She talks really black.

I was having a conversation with a woman the other day and she was describing another woman’s accent and she said she had a very south side accent. I knew what she was trying to say but apparently she didn’t think she was clear enough and she followed it up with, “what I meant was she talks really black, I guess I should have said she talks in ebonics”. This is a woman that knows me but doesn’t really know me, she doesn’t know my family or where I come from, for all she knows I very well could have been adopted by a black family and her statement could be very offensive to me. What really caught me off guard was she said it very matter-of-factly as if it was normal to say someone talks really black. Not only did she say it so casually but she said it again in another conversation, describing a phrase the woman used as “a very black phrase”, which made it very clear to me that she thought this was a very acceptable description of someone’s accent and dialect. It was interesting to me that she felt these were completely acceptable phrases and I cringed instantly when hearing them.