CMU School of Drama


Thursday, April 05, 2018

Carnegie Mellon University hosts 'Talking Black in America' Pittsburgh premiere

TribLIVE: "Talking Black in America: The Story of African American Language," is the first feature-length documentary devoted to African American speech, and attempts to remedy misconceptions and resulting marginalization, according to a news release.

The film will have its Pittsburgh premiere at 4 p.m. April 11 in Carnegie Mellon University's Rashid Auditorium.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm totally gonna go see this documentary. This is a conversation that is near and dear to my heart considering the amount of torment I went through when I first arrived to an all white school and realized the very words I was using weren't normal to a lot of the people in my class. Black language used to be something people were ridiculed for and still is frequently. However now that white mainstream culture has shifted to the mentality of " we want everything black except our skin" I have noticed that the language I grew up hearing my family use, the language that is the most accessible for me, is now used by everyone with respect for the culture it comes from. This is also true for slang words in Spanish which is co-opted by young white girls who do not understand what they are saying. I am super excited to see a documentary about the roots of black language in America as it is so specific to region. I have even noticed on this campus that I don't use the same words as the black people who are from Pittsburgh. Inner cities and places where black people congregate are such safe havens for the development of new language and I can't wait for a documentary that highlights the beauty in that instead of condemning it.

APJS said...

Wow, the concept of this movie alone is so important to understand the racial divide in this country. It was, or more likely still is true that to get a better paying show you have to learn what a lot of black people would consider a second language than the one they are taught at home. I was fortunate, in that my first language is what, the nay sayers in this movie, would call proper English. But that is only because my parents were taught it in the military and only spoke in that language as I grew up. So I was only surrounded by it and personally never learned what would actually be my native language. They would call it Ebonics, or now a day, hood, or just black. So while I do not speak it well I do have family who do and communicate just as well with other members of their family as I do. The comparison could be made directly with British English and American English. Is it not true that because the British are the direct decedents of the people who invented the language speak proper English and that us as American speak an improper form of English? If its one that that Americans do well its ignore the hypocrisy of its own past.