She didn’t mumble during interview segments. Her voice-overs didn’t sound like she was reading cue cards or like she was some airheaded ditz. Were there double negatives? Poor subject-verb agreement? Did she say “further” when she meant “farther?” What was so terrible about her speaking that people think she sounds illiterate?
Simply put — she sounds too Southern.
Southern accents have long been associated with stupidity and a lack of refinement. The Scarlet O’Hara affected antebellum Southern belle archetype has long been overshadowed by the hillbilly hick, and in the black community, there tends to be even more stigma attached to sounding “country.” How many southern rappers are criticized for “cooning” just because their money-cash-hoes anthems are delivered with a drawl? Would we be so quick to toss that word at a rapper from Brooklyn; even if that rapper’s songs and videos utilized similar imagery and themes?
Do we have a certain expectation for a star of Beyoncé’s magnitude? Are you not supposed to sound like that when you’re the biggest star in the world? Maybe she should practice her non-regional diction like news anchors, or adopt an affected faux European accent a la Madonna — would that silence some of the barbs?
Or maybe we should all pause for a second and think about what we’re truly criticizing. The next time you see Beyoncé in an interview, maybe jot down a quote or two and ask yourself — if you just read it on a page, would you think this person was “illiterate” or “dumb.”
And be honest about the fact that we continue to stigmatize and regularly feed into negative stereotypes regarding how people talk below the Mason-Dixon Line.
–stereo williams
