My Nigga, You're Still A Writer Without The Grandiose Words.

to: my niggassss.

Last night, I read some of my previous work on here and cringed at some of it. Not because my art was trash or because I wasn’t saying anything profound— but because I noticed that I felt this pressure to always use big words that I don’t typically use in my everyday language. I subconsciously figured that was what made someone a great writer.

WRONG!!!

While my vocabulary is extensive and I am that one coworker who started ‘Word of The Day’ at my job— utilizing the Merriam-Webster app, I realized that there is beauty in simplicity. With this blog, my aim was always to remain authentic and to write in a voice that is reminiscent of me, defying the typical writing rules that are taught in academia. All throughout my schooling, from elementary to college, I constantly received praise from my teachers and professors for my wide vocabulary, as well as my creativity and critical thinking skills. In elementary school, I recall being on a 9th grade reading level in second grade (yes, that was a moment to flex). And since I went to a predominantly white, college prep high school, I was all too familiar with the semantics around writing a legitimate college essay. Yet I found the rules around writing style and tone and delivery to be very… boring. When I thought about it, all of these traditional ideas about writing stems from white people and what they think is ‘right’. I always enjoyed reading works that challenged that. To me, Ebonics was beautiful and fascinating and ingenious and creative and unique. I used it frequently. I’ve never believed that speaking Ebonics or AAVE (African American Vernacular English) made a Black person less intelligent. My great-uncles from the Deep South would tell stories in a thick country slang that left an indelible mark on me, highlighting valuable lessons in their life experiences. They would say the most profound shit. Wisdom and storytelling wrapped in Ebonics, yet crystal clear messages nonetheless.

All ‘standard English’ is— is made up writing rules created by Caucasoids. And before y’all get on me, let me clarify that I’m not really referring to the language itself but rather critiquing traditional writing rules that are taught to us from K-12. All this shit is made up. By them. I mean… obviously I have to follow the dumb ass shit when I’m typing essays in my college classes or working on a school project, I guess. But as a writer— especially my niggas who are writers— we have to free ourselves from this belief that we must use grandiose words to get an eloquent point across. We have to free ourselves from this notion that we have to follow these writing and grammar rules regarding style, tone, and cadence to produce good art. We have to free ourselves from this belief that Ebonics or AAVE in our writing is just ‘improper’. Who told you that?

I started thinking about the history of Ebonics and how that came into fruition. Did an entire deep dive on it a few years ago, actually. It was coined by school psychologist, Dr. Robert Williams. During the early 70s, The Oakland Public School System raised concern over the lower literacy and comprehension rates amongst Black students. Dr. Williams proposed that it wasn’t that these Black children were not smart, but rather that we had a different way of communicating, labeling objects, and speaking. We had these intimate interactions that only we could understand amongst each other. Williams coined the term, combining the words ‘ebony’ (meaning Black) and ‘phonics.’ He pushed for Ebonics to be recognized as a language of African-Americans. Him and other Black educators faced backlash from white school teachers and Black people. Majority insisted that Ebonics were ‘ghetto’ and ‘poor English.’

Williams argued that Ebonics were just as much of a language as English was. If we really do our research, we’d see that English started off as a West-Germanic language, eventually progressing as time went on by other civilizations and societies— creating new words, grammar, and sentence structures. Williams questioned how Ebonics was any different, hinting at a subtle racism that pervaded academia. While the historical origin of Ebonics are widely debated, many Black linguists suggest that the dialect emerged as a result of African slaves merging their rich linguistic heritage with Standard American English. This produced a unique set of grammar rules, vocabulary, and expressions that reflect the cultural and historical experiences of Black people. The beauty and creativity inherent in Ebonics stands just as ‘proper’ as Standard English. It has just as much more innovation, depth, history, and ancestral connection compared to the latter. Nothing about it is ‘improper’, we’ve just been conditioned to believe that. This is one of the many examples of how deep white supremacy is— especially in academia. It is so deeply engrained in these systems, that even we as a people look at Ebonics or AAVE as ‘unprofessional’, sometimes measuring intelligence of other Black people based off how they speak or present. But I ask, who decided that Standard English was the ‘standard’ language and the ‘proper’ one? Really think about that.

I watched an interview of Dr. Williams speaking on the topic, sharing an experience where he administered a test to both Black and white students that displayed Ebonics language. White students did a poor job on the test, while Black students excelled. This reflected Williams argument that Black kids were not deficient, but had a comfortability with their own language. They understood plenty of things quite well, but schools were lacking cultural competence as far as linguistics and culture. IQ Tests were culturally biased, explaining the lower scores from Black students who did exceptionally well on culturally fair tests. Williams’ studies exposed the racism in education during that period, while simultaneously instilling a sense of pride in Black people, as he advocated for the understanding of our language and dialect rather than proposing that we conform to Standard English rules. He demanded that the Oakland School System recognized Ebonics as a legitimate language, which took place two decades later.

Knowing this, I started thinking, Bitch, why the fuck do you think you have to write with so much Standard English and big words in order to get your point across? Where does that stem from?

The pressure comes from years of being in schools and being taught by teachers and professors alike, that Standard English was the right English. It also stemmed from the lack of cultural diversity present in the required literature we had to read in high school. Shakespeare, Harper Lee, William Golding, and Edgar Allen Poe were absolute snooze fests for me. Their work wasn’t representative of my real life and culture, yet their books were seen as the pinnacle of American literature and prioritized in English curriculums through the country. Yet, Black authors were pushed to the side. I noticed that in high school and it pissed me off. I would go home ranting all day to my Mom about how the shit wasn’t fair and I was gonna spark a protest, lmao. Though I never did it, that prioritization of white authors served as a subtle way in which academia pushes this idea that Black voices and Black thoughts and Black experiences and Black expression were not THAT important. Not important enough to teach in schools nationwide. These are the small fucking ways that these institutions teach us that we do not matter. It is nasty work and it damages our children more than we’d like to believe. I was grateful that my parents had already introduced me to Langston Hughes, Walter Dean Myers, and a plethora of other Black authors who were smoking the Caucasoids in the literature department. No one was touching them if we’re being real. Caucasoid literature was praised for its mediocrity while Black literature was sidelined.

