The Seminole Wars...No the Gullah Wars. A war oblivious to African Americans

[Geode]

I know this thread is old, but the gems in here are priceless and timeless. Especially since my folks are from Florida.

 

[Geode]

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The Story Of English Program 5 Black On White

The very beginning of this video where he explains the "been" and "done" in language. I've used these phrases all my life. I remember during the craze about ebonics a speaker talked about the "been" and I never realized that is was uniquely black.

he left
he done left
and
he been left

have 3 different meanings to me.

 

[JahFocus CS]

Wanted to drop this here.

Forming a nation: the free black settlement at Fort Mose

 

[Apollo Creed]

My Gullah Geeche cousins

 

[IllmaticDelta]

@IllmaticDelta A maroon community in Harlem!?!? I'ma hafta look into that.

 

[HarlemHottie]

Initially, I was unclear as to WHY there were maroon communities in NY at all. Slavery in NY under the Dutch was still slavery, yeah, but free black people had property rights, could marry, testify in court, etc. Free and enslaved black had churches, socialized, intermarried. The enslaved were allowed to make their own money and buy their freedom. Usually, those conditions don't prompt slave revolts (bc slaves have hope). Slaves only revolt when it looks absolutely hopeless. So it didn't make sense to me.

But then I looked into the transfer of power from the Dutch to the British and all became clear. There's a difference between having some slaves to augment your labor class and an actual slave state. An actual slave state works hard to suppress even freed slaves. And that's what happened when the British took over.

Events that presumably led to the revolt include a decrease in freedom and status when the English took over the colony in 1664. Under Dutch rule, when the city was part of New Netherland, freed slaves had certain legal rights, such as the rights to own land and to marry.[3] After the English took over New Amsterdam and made it the colony of New York, they enacted laws that restricted the lives of enslaved peoples. A slave market was built near present-day Wall Street to accommodate the increase in slaves being imported by the Royal African Company.[citation needed]

By the early 1700s, about 20 percent of the population were enslaved black people. The colonial government restricted this group through several measures: requiring slaves to carry a pass if traveling more than a mile (1.6km) from home; discouraging marriage among them; prohibiting gatherings in groups of more than three persons; and requiring them to sit in separate galleries at church services.[4]

NY Slave revolt of 1712

The other: NY Conspiracy of 1741

 

[HarlemHottie]

The very beginning of this video where he explains the "been" and "done" in language. I've used these phrases all my life. I remember during the craze about ebonics a speaker talked about the "been" and I never realized that is was uniquely black.

he left
he done left
and
he been left

have 3 different meanings to me.

Two AAVE stories.

1. I was in hs during the ebonics debate. Senior year, I did my history term paper on AAVE. My teacher was a straight dikkhead, on some " You have no sources. This is not a real thing." I'm like, Ok dikkhead, I got you. My paper was bomb, well sourced, and he was forced to give me an A bc the head of the dept submitted my paper to journals and shyt. He was tight as fukk. Then I got into his alma mater.

2. I was (briefly) a linguistics major in ug. I was shocked to learn that the seminal study in AAVE was done ON MY BLOCK! (Language in the Inner City)


So I'm in college, at an Ivy, and my teacher (some Russian/ e european lady) is like "Oooooh!! We have a native speaker in the class! " shyt was hilarious. I'm reading shyt out loud in class, slipping effortlessly back and forth between dialects, minds was blown.


One of the major contemporary scholars in the field invited me down to UNC to do research, but I had already changed majors.


In summary, lol, our dialect is a real thing. It is nothing to be ashamed of. If I have to listen to all kinda patois and creoles and shyt (living in NYC), then I'm repping my set. I code switch within the same conversation, am impeccably educated, speak several languages, and dare somebody to check me.


edit: Just wanted to add, one of the things I love about AAVE is the imperfect (imparfait/ pluparfait in French) tense. English lacks an imperfect tense, so you literally can't convey 'I *been* did that' without our helpful additions. English is a trading language, very haphazard, and lacks all the conjugations and stuff in Romance languages. Language is about economy: how can you convey the idea in the shortest possible way? English, sans AAVE, forces you to use a lot of extra words to convey the imperfect tense.