If Black English Isn't a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?

The Basque countries are two ethnically similar regions, one within the national boundaries of Spain and the other within the national boundaries of France. The Basque regions have agitated for autonomy at least since the 1930s. Baldwin points out that people in the Basque countries have refused “to allow their languages to be destroyed” to signify the power of language to resist oppression (Paragraph 3).

Also called the Beat movement, this term refers to an American social and literary movement of the 1950s that was concentrated in artist neighborhoods in the California cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles along with the New York City neighborhood Greenwich Village (where James Baldwin occasionally lived). Baldwin argues that this celebrated artistic movement—mostly “composed of uptight, middle-class white people, imitating poverty” (Paragraph 5)—is indebted to Black language and culture.

As Baldwin defines it in this essay, this phrase originated in Black English to describe the “most total and despairing image of poverty” (Paragraph 5). This phrase was shortened and co-opted to label the Beat Generation.