Kamala - "I'm Speaking!"

She is a brilliant speaker, all the more so because she can do it spontaneously and with great power. As long as she doesn't say "ax" for ask, I'M WITH HER.

I would estimate about 80% of educated black Americans code switch in a non premeditated way. It is just what happens when you grow up knowing how to speak in two styles. I will say though most black West Indians from New York City do not code switch unless they are just speaking a slang word or in the dialect or accent of their ancestral Caribbean island.

Yeah, “I’m speaking” isn’t “black speak.

My dad codeswitched when he visited his family in the country over Christmas.

Or perhaps more accurately he codeswitched when consulting his patients in private practice. There was far less swearing.

"SAY IT TO MY FACE!"

Blacks do not say, "dude," ever.

No matter her code or hood or color, she must not go down the trap of condescension, especially when confronted by the opposing side.

She showed a taste of it when answering a reporter's question yesterday about her lack of interviews. Like, "can't you see I'm busy, get away..." Or, I'll do one when I'm damn ready".

Just politely answer the question.

Yeah. “I’m speaking” reads more “woman who ain’t taking no shit” than Black.

I think it’s effective. Especially with the stare. It offsets any bias that women are too weak to be President.

As long as she don't use Ebonics, I'm fine with it.

R6 This isn’t 1976. Black people under 40 say dude all the time.

As a hs teacher, no. They laugh when I say it.

[quote]Yeah. “I’m speaking” reads more “woman who ain’t taking no shit” than Black.

"I'm speaking" is obv not "blackspeak" or "code switching" That's just the title of the post and something she's known for saying..

Doesn't everyone slip into patois occasionally?

"Blah blah blah, y'all."

R13. You are BAE

[quote] The VP has a way of moving into "Blackspeak" during her appearances.

Infamously, so did Hillary Clinton.

Obama was very effective doing the same thing. Good, she's smart enough to know what works

r7, her reply to that reporter was absolutely polite. Don't know what you're going on about...

you didn't need to go all the way to U.C. Berkley. I could have told you. It's not who we talk to it's what we talk about.

Kamala and Obama have nothing to do with Black American community. Obama was raised by his white mother and grandparents, Kamala by an Indian mother. Their black/mixed race fathers have nothing to do with America, one was fron Kenya, the other from Jamaica. So, it is just politicians being fake and sleazy.

There is always some cunt that has to derail discussions like this with played out corny stereotypes.

Kamala went to Howard University and proudly joined an all-Black sorority there. Doesn't get Blacker than that, r19.

R19 But they both grew up in the states and therefore were socialized as black. You lose. My mom is not AA. I grew up in DC attending black elementary schools. One of my best friends mom was white and he was blacker and hooder than me lol.

Everyting gwarn be iree, man.

Nope, Obama grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, withiut any black people around him. Kamala was raised in Canada, her parents divorced and had no connections to blacks. By the time you get to college you already have fully formed accent.

Plus it blatantly disregards the history of how blacks are socialized. Mixed race black people have always been put on a pedestal just like blondes in white culture. They are still black and are treated as black by the law and banking institutions, everything and usually grew up in black neighborhood. Think of all the famed mixed race black people in old show business. Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte. They grew up in black circles and are still black. Kamala grew up in black ass Oakland. Obama actually did grow up mostly around white people though.

Kamala spent 5 years in Canada.

Kamala moved from Oakland to Canada as a kid. Her accent is fake, just like Hillary's.

You all speak from your ass

R26 your point? She mostly lived in Oakland growing up. If none of these people weren’t famous they would be regular, educated lightskin black people. Fkin liars.

Ain’t nobody more mafuckin hooder than Kamabla

R29 Even if she move from Oakland at the mafuckin age of 9. In the words of Hillary Clinton:

What difference does it make?

She worked at Mc Donalds and she went to Howard and she is a soror in the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.Go fuck yaself.

Kamala has a very little percentage of black African DNA. Her mother is fully Indian and her father is mixed Irish, Indian and black African. She is probably less than 25% black. Plus raised in a family of educated immigrants.

Are there no Black people in Canada?

The same way white Anglo Saxon Protestants claim all type of exotical and sophisticated white people we gon claim world traveled Obama and Harris. White people do not own sophistication and cultured. Fuck off.

3, r34.

Both Obama and Harris have nothing with black Americans. As I mentioned their black parents (who they didn't grow up with) were African and Jamaican

The thread brims of racism

Jesus, here we go again, dissecting a candidate's racial identity and coding so she can be torn apart. You're all incredibly tiresome and predictable. Shut up.

