Quote:
Originally Posted by WT Sharpe
I don't see GA Russell's statement as racist. The early blues pioneers were, by and large, not known for having advanced degrees in their résumés. That's not to criticize them, it's just recognizing the history. In the antebellum/Jim Crow South where the blues originated, a decent education was something to which few people of color had access.
But that Corpus of Historical American English to which you linked, miguel1626, is fascinating, and certainly brings up a wealth of instances where the word 'couple' was not followed by the preposition 'of'. |
It's not racist because it's falsifiable in the sense that black jazz musicians spoke the Queen's English, it's racist because it assumes that the erosion of English grammar in America came from black people. Poor whites in America were speaking mangled English long before black jazz musicians came along.