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Blacksplained

Can White People Code-Switch? Blacksplained by Sunn m'Cheaux and Dr. Rachel E. Weissler

Yesterday · 1 hr 7 min · Season 1 · Episode 3 · 129.5 MB
0:00-1:07:26

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Can white people code-switch, or is it a genetic ability that Black people are born with, like clapping on beat or making white people “fear for their lives”? Is it the same as “talking white” or is it a technical skill that people like Barack Obama, Kamala Harris and Ketanji Brown Jackson learned at the Respectability Politics School for Black Excellence? Do all white Gen-Zers (including Post Malone, Tyler Herro and Miley Cyrus) go through a Blaccent phase or are they reverse code-switching?

This is why Blacksplained exists.

Each week, we ask scholars, experts and people who know things to tackle one specific question about history, politics, culture, science or whatever’s got people talking. The smart, funny and insightful conversations end up in the most unexpected places while staying rooted in facts, truth and something that is often missing from the public discourse: a Black perspective.

Sunn m’Cheaux is a sociolinguist, musician, educator, and Harvard University’s first (and only) Gullah instructor. m’Cheaux’s social media posts contextualizing language, race and culture have made him one of the internet’s favorite public scholars.

Rachel Elizabeth Weissler is a raciolinguistic emotion perception researcher, African-American English scholar and a professor at the University of Oregon’s linguistics and Black studies departments. Dr. Weissler uses experimental methods from sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics and history to explore how Black language is used, how it changes and how it’s appropriated.

But today, professors m’Cheaux and Weissler are going to Blacksplain:

“Can white people code-switch?”

Chapters

  • 00:00 The Origin of Southern Accents
  • 02:04 The Diversity of Southern Accents
  • 04:05 The Influence of English Variations
  • 06:45 The Impact of Language on Social Standing
  • 11:07 The Concept of 'Talking White'
  • 16:12 The Authenticity of Accents and Dialects
  • 40:04 The Significance of Home and Contact
  • 44:33 Context and Culture
  • 46:16 Linguistic Gatekeeping
  • 47:50 Preserving Black Language
  • 54:08 Authenticity of Black Music
  • 01:00:43 Cultural Evolution and Ownership
  • 01:19:08 Defining Country Music