R36 That’s a lie. Like America there huge areas of Canada with very little black people. But it’s major cities, like Toronto have blacks. They usually are black of West Indian descent. I think 90% of Canadian blacks originate from the Caribbean. R&B singer Tamia, who Kamala kinda favors to me, is black and grew up in the projects in Canada.

Are you stupid R38? Retarded?

You can’t fix bipolar ignorance

Ain’t nobody gonna tell me that Kamala can’t code switch when I do it myself. Mama didn’t raise no hypocrite.

I'd actually say "dude" is from Cali and an almost 50 year old movie.

Kamala chameleon

Gays.

Yall let’s let the troll to talk to itself and then we will return.

R29, that was my point. She wasn't raised in Canada, she only spent 5 of her teen years there .

But how does she font, that’s the real mafuckin question.

R19, Do you not realize that in America, if one looks Black, one is regarded and treated by Whites AS Black? They don't ask your genealogy.

One of the greatest books on American culture that should be, with "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," required public school reading:

Looking black doesn't alter your accent.

R34, Canada is on the continent.

R2, I believe the entire point is that it’s not code switching. Code switching occurs when one is speaking to one person/group/audience as opposed to another. The author posits that Kamala uses different vernacular while engaging with the same person/group/audiemce.

Some old white posters here seem to think she's uppity.

Fuck anyone who criticizes her speech when Dump rambles on incoherently spewing nonsense and lies.

@r19, Not black enough for you? God, what do you people want? Let me guess, you're one of those Aryan types that think THIS is the master race

Pick anybody up at the family reunion?

Kamala does indeed move into a more vernacular style of speech, depending on what she's talking about but, frankly, that's part of what makes her a powerful and relatable speaker. I don't see anything phony or dishonest about it.

Maybe not, r51, but it sure makes Whites care enough to be bothered.

I'll tell ya what: Don't come to my area lest you be made uncomfortable by some Pennsylvania Dutch, say vunst naw!

Glenn Greenwald tears Kamala to pieces, and fairly so. Her expression of barely contained rage and utter contempt while she was addressing the protesters is a true reflection of her character: intellectually limited, arrogant and nasty. If she behaves like this as a candidate, we can only imagine how tyrannical she is going to be when the Clintonite cadre manages to puppeteer her into the presidency.

And before anyone says anything, Donald Trump is just as bad, but the creatures that populate the Washington DC swamp dislike him because of his mercurial temperament and his lack of self-control, as well as the fact that he is not a career politician, but an "outsider" who has managed to rise to the presidency through a cult-of-personality phenomenon and media savviness, as well as Hillary Clinton's underperformance as a candidate.

Kamala has been allowed to be more Black than Obama.

Well then, Cedric on Big Brother is definitely a CodeSwitcher !!

Glenn Greenwald? Seriously?

Does Glenn Greenwald ever NOT trash the Democrats while remaining "strangely silent" on Donald Trump?

I follow a few left-of-center commentators, including the Bad Faith and Empire Files podcasts, and no Democratic candidate is ever progressive or good enough for them. It gets tired.

Listen to Cori Bush's losing primary speech and you get where crazy angry black lady gets a bad rep.

Kamala can NOT even slightly veer into that lane. That's the concern here.

R59's "mercurial temperament and...lack of self-control" translated:

"Insane ramblings, incoherent speech, violent (kill, bloodbath, war, attack, etc.) imagery, name-calling, and outright lies."

Glenn Greenguts?... 🤮

I noticed certain phrases I only hear black people use: "In this space", "I can speak to that" or "Can you speak to that", "I don't like the way he moves", etc.

Don't most professional gay men code switch, too?

I know I don't speak the same way in a business meeting as I do with my (gay) friends.

Kamala should use her French skills if she acquired any from her time in Canada.

Everyone adjusts there speech to accommodate there audience. Ever notice how Trump talks like an idiot around MAGAts? Oh, wait, bad example, he really is an idiot

When a politician alters their speech pattern it can be seen as phony or inauthentic. It certainly did when Hillary did it.

It's not phony if you're just trying to communicate with different people. Hillary was upper-middle class, well-educated suburban Chicago. I doubt that would play well as first lady of Arkansas. She adjusted to them. When you expect people to adjust to you you're not going to make many friends

I don't see it any different than going to France and speaking French. It's what you should do

R65 what’s crazy is that Cori Bush’s concession speech is not even crazy in the era of Trump. Yes she was fiery and bodied but she actually conceded. Trump has NEVER made a concession speech for the 2020 election. Never. Crickets from media. Cori didn’t have to call that brother a sellout though lol.

