Personal Narrative Speech

Black Accent?

             Last week, I was surfing on the internet when I saw a very interesting video on Youtube. In the video, a black man talk about a conversation he had with a coworker about his accent. The coworker had asked him, “Ronald, you don’t have a black accent.” The man says, “What? What do you mean?” So the coworker replies, “You know. You don’t have a black accent. You don’t talk like black people. Your people.” Many people assume a black person would talk in slang and slur their words even before they meet the person. Then, they find it weird to find the person speak in a British accent or a southern accent. The creator of the video emphasizes how people’s accents differ depending on the region they’ve lived in. Therefore there is no such thing as a “black accent.” Have you ever seen Obama speak like Tupac or 50cent?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

             I also had a similar experience related to my accent. In middle school, it was mandatory to speak in English in certain classes. Therefore, about a third of all the talking I did in a day was in English. With my friends exposed to my accent for such a long period, they started to notice something about it. One day, they finally decided to drop the question on me. I remember talking to my friend about an inappropriate song, when he asked me, “Why do you talk like that?” For a second there, a part of my subconscious urged me to stick my middle finger in his face. However, I suppressed my urge to do so and kindly asked, “Why do you say so?” He replies, “Your accent. It’s like somebody mixed a western accent with a black accent and put it in your mouth.” “Is there anything wrong with that?” I replied. “Yeah, dude.  An Asian talking like a black person? Man, it’s unnatural. Not cool at all, dude.”

             Until that day, I’ve never thought I had a black accent. I do occasionally say things like, “We ain’t got no workshop,” but apart from that I saw no similarities. However, even if I do so, is it wrong for an Asian to have a black accent? Or, is it wrong for a black person to not have a black accent? Is there such a thing as a black accent? In the modern world, many people go about on how globalization has become universal and how countries no longer have borders. However, in such a world where people of many different ethnicities and characters interact, would it be beneficial to hold such stereotypes? These stereotypes aren’t just about the accents people have. Whether they know it or not, people subconsciously assume what a person would be like even before meeting the person and in many occasions it limits the depth of their interaction. For example, many people hold the stereotypes that Asians are not good that team sports such as basketball. This is exactly why Jeremy Lin wasn’t able to go to a university that’s famous for its basketball programs. Of course he did end up playing basketball at Harvard, but he talks about how hopeless everything seemed when college coaches would just assume that he’d be bad just because he’s Asian. As for the black man in the Youtube video, he would probably turn his coworker’s life into a living hell as he’s the supervisor at his job and he was offended. Stereotypes, they may not be discriminatory, but they imprison your insight and perspective.