Ren Jones is a YouTuber who teaches Spanish specifically for the Black community. Now, he is creating a movement to build support for Black language learning for all languages.
“Many people believe that African Americans speak ‘unintelligent English.’ So they automatically believe that Black people can’t speak more than 1 language. But our African ancestors spoke 3+ languages, and there are an estimated 2,000 languages in Africa—a third of the world’s languages. Language is in our blood.”
The new movement is called Blacklingual, which means “black and bilingual.” Ren is building support for the movement through T-shirt sales, which go towards the creation of an app where people can connect with other Blacklinguals around the world who speak or are learning their native and target languages, find tutors, and find Black host families for international travel opportunities.
Ren is determined to change the perception of language learning and inspire more Black people to learn a second language, but he is also sharing the message that Ebonics (or African American Vernacular English) is a real dialect and not unintelligent English.
“Ebonics is more than pop culture and words that are fun to say. It’s real language used by real people of all education levels. The majority of African Americans speak and/or understand Ebonics–its not unintelligent speech. It’s Black culture. It’s us. And we shouldn’t be made to feel ashamed of that. It’s the same with all Black dialects whether it’s Dominican Spanish or French Creole. Black dialects are not broken or ghetto versions. They are legitimate, beautiful dialects.”
Website: www.blacklingual.org
YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/c/lajerganegra
