As this is an open letter, I hope you feel compelled to engage in some sort of dialogue with me. I’m writing this because I feel like this has gone on too long, and it needs to be addressed. I often find myself in a bind because I never know what to say or do when you openly make fun of me and where I’m from. And I can honestly say that it’s because you genuinely catch me off guard each and every time. So, I’m going to take this letter as an opportunity to explain to you why your Chicago jokes are never funny, and why you don’t get to talk down to me because of where I come from.
I’d like to get this straight, being from Chicago IS NOT a handicap. I’ve never received a handout or any type of government assistance based on the fact that I am a Chicagoan. A lot of the issue you take with me is that you feel left out, and you feel like the only reason people “give me a pass” and continue to be friends with me is because I’m from Chicago. If people prefer my company to yours, and you say we share similar personality traits, you need to take another look at yourself and really try to figure out what you’re doing wrong. I can’t say what it is for sure, nor am I in a position to condemn anyone, but clearly you posses some traits that I don’t. One thing’s for sure though, everything that I have, whether that is the respect and love of my peers, or an internship at a law office, I got because I earned it. I have never and will never need people to feel sorry for me. Being from Chicago doesn’t make me an automatic charity case.
There’s something to be said about the condescending tone of voice you use only when you talk to me. I know that a large part of it has to do with you equating my intelligence to the way that I regularly speak. You have this stigma around African American Vernacular English, and I’m here to say get rid of it. AAVE is it’s own dialect of English. It has grammatical, phonological, and syntactical rules just as Standard American English does. Additionally, Chicago lingo is not “ghetto.” It’s just the way we speak and relate to one another. If you don’t know what something means, just ask, everybody else does. Don’t assume that my vocabulary is small, and that I’m not an intellectual, because I am. When I’m around my peers I don’t feel the need nor the pressure to speak Standard American English because these are people that I am comfortable with. However, I don’t have to explain my code-switching to you.
As I am continuing to be honest, you thinking so lowly of me based on the way that I talk is ridiculous. We go to the same university, and we have the same scholarship. The person that you view as below you is in the same place as you at the same time. Furthermore, I’m not ok with these respectability politics that you’re trying to play. Pointing out my use of AAVE and Chicago lingo while you speak Standard American English does not make you the better black person. It does not make you the poster child example of what a black person should speak like. It does not make you more deserving of respect, and it does not make you smarter. However, it does make you snobbish.
As for the shooting and gang banger jokes, quit it.
Last Sunday when I was on FaceTime with my mother and sister and they said six words to me that could make anybody’s heart sink. “Your cousin got shot and killed.” That really put your jokes into perspective for me. My mother is the poster child for a good woman. She’s an attorney with two daughters, one of which is a teacher with two masters degrees, and the other attends NYU. Most people would look at her and say that she did everything right. Same goes for my dad. He’s a retired contractor who lives with his wife in the suburbs. But what’s crazy is that no matter how much my parents decided to live on the straight and narrow, they couldn’t escape this. My mother couldn’t escape her nephew being shot in cold blood, and neither could my dad. I’m not saying this to elicit sympathy from you or anyone for that matter. I’m saying this to say that when you make jokes about getting shot 90 times you reduce this gun violence problem to an issue that only affects people who choose to participate in gang activity, and that’s not true. It affects the people you’d least expect, the people you’d say least deserve it.
Beyond that, the jokes you make are problematic because it’s never funny when people die, and you’re neglecting to consider the structural issues that causes the violence. In 2013, the Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, decided to close about 50 public schools. This left thousands kids displaced. Most of the schools were in minority neighborhoods. The closings of these schools forced kids from groups that don’t necessarily get along with one another to be in the same building with each other for about 7 hours a day without addressing the disputes correctly. Additionally, the school closings inconvenienced people so much that people began to drop out of school. The idea here is, it’s easier to stay home then spend money you don’t have everyday on transportation to a school that’s about an hour away from you. And when you have people not in school learning, and on the streets trying to provide for their families to make up for the income that they could’ve made by earning a degree, you get people selling drugs, doing drugs, and fighting with each other over territory to do these things. Thus the spark in gun violence.
If you don’t take anything away from this letter I hope that you understand that you and I are equals. Everyone has a past, a present, and future. It all helps in making our stories unique. I shared mine with you in hopes that you’d learn how to empathize a little better. Moving forward, I hope that you can be more careful of the things you say. But more importantly, I want you to know that I forgive you. I’m not writing this letter because I’m mad at you, but because I didn’t want you living in this ignorance anymore. I want you to see me and Chicago for who we are, not who you think we are.
From Nia With Love.
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