Will The Oxford Dictionary Of African American English Help Address Language Appropriation?

Although African American Vernacular English is front and center in the way all of us communicate, it has always been regarded as slang. More recently, Black colloquial phrases have been wholly co-opted by certain subsets and make up what some more clueless people consider “internet-y” or “Gen Z speak.” Let’s be real: Describing your meal as “bussin” is not Twitter or TikTok slang. Anything remotely cool or flavorful in American culture came from Black people.

So it feels good to hear that Henry Louis Gates Jr. and a team of researchers from the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research have teamed up with the Oxford University Press to give Black English its long-overdue props. The Oxford Dictionary of African American English, set to be released in 2025, will define historically Black words and phrases and provide the more accurate origins of those words — reclaiming them, in a way.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/oxford-dictionary-african-american-english_n_646e469de4b02325c5d87523

let's divide the people more