blaccent
noun
speech used by non-Black people to affect a stereotype of African American English
What does blaccent mean?
Blaccent (usually uncapitalized blaccent) is a speaking style used by people who are not Black Americans to mimic, stereotypically, a style of speech associated with some Black Americans. Blaccent can encompass not only inflection, tone, and pronunciation, but also the grammar and vocabulary of African American English, also known as African American Vernacular English or AAVE.
Examples of blaccent
Blaccent … is the accent adopted by whites desperate to sound urban.
—Lola Ogunnaike, The New York Times, 12 July 2004
… a very successful Asian actress and comedian who grew her fame by employing a blaccent in her roles and expressing herself through culturally Black jargon and slang.
—… today examples of white people appropriating Blackness abound … [including] mimicking the latest African American vernacular in a much-derided trend called “Blaccent.”
—Countless nonBlack creators have adopted a blaccent and AAVE to gain views because they know it makes their content and storytelling more engaging. However, they use our lingo as a costume because they see it solely as a tool for amusement. Then suddenly, as if it has never existed before, they market our language as new and trendy.
—Non-Black people’s use of a Blaccent is akin to the ways that non-Spanish speakers use mock Spanish to make themselves sound “cool.” However … the use of mock language retains derogatory implications, especially for those who are racially/ethnically tied to the language being mocked.
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Where does blaccent come from?
Blaccent is a portmanteau Black (“of or relating to Black people and often especially to African American people or their culture”) and accent (“a way of speaking typical of a particular group of people and especially of the natives or residents of a region”).
How is blaccent used?
Blaccent is almost always used disapprovingly, though sometimes it is used with a different, neutral meaning to refer not to stereotypical speech affected by non-Black people, but rather actual speech characteristics of some Black American English speakers.
… the kind of blaccent I am interested in is the kind that is not subject to code switching, but is instead a background factor. … Even black people saying breath and ask rather than bref and aks are usually still perceptible as black in this subtler but unmistakable way. … It’s mostly about vowels. Obscure sonic flutters though they seem to be, they are part of the black American cultural tool kit.
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More often, however, blaccent appears in discourse about cultural appropriation, which is defined in our dictionary as “the adoption of cultural elements (such as clothing, customs, or hairstyles) of a group (usually a minority culture) by members of another group (usually a dominant culture) in a way that is exploitative, disrespectful, or stereotypical.” The word has been used since at least the late-20th century.
“‘Blaccent’ is a term describing the fake accent racists and cultural appropriators use when they mimic Black people,” says Mikki Kendall, an author and diversity consultant. “Black people have accents, but we don’t all have the same one and yet somehow those two groups always use the same accent when they imitate Black people.”
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