Posted on 09/18/2024 1:16:27 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
As is the case for many people who grew up in the Deep South but have lived somewhere else for many years, the Southern accent I once had has given way to the “nowhere man” accent that I think of as generically American. But it comes roaring back when I visit my family in central Alabama, and even lingers for a few days after I have returned to Brooklyn. It’s also a little more pronounced after a martini (or two).
No one gets offended when my Southern accent comes and goes. For Kamala Harris, it’s a different story. Figures on the political right, including JD Vance, Donald Trump and various conservative internet celebrities, have accused Ms. Harris of affecting a Southern accent on the campaign trail, and implied that it was a kind of deception.
Ms. Harris, who is not from the South, wasn’t using a Southern accent, though. As John McWhorter has recently pointed out, what Ms. Harris was slipping into was Black English. There’s nothing unusual about her using Black English because to state the obvious (to everyone except Donald Trump, apparently) Ms. Harris is Black.
So what’s really bothering Republicans? The answer has nothing to do with linguistic purity. It has everything to do with cultural stereotypes — and electoral math.
Studies show that people with Southern accents are often regarded as less intelligent, even by people who have those accents themselves. It’s a learned bias that begins at a young age. There’s also a class bias; people associate deeper Southern accents with lower income, an impression that can translate into wage discrimination and fewer opportunities for professional advancement — one of many reasons people with accents may work consciously to...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Even great actors have trouble with foreign accents. Harris is not even a good one.
(I remember a movie where Vanessa Redgrave played an American. Her over exaggeration of the American rhotic ‘r’ was laughable. I suspect Kamala sounded equally ridiculous to real Black Americans.)
Their racist attributions abound: Stupid (don't know how to obtain an ID to vote); uneducated (the Steppin' Fetchit way they speak); lazy (see "Stupid", above); child-like (cannot "make the grade" on their own and without the Leftist's help); and so forth.
It's digusting really, especially when the Leftist (i.e., Democrat/Communist Party cult member) feels so proud of themselves -- so smug -- when they pander to a black adult ... when they act out the Left's version of "compassion" for those poor, pathetic, disadvantaged "black folk" who can't survive without it.
To Democrats, if you question the authenticity of something, you must hate it. You can’t just be curious, you can only be vitriolic. She didn’t grow up in an American black family, so she had to have picked up the accent from the schools she went to; the HBCU seems the most likely.
She doesn’t have any Black American ‘accent’, picked up or otherwise. The speech we heard from her was a ridiculous parody.
The Times hates southerners, but now they found an accent to love.
I have never heard an accent like the one she feigns.
She might not be a good mimic. She grew up with her parents’ accents for the first few years of her life, then her home accent was probably modified by what she heard on TV and at school in a natural way. Her HBCU time may have contributed the most to what she affects. It’s just not a natural accent for her. She’s just drawling out her words (aaargh, in her somewhat chalkboard-scraping voice) to sound “black”. I never said it was authentic, because it can’t be
My father’s father was straight from Italy and had a strong accent despite being in the US since the late 1920s, but all of his children that I met had a Rhode Island/NYC accent.
No, she is not a good mimic, and she has a terrible ‘ear’.
What she is, is a complete and empty FAKE.
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