I have grown up in an inner city school my entire life. I have 2 brothers who always found it funny that I talked “white”. When I began to learn to talk, according to my mother I had the pronunciation of a “35 year old English Professor”. I never understood what people meant until I reached the seventh grade and my very first friend was white. I had never thought about how people talked until I heard her speak. And in listening to her speak I picked up the way I spoke. I went home that day and asked my mother if she thought I spoke “whitely” and she said simply ” The last time I checked, language didn’t have a color” and that was the end of that. I still have black friends that tease me about it but just because I do not use slang words does not make my skin any lighter than theirs.