Where am I getting at? Our experiences have been neglected in academia, triggering an anxiety that leads us to doubt our worth, struggling with the way in which we convey our messages. We need to stop questioning the validity of our own expression and experiences.

But this is defffff larger than Ebonics, it’s also about us second-guessing ourselves and our styles if it isn’t hard to comprehend. I had to unpack that. And fast. I’ve always gotten the traction I’ve received because of how authentic, raw, honest, and real I am. I’ve met people from different cities, who always point out how heavy and thick my Philly accent and slang is. I remember a non-black supervisor telling me that I should work on ‘adjusting’ my accent and the way I communicated with my co-workers (yes, I went to HR). My accent was thicker and significantly more noticeable before my high school days due to the fact that all the schools I went to had a predominantly Black and Latino demographic. I never felt the need to change it because we all spoke to each other fluently that way. My parents never thought there was anything wrong with the way we spoke to one another. I had been around niggas my entire life. My neighborhood, my church, my schools… there were all Black people. Once I entered my predominantly white high school, it was a complete culture shock for me. I was not used to being around white people whatsoever. I found myself frequently arguing with white students who just didn’t know their place and getting extremely upset at the fact that I was now in an environment where I had to tone certain things about myself down. And not even down a notch— that is a bold-faced lie. I had to literally turn it off to avoid conflict. That was the first place where I became keenly aware of my Philly accent and demeanor. It was the first place where I learned to assimilate and code-switch. It was the first place where teachers corrected me whenever I used Philly slang or ‘improper’ sentence structure. In my own personal writing during that time, I started drifting from my natural, original writing style in favor of what sounded more abstract and complex, thinking that was BETTER than the essence that was me. Eventually, I recognized this and had to pull myself up out that mindset, something I still am unlearning to this day.

My writing blog is supposed to be a reflection of this new era I am in, as well as a space where I can express myself however I choose to. There are no rules. There are no restrictions. It’s just me and my damn thoughts. Even in typing this now, I noticed how much I shifted from the a more ‘professional’ tone to a tone that is more reflective of Kamory’s voice. And I think that is dope as fuck. I love how we can shift between two different dialects and languages simultaneously.

Of course, as Black people we want to challenge ourselves and expand our vocabularies— not because we have something to prove and not because we wanna be ‘hard to understand’, but because there should always be a desire to learn something new everyday. In no way am I pushing this message that there is something deeply wrong with wanting to push yourself and create art that is outside your comfort zone— utilizing words, satire, imagery, and figurative language to paint a picture or transcend your typical writing style. That is all encouraged on my end. I just want y’all to know that simple words do the job just as well.

Gil Scott Heron, one of my favorite poets/artist of all time, touched on this subject as well, recalling an experience in school where his teacher showed him and his classmates a sentence asking him what it meant. It was a simple sentence, too. Him and his classmates figured it must be something super deep since since it was in a poetry book. He spends the rest of the video explaining how poetry doesn’t need to be complex. Creativity doesn’t need to be complex. Writing doesn’t need to be hard to understand in order to be effective and impactful. He urges aspiring artists to create from the heart, ignoring the pseudointellectual semantics around poetry and writing. We all communicate and interact differently, but there is no set or standard way to do it. We’ve just been brainwashed to believe that there is. My first time viewing this, it touched me forever— mainly because this nigga is fine as hell LMAOOOO.

But once I got past the looks, I would find myself always referring back to these words as an aspiring writer.

Valencia D. Clay, a former teacher that I’ve been following on Instagram for yearssssss, has been vocal in challenging the way racism shows up in academia. The way she advocates for Black students is something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. She frequently went viral for her radical and revolutionary teaching style. She frequently emphasized the importance of comprehension and a students’ ability to digest and dissect learning rather than focusing on standardized testing scores. She constantly challenged her students in their way of thinking, communicating, and expressing. I remember one video in particular stuck out to me— where she emphasized the importance of reframing the way we label and talk about AAVE.

v.d.c.b

A post shared by @v.d.c.b

Moving forward, I just wanna write however I wanna write. I really don’t give a fuck. If I’m in the mood to write a thinkpiece with big words and coherent thoughts, then I’ll do that, but I won’t become pressured to feeling as though I need to always write that way. Takes the joy outta the process. I love that I can shift my tone, language, and dialect. While yes, it is a result of socialization and assimilation in order to get by in white spaces, I feel like it is superpower that Black people have been gifted with.

I don’t want to limit myself. I want to be freeeeee as a bird. So no, I do not want to hear your critiques on my writing style or structure or grammar. This isn’t the space for that. I’ll do whatever I wanna do. Talk about whatever I wanna talk about. I’ll continue to write my run-on sentences and use the word ‘like’ as a transition word. However I feel that day, is how I’m gonna show up. And that is perfect. And that is enough.

****

#YAPSESHHHH 🍒🤎🧚🏽‍♀️🌹

Let’s chat in the commentsssss

1. Did you like any of the literary works we were forced to read in high school?

2. Did your high school embrace Black literature?

3. What are some things you’re trying to work on with your writing?

4. What makes your writing different from others?

Make sure you’re following me on Instagram and Threads @kamoryrose

I also curated a playlist for y’all as well. Some new sounds I’ve found, songs that reflect where I’m at right now as an aspiring rich bitchhhh, songs that I just enjoy. Tune innnn :)