This is such a classic U.S. moment, one that demonstrates how fucked up we are. For hundreds of years being even being partly Black was a crippling disadvantage. Now that acknowledging Black ancestry is acceptable suddenly that’s wrong too . . .

Another takedown on Kamala Harris' dishonesty and the Democrat party's attempt to silence anyone who refuses to toe the DNC's pro-corporatist line.

[quote]the Democrat party's

I’m gonna be constructive here: you should kill yourself.

Your trolling is flaccid, r76.

R59 is a both sides troll that is constantly stuck in limbo. As it tries to walk both forward and backward at the same time.

She be alrigh' as long as she don't eat lak a fiel' han' and gobble lak a hog.

R76 = RFK, Jr.

Does anyone sentient believe the Republican Party is NOT "pro-corporatist"?!

Frazier IS Kamala!

Oops! Link for r82:

Oops, redux! "Frasier."

R80, I'll think about that tomorrow.

[quote] Kamala and Obama have nothing to do with Black American community.

Ridiculous.

That was a Black American family in the White House for eight years.

Obama has a Black wife and Black daughters.

He’s Black.

When she says, “…and I am telling you, I’m not going,” that’s black speak.

The Klan Grannies are about to lose their minds all over again.

OP, all of Kamala's code switching and low key semiotics are deliberate. Not sure why you are wondering about "premeditated".

R85 I was not denying Obama being black, or rather biracial, after all it is obvious. I just stated that his black father (who he hardly knew) is Kenyan and has nothing to do with black Americans, their culture and history. He is American from his white mother's side and he was raised by his wealthy white family. Marrying a black American woman and having children with her doesn't magically give him the lived experience and impact of being raised in that community, no more than JD Vance is Indian because he married an Indian woman.

I adore her “I’m speaking.”

And I love Maya Rudolph’s impression of Kamala.

I do too

“A (Black) UC Berkeley linguist”

Next.

Yeah, like a young white man in the 1970s was gonna change his name from Barry to Barck to establish his white upbringing.

Barack, of course. Sorry.

Never said that he wanted to establish his white upbringing. He doesn't need to. It is what it is.You can't change it as you change the name.

I guess with the name he wanted to accentuate his Kenyan, African side, side which he never knew, cause father had left him as a toddler.

Barry could have used Martin Luther Obama for all it matters. Another racist thread

R89: from his memoir, I understand that he was considered a member the black community of Honolulu back then. Some of the black men were like surrogate dads.

R89, what you said, and I quote, was that Barack Obama has nothing to do with the Black American communiry.

Which was a stupid fucking thing to say, considering his wife and his daughters are members of that very community. And that is even supposing that Obama himself is not a Black American. Which is a stupid and racist proposition on its face.

Fuck off, troll. You don't even deserve a response.

I never hid my Blackness, and I succeeded triumphantly!

I don't think it's a black accent. I think its more her Québécois French accent.

R98 because his wife and daughters are members of African american community. Than Kardashians are African American too.

Someone well said that Barrack Obama is a by-product of white privilege. His maternal family who did well, were successful, supported him and his education and gave him the opportunities, social and cultural background skills to become the president of the United States.

She's just pretending to be black.

DJT

Obama is a child of affluent upper class white liberal family from a brief relationship that Obama's mother had with a Kenyan student.

His grandmother Madelyn Dunham, who raised young Obama when he returned to Hawaii in 1971 while his mother stayed in Indonesia, was the first female vice president at the Bank of Hawaii in Honolulu.

Obama's mother, Ann Dunham Soetoro worked for the elitist Ford Foundation, World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Bank Rakyat (the majority government-owned People's Bank of Indonesia), and the CIA-linked USAID.

Obama's grandfather.

Stanley Dunham's distant cousins include six U.S. presidents - and another president who is Dunham's grandson: James Madison, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, plus Barack Obama, his grandson. Through a common ancestor, Mareen Duvall, a wealthy Huguenot merchant who emigrated to Maryland in the 1650s, Dunham is related to former Vice-President Dick Cheney.

Jesus christ, the trolls are tiresome.

R106 when you have no arguments to counter the facts that Obama was raised in uber privileged and well connected white upper middle class environment (his estranged father was Kenyan elite too, graduated from Harvard and held high positions in Kenyan administration) just call people troll.

But, the fact is that he was sold to African Americans as one of their own, solely based on his skin color, is laughable.

I guess he technically may be African-American (African on his father side, American on his mother), but he is nothing more and nothing less than a member of white US elite.

