mistake when transiting other cultures at one time or another.

------
raverbashing
Well, to be honest it is.

In the same way English is (especially spoken one), "mistakes" from the
languages that preceded it.

~~~
jordigh
Sure, but the article is trying to reduce social stigma against linguistic
varieties.

I have a long-lost-now-found sister who grew up in French Switzerland and in
black culture in NYC . She's basicaly bilingual in both standard English and
in AAVE (as well as Spanish and Swiss French). It's really interesting to hear
her switch from AAVE with her rapper friends and coworkers to standard English
with everyone else. She will conjugate verbs differently, which is the most
obvious change to me, as AAVE has a richer verb system than standard English:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_En...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_American_Vernacular_English#Tense_and_aspect)

~~~
dudul
Cool link. It's interesting to see that it seems to be a dialect that is not
based on geography, but based on race and income.

On a side note, as a non native English speaker, the double negative always
sounds really awful to me :) You can call it dialect all you want, it just
doesn't make any sense.

~~~
tptacek
You should re-read the essay, which spends considerable time on the double
negative. Ironically, _not_ speaking English might make a reader _more_
comfortable with double-negatives, which are, for instance, a feature of
mainstream Italian.

~~~
mikeash
French too, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a language more stuffy or
proscriptive. How many languages have a 400-year-old state-sponsored committee
whose sole purpose is to guide the language?

It's amazing how difficult it is for people to get past the trap of thinking
that what's familiar is "correct."

------
pluma
I think the easiest way to talk about this without the racial connotations is
to compare it to another language that is often simply considered "non-
standard English": Scots. The Scots language is distinct from Scottish English
and has actually a larger minority of speakers than AAVE (30% in Scotland
according to Wikipedia).

However it's insane to think that this means speaking Scots is sufficient if
you want a good job. I don't think anyone attempting to get by in life and
pursue a career in business or politics or academia would be taken serious if
they only spoke Scots.

Actually Scots probably has the advantage of nostalgia. AAVE on the other hand
is (ultimately) an artefact of American slave ownership -- that's something we
would much rather undo than remember.

I think there's an argument to be made for the preservation of obscure
languages (and a pidgin that is being threatened to be displaced by a dominant
language it is partially based on certainly qualifies) but ultimately I agree
exactly with what you are saying: reassuring AAVE speakers that it is okay to
only speak a minority language when living in a country that is entirely based
on a different language is cruel to the speakers.

For comparison (according to Wikipedia's numbers): Irish Gaelic is spoken by
18.3% of people on the Irish island (i.e. both Republic and Northern); Welsh
is spoken by 19% of people in Wales.

Again according to Wikipedia's numbers, 12.8% of Americans speak Spanish at
home, while 17.4% of Americans identify as Hispanic or Latino. If we assume
AAVE is as widespread among black Americans as Spanish is among Hispanic and
Latino Americans (because there are no official numbers) that would mean only
9.3% of Americans speak AAVE.

Even assuming every black American is an AAVE speaker (and that seems
extremely bold as even linguists admit that "AAVE" is more of a spectrum than
a clearly defined language) that would still be only 12.6% of Americans who
speak AAVE. In other words: even by the most generous estimate 87.4% of
Americans _don 't_ speak AAVE -- and likely don't comprehend the more
idiosyncratic variants of AAVE.

So, even if AAVE is a "real" language, it's not widely useful outside of the
small circles of AAVE speakers. It's just not realistic to expect 87.4% of the
population to accommodate the "native language" of the remaining percentage if
they already both speak General American English (or some approximation
thereof).

~~~
GordonS
> 30% in Scotland according to Wikipedia

Actually, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't use Scots to _some
degree_. I realise the 30% figure came from census data, but most people here
use Scots without recognising it themselves as a distinct 'Scots' language.
It's a tricky thing to word in a census to get real numbers.

> However it's insane to think that this means speaking Scots is sufficient if
> you want a good job

Absolutely true. Myself and everyone I know use Scots in daily life, both at
work and at home. But most recognise that (rightly or wrongly) it's not
socially acceptable to use it in _formal_ situations, such as during a job
interview, talking to clients etc.

~~~
pluma
Also note that I didn't say it's not possible at all to find a job (even a
high paying one) if you consistently only speak Scots. But it's most likely a
significant disadvantage (akin to speaking only basic English or not speaking
English at all, depending on the extent of course).

Scots or AAVE might not _actually_ be "deficient English" but to a non-Scots
or non-AAVE speaker of English they might as well be because the only thing
that matters (biases aside) is intelligibility.

For an absurd example: if you're a German company and hire a sophisticated
Dutch native speaker who doesn't speak a word of German it doesn't matter how
sophisticated their Dutch is, you'll still only understand a fraction of what
they say and think they have a really strong accent (because the words you
understand as German are actually Dutch and just happen to have the same
origins).

Of course it's less of a problem with Dutch because there's actually a
language where Dutch is the official language and there is a large regional
population of people all speaking the language and learning standardized rules
for the language in schools.

Scots at least has the large regional population. AAVE outside majority-black
areas might as well be Scots because the majority of people won't find it
mutually intelligible.

------
marcoperaza
This is thinly veiled nihilism. Yes, language is a human construct and no
dialect is "better" in any universal objective sense. But as a society, we
have expectations for how our common language is spoken. We have positive and
negative associations with different dialects. The negative associations are
equally valid parts of the language evolution process as the positive ones. I
don't think schools should start teaching street talk. Civilization is about
bringing order to chaos and having a standard accepted language is part of
that. The common dialect, called Written English, used around the world is a
major strength for our civilization.

Teaching AAVE in schools is not going to help the students in black
communities, it's just going to further alienate them from the rest of
society. Accepting papers written in AAVE isn't going to prepare people for
reality: no one cares about social justice for a dialect, they care about
effective communication.

~~~
dang
> _This is thinly veiled nihilism._

> _Civilization is about bringing order to chaos_

Please don't take HN threads on generic ideological tangents.

We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030324](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12030324)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
marcoperaza
I think my comment was perfectly on topic in response to the parent comment. I
wasn't aware that only superficial views of subjects are allowed to be
expressed on HN, or that subthreads can't discuss underlying philosophical
debates.

Taking two quotes out of context and presenting that as the reason for marking
the comment off-topic is a bit bizarre. Are you saying that any comment that
appeals to broader philosophical arguments is necessarily off-topic?

------
stuxnet79
Is your sister in the music industry? Because you mentioned her "rapper"
friends, and I just want to make it clear to everyone in this thread that not
all AAs in NYC are "rappers".

~~~
jordigh
Yes, she is in the music industry. I didn't mean to say rappers and AAVE were
synonymous.

~~~
stuxnet79
Ok, thanks for clarifying.

I don't understand why I am being downvoted.

~~~
unclenoriega
I think you're being downvoted because you seem to assume that, but for your
intervention, the people reading this thread would assume that all blacks in
NYC are rappers. The downvoters probably assume that you did not make this
post in good faith but instead posted in a fit of passive-aggression, or for
some other motive that does not contribute to the conversation.

