A black linguist has defended controversial remarks made by a senator about the US President.

Democratic Senator Harry Reid was quoted as saying that America was ready to accept then-presidential candidate Barack Obama because he was "light-skinned" and "had no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one."

The comments, reported in a book released last week, have been widely interpreted as racist.

However, while agreeing that "Negro" was an outmoded choice of term to describe an African American, linguist John McWhorter of Columbia University, New York, said that Reid was only reflecting common perceptions of African-American English.

"In mentioning that Obama doesn't speak in 'dialect,' Reid acknowledged something many blacks are hot and quick to point out, that not all black people use Black English," said McWhorter of Columbia University, New York, writing in The New Republic.

African-American speech was widely regarded as inferior to standard American English until the 1970s, when the "Ebonics" controversy arose amid linguistic studies finding that Black English was a legitimate variant of the English language in itself.

"Black English is as systematic as standard English, and what we hear as 'mistakes' are just variations, not denigrations," McWhorter said.

There is still a popular widespread perception that Black American English is substandard, though the linguistic consensus is that it is no more or less sophisticated than any other dialect.

"Reid implied that black dialect is less prestigious than standard, such that not speaking it made Obama more likely to become President," McWhorter continued. "That is, he implied what we all think too: Black English is, to the typical American ear, warm, honest – and mistaken."

Reid nevertheless phoned the President to apologize for the remarks. Obama praised Reid's character and accepted the apology, saying, "As far as I am concerned, the book is closed."

17 January 2010