If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?

Also called the Beat movement, this term refers to an American social and literary movement of the 1950s that was concentrated in artist neighborhoods in the California cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles along with the New York City neighborhood Greenwich Village (where James Baldwin occasionally lived). Baldwin argues that this celebrated artistic movement—mostly “composed of uptight, middle-class white people, imitating poverty” (Paragraph 5)—is indebted to Black language and culture.

As Baldwin defines it in this essay, this phrase originated in Black English to describe the “most total and despairing image of poverty” (Paragraph 5). This phrase was shortened and co-opted to label the Beat Generation.

The Black diaspora refers to the worldwide scattering of Indigenous African peoples that was caused by the centuries-long slave trade (starting at least as far back as 1619) largely in the areas of North America that became the United States, South America, and the Caribbean. Baldwin discusses the way the diaspora created Black English throughout the essay.

This term for the US system of enslaving Black people (roughly 1619-1865) stems from the noun chattel, which means an enslaved person who is considered the property of another person. Baldwin argues that this system depended upon Black people from different areas of Africa having a limited ability to communicate with each other.

Congo Square is a gathering place now located within Louis Armstrong Park in New Orleans, Louisiana, near the French Quarter. Sometimes referred to as the birthplace of jazz, the square has a complex history connected to enslaved African people who had an ethnic Kongo background. It was a place where enslaved people gathered to dance, play music, and sell handicrafts. These gatherings occurred primarily on Sundays. Baldwin uses it as a synecdoche for the gathering places of African people in that facilitated the formation of Black English.

A dialect is a regional or societal (such as “wealthy” or “agrarian”) subset of a language with its own vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. In this essay, Baldwin indicates that he considers the label “dialect” for Black English to be both inaccurate and condescending.

These words that originated in Black English describe a person or thing that is unconventionally or uniquely stylish in an easygoing way (funky) or refer to such a style or state (“like funk was going out of style” [Paragraph 5]).

This phrase that originated in Black English is used by Baldwin in the phrase “trying to get down” (Paragraph 5). It can refer to enjoying oneself with people, often by dancing.

Jazz is a music genre that developed from ragtime and blues in the early 20th century, with its origins in and around New Orleans, Louisiana. It often has a core of lengthy improvisation; musicians play solos that they make up in the moment. Jazz music is typically syncopated and can include call-and-response patterns, in which one instrument or voice answers another. The call-and-response pattern is also prominent in Black religious worship and gospel music. The word jazz was co-opted from the Black English sexual expression “jazz me, baby.” Baldwin suggests that white speakers purify this language when they co-opt it.

The American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby) is widely attributed to calling the 1920s “the Jazz Age,” seeking to capture the decade’s struggle between old and new as everything was changed by the just-ended Great War (later called World War I) and the spread of two new technologies: the radio and the phonograph. The period is also called the Roaring Twenties and the golden age of jazz. Baldwin suggests that this period is when white Americans co-opted significant elements of Black culture.

This expression is a sexual proposition. Baldwin says that this sexual expression that originated in Black English was co-opted and sanitized by white mainstream English to the forms “jazz” and “the Jazz Age.”

Meaning to relax and enjoy without inhibition, this is one of a group of sexual expressions that Baldwin says originated in Black English and were then co-opted and sanitized by white mainstream English.

When Baldwin says “so many of the nonwhite are […] on the needle” (Paragraph 12), he’s likely referring to heroin, a readily available and highly addictive injectable drug that was killing Black people and destroying minoritized neighborhoods in the 1970s. (Crack cocaine didn’t become widely available until the 1980s.)

Provençal refers to the region of Provence in France or to the people, language, food, or customs of that region. Baldwin suggests that people in the south of France “cling” to this language and similarly argues that it is not a “dialect.”

This expression that Baldwin says originated in Black English describes someone who shows or expresses private personal information in public. To explain, Baldwin uses the example of accents in England and the list of information each accent reveals about its speaker (Paragraph 4).

This is one of a group of sexual expressions that Baldwin says originated in Black English and were then co-opted and sanitized by white mainstream English. It expresses assent.

The slave trade refers to any capturing, selling, and buying of enslaved persons, but in Baldwin’s essay refers specifically to the trade of Indigenous African peoples who were enslaved and brought to the areas of North America that became the United States.

This is one of a group of sexual expressions that Baldwin says originated in Black English and were then co-opted and sanitized by white mainstream English. It means “give it to me” with sexual connotations. This phrase likely spread into mainstream consciousness because of its regular use on the television sketch-comedy series “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In” (1967-1973).

This term that Baldwin says originated in Black English is used in the phrase “doing their thing” (Paragraph 5), meaning to behave as someone wants.

Wales is one of three countries that make up the island of Great Britain: Wales, England, and Scotland. Through a process that was launched by a public vote in 1997, Wales has its own legislature and is jointly governed by that legislature and the government of the United Kingdom. However, when Baldwin was writing in 1979, Wales was wholly governed by the United Kingdom. The Welsh people have over many centuries steadfastly kept their language alive, a point to which Baldwin refers in the essay.

Meaning exhausted or defeated, this term that Baldwin says originated in Black English is used in the phrase “the nation would be even more whipped than it is” (Paragraph 6).