ABSTRACT
In contestations around language and race today, mandatory speech therapy classes are a thing of the past. In fact, there are professional penalties—including potential loss of certification—for speech pathologists who misdiagnose African American Language speakers as having a communication disorder. In the public sphere, African American Language and its progeny, Hip Hop Nation Language, are now the lingua franca of popular culture in the US and throughout the world. In fact, it is so imbedded in Generation Z culture that some think it is their language. Today, there are not only sociolinguistic and educational courses in African American Language in schools and colleges. There are also academic centers and programs devoted to research, study, and teaching of the language. In the society where there are now laws against racial discrimination, at the end of this second decade of the twenty-first century, language has become a proxy, a stand-in, for race.
