African American Vernacular English Is Not Standard English with Mistakes (1999) [pdf]
I think the easiest way to talk about this without the racial connotations is to compare it to another language that is often simply considered &quot;non-standard English&quot;: Scots. The Scots language is distinct from Scottish English and has actually a larger minority of speakers than AAVE (30% in Scotland according to Wikipedia).<p>However it&#x27;s insane to think that this means speaking Scots is sufficient if you want a good job. I don&#x27;t think anyone attempting to get by in life and pursue a career in business or politics or academia would be taken serious if they only spoke Scots.<p>Actually Scots probably has the advantage of nostalgia. AAVE on the other hand is (ultimately) an artefact of American slave ownership -- that&#x27;s something we would much rather undo than remember.<p>I think there&#x27;s an argument to be made for the preservation of obscure languages (and a pidgin that is being threatened to be displaced by a dominant language it is partially based on certainly qualifies) but ultimately I agree exactly with what you are saying: reassuring AAVE speakers that it is okay to only speak a minority language when living in a country that is entirely based on a different language is cruel to the speakers.<p>For comparison (according to Wikipedia&#x27;s numbers): Irish Gaelic is spoken by 18.3% of people on the Irish island (i.e. both Republic and Northern); Welsh is spoken by 19% of people in Wales.<p>Again according to Wikipedia&#x27;s numbers, 12.8% of Americans speak Spanish at home, while 17.4% of Americans identify as Hispanic or Latino. If we assume AAVE is as widespread among black Americans as Spanish is among Hispanic and Latino Americans (because there are no official numbers) that would mean only 9.3% of Americans speak AAVE.<p>Even assuming every black American is an AAVE speaker (and that seems extremely bold as even linguists admit that &quot;AAVE&quot; is more of a spectrum than a clearly defined language) that would still be only 12.6% of Americans who speak AAVE. In other words: even by the most generous estimate 87.4% of Americans <i>don&#x27;t</i> speak AAVE -- and likely don&#x27;t comprehend the more idiosyncratic variants of AAVE.<p>So, even if AAVE is a &quot;real&quot; language, it&#x27;s not widely useful outside of the small circles of AAVE speakers. It&#x27;s just not realistic to expect 87.4% of the population to accommodate the &quot;native language&quot; of the remaining percentage if they already both speak General American English (or some approximation thereof).