006 - The statement "You are so well-spoken!", although it may be meant as a compliment by a White person, is not a compliment. Cohosts Randy and Mel explain that the phrase may come out as "I didn't know you were Black from the way you talk" or "You sound just like a white person."
However the phrase comes out, "You are so well-spoken" reveals an innate negative expectation. It sounds like you thought the person you are talking to was going to speak an unintelligible sub-language. Remember the jokes about speaking "Jive" from the movie Airplane back in the day? Yeah, like that. In interview with Dr. Stacey Pearson-Wharton, college administrator and host of the podcast "Being the Dot", sheds light on the idea of "implicit bias" as it relates to cross-racial relationships.
Mel and Randy talk, as they often do, about how the beautiful passage in Romans 12 from the Bible gives key insights to improving the way we speak to and treat people of other backgrounds. Also there is a slightly uncomfortable discussion about "assimilation," which Ibram X. Kendi discusses in his landmark book Stamped From the Beginning.
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