The Opinions - JD Vance Is Wrong — Kamala Harris Isn’t Changing Her Accent

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

Recently, Republicans have taken to accusing Kamala Harris of using fake accents while on the campaign trail. In this episode of “The Opinions,” John McWhorter, an Opinion writer and linguist, argues the vice president is simply revealing a piece of herself by slipping into “Black English,” a form of code switching that is actually quite presidential.Questions? Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. My name is John McWhorter. I teach linguistics at Columbia University. And I write weekly a newsletter for New York Times opinion. I've recently been thinking about how Kamala Harris does what we call code switching. People keep accusing Harris of changing her accent in her rally speeches. I don't know if you saw this, but earlier this week, look up the clip, she went down to Georgia and started talking with a fake southern accent.

And a great many people find it either peculiar or annoying, fake in some way. When Kamala Harris code switches, what I see is somebody being themselves to the extent that you can in formal and public situations, and I welcome it. You better thank a union member for sick leave, member for paid leave, number for vacation time. Kamala Harris is just continuing what Barack Obama. Obama did to a lesser extent and got made fun of in the same way. Sorry, what did you say? Said I was still fine.

I'm not going to tell Michelle you said that. And also the informal language that was acceptable to many people from, and it wasn't matter of code switching, but the way he often talked, George W. Bush. It's just a fact. I met an onion grower today at the airport when I arrived. And he said, you got to help me find with people that will bowl onions, block them or whatever you do with them, you know. And let's not even get into the way Sarah Palin.

was comfortable expressing herself. He is from the private sector. Not a politician. Can I get a hallelujah? You know, if you're a human being throughout an exchange, you're going to go hot and cold. You're going to go casual and formal. You're going to talk about income tax.

You know, I offer a new generation of leadership. Then you're going to talk about how you prefer to make a BLT or something like that. Just like lather that baby up, right? That is where you start code switching between dialects. Black people. tend to do this very much. It's not that black Americans only speak the thing that now we often call ebonics.

Linguists call it African-American vernacular English. I like to just call it black English. There's that. Then there's also standard English. And so despite the fact that often black Americans are ridiculed as having a habit of slipping into bad grammar, the bad grammar is not bad grammar. It's a different but equally coherent English.

There are some people who frankly pretend to think that what black people speak is just Southern English. But frankly, anybody who has grown up for 10 minutes in the United States knows that there's a difference between white Southern English, as in Jeff Foxworthy or Blanche on the Golden Girls. God, my references are dated, but I can't help it. But some people listen to her and they think that she's going into Southern, as if this black woman stands up at a podium and starts imitating white Southerners because she thinks that's the only thing they'll really get or that's the way to relate to them. them, as if she was going to Minnesota and she started saying soda instead of soda because she thought that would relate to them. That's not what she's doing.

She wouldn't go to New England and try to imitate New Englanders to try to connect with them. She's just being herself and using the non-standard dialect that is native to her lifetime experience. I get the feeling a lot of people look at Kamala Harris and they think, okay, she has an education. Yes, she has a law degree. Yes, she was a prosecutor. And so therefore, the way she must talk is in standard English, even if she's making breakfast or just waking up. She speaks standard English. But Kamala Harris grew up as a little black girl.

She had lots of experience with black kids in the Bay Area at various times. She went to Howard University. At Howard University, despite the fact that it was a university, there was an awful lot of black English spoken because college students are normal people. And so she would have been there using both standard English, say in the classroom, and then a lot of black English, say in the dorms and switching back and forth. My own sister went to an HBCU around when Kamala Harris did, and she acquired a code switching ability which she and I actually had not had before then. But Kamala Harris, if I knew her basic biography,

I would find it peculiar if in real life she couldn't code switch. This is what we would expect. When you code switch, what you're doing is you are showing an accessible side of yourself. It's a way of showing yourself to be relatable to a lot of the audience. And Kamala Harris's case, especially if there are a lot of black people in the audience, or often just to show that she is a black people, so to speak. That is a way of connecting. And I will tell you, when we get this done together, my friend,

and when I am president, I will take on the bad actors who exploit a crisis. So what she's doing is bringing real life behind the podium in a way that no one in her position would have, say, 50 years ago, or frankly, even 25 years ago, but language use gets more informal. Actually, in societies worldwide, we're not as buttoned up as we used to be. We're looser now with these sorts of strictures. You know, the truth is that the code switching is not unpresidential. It's presidential because what you're trying to do is communicate effectively with the public. And who's going to tell us that part of effective communication does not include channeling the warmer and more intimate aspects of the way we think and we feel? Why is it only effective to talk in an elevated, anodyne, affectless way, as opposed to talking like normal? people, I want us to be able to hear casual speech with more allowance and affection and even

awe than we're often taught to because there's so much in the way people talk. We need to pull the camera further back and understand that what somebody like Kamala Harris is doing is perfectly authoritative and ordinary. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur. Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Bishaka, Fibylette, Christina Samuelski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie Rose Strasser.

Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta, Christina Samuelski, and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.