The White and Asian characters in my book A Blind Eye make use of African American slang to navigate their relationships with Black people.

In her paper, “Appropriation of African American slang by Asian American Youth”, Angela Reyes states ‘non-African Americans benefit from appropriating the verbal dress of a group that has been the target of much discrimination and racism in the United States as a way of sharing vicariously in the plusses of that culture without having to experience the minuses associated with it’ (2004: 383). While non-African Americans may gain local social prestige through peppering their speech with African American slang terms, they do so without suffering the daily experiences with discrimination that plague the lives of many African Americans’.

Appropriation of African American slang by Asian American youth written by Angela Reyes, Journal of Sociolinguistics 9/4, 2005: 509-532 Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2005 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA.510 REYES