This is a bit simple, too. AAVE is not a single thing. All black people do not have the same accent, and some don't have similar accents to each other. There is

This is a bit simple, too. AAVE is not a single thing. All black people do not have the same accent, and some don't have similar accents to each other. There is also no an ur-accent floating around that is perturbing all black people in a uniform way from the local accents that surround them. And while people can theorize that some notably common Black speech patterns arose from West Africa because they can find similar things in some contemporary West African speech - this is a comparison that people were biased to make (black people imported from West Africa talk funny, must be West African influence.) Black people's accents as you quote here are generally the same archaic Scottish/Irish/English accents that everyone else they lived near had, but didn't continue identically because black people were physically separated from white people socially, and often living under enforced illiteracy. Black people were brought here speaking a huge number of languages, and forced to live with other black people who didn't speak the languages they spoke, and forced to live under white people who demanded that they speak in a subservient manner and remain illiterate. AAVE is honestly a joke. It's another way to designate black people as a designated foreign underclass. Black West Texans or Hill Country Mississippians don't sound like black New Yorkers. Black West Texans sound a lot like white West Texans, and black New Yorkers sound a lot like white New Yorkers. That they don't sound identical is due to segregation, past and current, not some foreign origin. The reason they don't track black people's accents, or even recognize them, is because no one cares about black people. It's easy to see how the recognition of "AAVE" seems like a victory if one thinks that all black people are fungible. edit: and of course, if you're white, talking "black" is a single thing, and white people can do it. It involves holding your hands in weird ways, pushing your chest out, making a mean face, and can only be used (and will almost always be used) when talking about partying, violence, or having sex. Pop music is minstrelsy.