 Black American Sign Language ( BASL ) or Black Sign Variation ( BSV ) is a dialect of American Sign Language ( ASL ) spoken most commonly by deaf African Americans in the United States . The divergence from ASL was influenced largely by the segregation of schools in the American South . Like other schools at the time , schools for the deaf were segregated by race in the South . Many of the students were descended from slaves who had been deaf-mutes . They were often forced to sign with a limited vocabulary and grammar . This led to the creation of a distinct dialect of ASL .

BASL is a