The article centers on Representative Jasmine Crockett's controversial remarks about Texas Governor Greg Abbott at a Human Rights Campaign event. Critics argue her use of informal language contradicts her usual formal speaking style.
The author defends Crockett's choice of language, arguing that it's an example of code-switching—a common practice among Black Americans, who employ different speech styles for public and private settings. This is compared to Martin Luther King Jr.'s use of formal and informal language.
The author highlights the changing nature of public speaking, suggesting that informal language is becoming more common across all settings. The article argues that Crockett's choice is not inherently inappropriate given this evolution.
The article's main argument is that criticizing Crockett for using informal language in a specific setting misunderstands the cultural context of code-switching and ignores the broader trend towards informality in public discourse.
Last week Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas landed in the hot seat for comments she made about her state’s governor, Greg Abbott. “Y’all know we got Governor Hot Wheels down there, come on now,” she said at a Human Rights Campaign event, “and the only thing hot about him is that he is a hot-ass mess, honey!”
Crockett, a Democrat, has come in for a good deal of flak from critics on the right who accuse her of affecting salty Black speech patterns to get attention. After all, those critics point out, she’s an educated person, a successful lawyer, who has on many other occasions relied on standard English and a more reserved speaking style. That criticism, however, misconstrues the way Black Americans speak. We tend to have a two-pole speech repertoire, one for the public at large and one for our own community, as I have argued here about Kamala Harris and others.
Martin Luther King was duly famous for the power and polish of his rhetoric. Yet in the book, “The Word of the Lord is Upon Me: The Righteous Performance of Martin Luther King, Jr.,” the sociologist Jonathan Rieder notes, “Within his circle of Black friends and colleagues, King indulged in vulgar, ungrammatical, racial, lewd, and street talk” — even using the N-word when joshing around with his colleague, Andrew Young.
It wasn’t strange or fake when King code-switched, and it’s not strange or fake when Crockett does it, either. The difference is that King was not given to using the “street” ways of talking in public. Few public figures were, back in the days of fedoras and dances with numbered steps. Today, people speak more informally in all arenas, and part of that way of talking is trash talk.
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