Our racial beliefs are affected by many different factors, including language. African American Vernacular English, or AAVE, is just one of those factors. To standard or academic English speakers, hearing the sentence ‘Can’t nobody tink de way he do’ instead of ‘Nobody can think the way he does’ may sound like incorrect grammar. But speaking AAVE is a deft skill that follows strict grammatical rules. As Stanford linguist John Rickford puts it, ‘The single biggest mistake people make about AAVE is dismissing it as careless, or lazy speech, where anything goes.’