Dw1 b

From the course text “It Bees Dat Way Sometime” the author Smitherman writes about Black English. Smitherman shows how Black English has just as many rules and regulations as AAE. Throughout the passage she shows different rules and grammatical structures for particular sentences. She also tells of ways one would speak in Black English. The main point that she tries to get across is that although Black English is different from AAE, it doesn’t make it any better or worse. At the end of the passage she quotes a poem by Langston Hughes.

The poem really resonated in my mind because it reminded me so much of my commencement speech. The whole poem was written in Black English, which was considered incorrect. In my senior commencement speech, I spoke in a manner at some points which was considered “informal”. It was looked at as an incorrect way to address a public audience. In the Langston Hughes poem there is a phrase by a man named Simple, “If I can get the sense right, the grammar can take care of itself. I have not had enough schooling to put words together right-but I know some white folks who have went to school for forty years and do not do right. I figure it’s better to do right than to write right, is it not?”. The point is, it does not matter what you are saying, as long as it has meaning. The man in the Langston Hughes poem stated it beautifully; it doesn’t matter if you can speak correct AAE English or if you are speaking Black English, as long as what is said is true to the speakers’ heart and has meaning behind it than that’s all that matters. Even though my speech was not spoken in standard AAE, it was understood and enjoyed by the public. It did not matter how I was speaking to my audience, it was the fact that me and my senior class had a connection and I could speak in a way which was comfortable to me, and I believed would get my point across in the most effective way.
After reviewing the “ It Bees Dat Way” passage, and relating it to my own experience with my commencement speech, I found an underlying similarity. When you are expressing yourself through words, all that has to be made is that connection with the listener. It does not matter how you are saying it as long as that connection is made and the point is getting across. I used everyday language that a standard teenager would use, in my speech, to connect with the teenage audience. Langston Hughes used Black English, and showed slight differences did not make a difference to the power of the passage, it still has meaning. So as long as what your saying has meaning it doesn’t matter what type of grammar you use.