[christiangirl]

Dear Ignorant Pale Person:

These are a few tips I am providing free of charge. Please adhere to these guidelines as though your life depends on them because, if you keep talking the way you're talking, it just might someday.

1. Speaking Standard English in a clipped, Californian accent does not make me sound "white." In the same vein, it is NEVER appropriate to call a black person who speaks this way "white black."

2. Using a deeper Southern accent, unstructured grammar, and slang does not make me sound "more black."

3. Unlike you, I naturally swing between the two because I have lived in both places and thus change the way I speak depending from which part of the country the friend I am talking to has come. It is not for the purpose of sounding "more white" or "more black" but rather just blending in with whom I am speaking. The same way, that time you spoke to the girl with a heavy British accent, you began to sound like a cracked-out Spice Girl. It was involuntary, I'm sure.

4. Purposely abandoning all sense of grammatical structure, doing inane things like inserting a "z" where an "s" should go, and repeatedly saying "yo" will not help you "relate to me on an ethnic level."

5. Should you do any of the above things again, the above rules will be LOUDLY stated to your face, thus hopefully causing you a great deal of public shame.

Class dismissed,
CG