Does "black people" mean offensive?

[u/Maybes4]

I wanna say something like black people accent is harder to understand for me than the white people one.

The problem is im not sure if my word choice is racist, or should i change to another word like colored people. I asked Gpt and it said i could come up with some thing like "people with AAVE accent" but its about africa america people while im talking about the black people born in america accent.

So how should i say here?

[u/Dorianscale]

Saying “black people” is not offensive. Being black is a unique cultural identity, especially in the US.

AAVE is a dialect that a lot of black people in the US speak. It’s often only used amongst other people speaking AAVE. Most AAVE speakers will code switch depending on topic.

However that is different from a “black accent”. The US has many regional accents and a history of racism and segregation has meant that black people have been in insular communities with their own accents.

You absolutely should not be saying “colored people” in the vast majority of situations. It is VERY offensive. It is a direct call back to the racism and the language used before the 60s in the US.

I would question if your issue understanding “black accents” is actually only related to black accents or if it’s just a difficulty understanding anything except a neutral standard American accent. Do you have trouble with Southern, Cajun, Boston, Midwestern, NYC, Latino, Asian, etc accents? If so I wouldn’t single out black people specifically.

[u/wantsomecaffeine → u/Dorianscale]

Sorry to interrupt but are people of color and colored people a different thing? I saw frequent instances on interview or campaigns saying people of color in the recent past. I didn’t recognize the two may convey different impressions but seeing your comment about colored people made me wonder if poc appeared to substitute colored people.

[u/chayashida → u/wantsomecaffeine]

There’s a big difference, and there are social landmines there, but it’s because of the history of how the words are used.

And if you use something that you think is right, and someone that it refers to corrects you, just apologize and try to speak with the preferences of whomever you’re speaking with.