On Grammar Check and White English

I've been editing the past couple of days. And something caught my attention. My characters use "slang," and sometimes sentences of mine that are underlined just don't mean the same thing "corrected." So I started thinking about the long standing debate about Black English, or AAVE. Additionally, there's the lesser-known issues with Black ASL. These issues exist because of a desire to label Black-associated things as "less than."

When spell-checking work, you always have to have a decent grasp of grammar yourself in order to decide whether or not you should make a change. But, if you are not a user of "standardized English," as most are not (I tried something yesterday where I tried to communicate using two grammar rules related to something I was researching and ended up unable to make English), you also have to be able to discern when anti-blackness is putting a squiggle under a word you write.

In an article describing the different voices characters may have, the author chose to describe slang-using characters as illiterate, implying that people use slang or "make their own words" because they are incapable of learning big, "educated" words. This is a view held by most proponents of standardized English just out of pure ignorance.

I was surprised to learn that most of the things taught as no-nos in my English classes are actually considered "less formal." Ain't is a word. You can say like instead of as if. "Off of" is not always incorrect. Not using all the forms of  "to be" is not incorrect. Yet, if you go onto grammar sites, you will quickly see heads roll because the masses believe certain "uneducated" phrases are not English.

Additionally, many people still believe that the way to success in this world is "learning the White man's language." It's not just a thing of history.

So, it takes a lot of focus (oh no, I said "a lot!") to look at a correction of a sentence and not change it. Many times the "less formal," "slangified," and/or "incorrect" version of a word or sentence holds more or different meaning. I always felt this when I was forced to change things in the past, but I thought it was all in my head. On the other hand, I do tend to use "just" too often. Unlike "even" (in my opinion), it doesn't really add meaning. ("Really" is another one!)

Yet the battle still continues, debating whether Black English and Black ASL are languages. Why? Anti-blackness.