“Language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard American dialect has any validity. The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another. Such a claim leads to false advice for speakers and writers, and immoral advice for humans.” –(1974 Students’ Right to Their Own Language position statement; emphasis added)

“Your Average Nigga” contends that just as exaggerating the differences between black and white language leaves some black speakers, especially those from the ghetto, at an impasse, so exaggerating and reifying the differences between the races leaves blacks in the impossible position of either having to try to be white or forever struggling to prove they’re black enough. In this essay I recount how I negotiated my own black ghettoto- middle class identity conflict as I facilitated classroom interactions with a black male student from the ghetto.