"Rachel Dolezal & the Science of “Sounding Black”"

"Since the language we speak comes from our environment rather than from our genes, the overlap between AAE and black ethnicity is blurry; not all African Americans speak AAE, and some non-African-Americans do. But like all languages and dialects, AAE is a complex system, and mastering it takes a certain amount of exposure and interaction with actual speakers of the dialect, preferably early in life. A more superficial exposure can leave tell-tale traces in the speech of non-native AAE speakers, ringing false to the ears of African Americans in much the same way as a bad actor’s flimsy accent...

Guy and Cutler compared the speech of nine white teenagers involved in hip-hop with that of three African-American rappers (Dr. Dre, Nas, and Chuck D) and two white rappers (Eminem and Eyedea). Several of the teens frequently dropped “t” and “d” sounds in interviews with the researchers, and they did so in a pattern that inflated the difference between word classes relative to native AAE speakers. This was similar to the performance style of the white rapper Eyedea (pronounced “Idea”) and the black rapper Chuck D, who, the authors note, grew up as a middle-class kid in Long Island, earning a university degree in graphic design. But the other black rappers—along with Eminem—showed a very different pattern in radio interviews...

The idea that a quantitative analysis of someone’s speech can part the curtain and reveal his “true” linguistic self is an intriguing one. But the very notion that a person has a single authentic dialect is somewhat suspect in America’s current racial landscape—as is the idea of a static dialect called African-American English. As noted by linguist John McWhorter, most African Americans today experience a double consciousness when it comes to culture and dialect, constantly oscillating between Standard and African-American forms in a way that displays an acute awareness of the social implications of these dialects. In a sense, whiteness and blackness are constantly being “performed” through language."

http://nautil.us/blog/rachel-dolezal--the-science-of-sounding-black

This is really interesting - the layers of double consciousness, and the observations in different groups.