Funny how Obama just looks like darker version of his white grandpa.

Indeed, r107.

Obama likes to play victim and to downplay his social status.

He said that he was the son of a man who herded goats as child, forgetting to say his father was sent to study at Harvard and have become high government official in Kenya.

He also like to portray his maternal family as some modest middle class working people, somehow omitting their family liaisons to American elite, outstanding careers his grandmother and mother had (which very few women had at the day) and the fact that his grandfather was a very wealthy man.

Michelle is the bootstrapping working-class African American. Barry much less so, but he has the right to identify as black if he wants to, so he did.

My God, you are daft. Of course he is biracial, but he was raised and is a part of an upper class white American family. And his father (he have met just once) is a part of Kenyan elite.

He attended expensive private schools, was waited by house servants ( partcularly in times when living with his stepfather), went to elite universities, hax every door opened for him once he got his degree etc.

Goats be hard to herd, y'all.

[quote]My God, you are daft. Of course he is biracial, but

There is no BUT about it. Republicans could not have been beaten with a Black Panther in 2008.

It took an old white PROGRESSIVE to beat Republicans in 2020 after the old, white woman was a bridge too far.

Kamala has all Joe's beliefs, but is a LIKEABLE Black woman.

People TRUST Kamala.

Donald will never have that.

It should have been written that Obama didn't care about the black community until he ran for office. Same with Kamala. As soon as she made it she was done with gobbling black cock.

Really, is that why she went to a HBCU? Why she is a beloved member of a Howard Black Sorority?

Stop being an asshole cunt troll, r115.

Stop shitting out yo mouth.

R107, there’s no “technically” being Black. Wealth and privilege do not = “whiteness.” That’s all crazy nonsense.

R117 wealth and privilege of an affluent, well connected white family=whiteness

R118 is racist without saying he's racist.

HBCU's are easy to get into. Top colleges, not so much.

R120 you dumb fuck. Howard University is not easy for a black person to get into. It was probably easier in the 80s but it’s not easy. I got a full scholarship there. I should have went.

Yes you should have.

R121, you proved my point, jeesh. "I should have went there."

Oh, dear.

Howard University has a 53 percent acceptance rate.

R123 oh dear me bitch. I don’t give a fuck. 😆 I’m in a nasty mood this week.

I've noticed she says "Ima" in most of her speeches, and it drives me crazy. She's too smart and polished for this.

She has to steal "Claiming my time!" from Maxine Waters and make it her own.

R126 oh well. Small potatoes.

R119 stop prostituting the word racist, like you were proatituting yourself. This world has lost any meaning because of idiots like you. Learn to use arguments.

I just had a conversation , ok argument wit ha MAGA relative, and one of the things the said about Kamala is the way she speaks. They said she talks in circles and is hard to understand. Odd since Trump talks in even bigger circles and babble. Anyways, that's how MAGA sees it anyways. They are trying to turn Trumps poor communication BS into being Kamala.

[quote]stop prostituting the word racist

r128, arguments do not work on racists. Racists are used to coded speech of the Plantation South.

Bless your heart.

Go cumdumping, cause this is what you do best R130.

No, what I do best, is point out ridiculous Trump Trolls.

But you are pretty good in cumdumping too?

r133, taking or giving, wait, wait, I get leg and foot cramps.

Well past my gang bang/cum dumping stage.

I consider DataLounge a gang bang at times. Intellectual.

And that's how to end an interesting thread.

For sure r108, it's the chin! Malia Obama inherited this too. I'd never seen a photo of his grandfather until now.

I think she speaks just fine.

She speaks fine and I don't hear black girl speak at all. Hillary did that more than Kamala ever has.

Didn't Judge Judy Shyster use that line a lot? I'm SPEAKING!!!!!

"I said Donald Trump is a great businessman"!!!!!!

Yes, Judge Judy would say "I'm speaking" whenever a litigant tried to interrupt her. If they kept it up, she'd remind them that the production team would cut off their microphone, not hers. So maybe Kamala can remind rally-attendees who interrupt her that security will throw THEM out of the event, not her.

I dont think the pee on her leg joke Judy used would work for Kamala. Honestly, I never got why people liked that, it was a stupid awkward joke to make in a court room.

I FOUND THE SOURCE:

Judge Judy version was a misquote (or transparent plagiarism) from Clint Eastwood in "The Outlaw Josey Wales". What he actually says is "Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining."

R140, rough them up, too.

DjT

It was neither, r140. JJ simply cleaned up a movie quote. She didn't pretend to be the origin.