A lot of AAE features are actually shared with Dixie English as spoken by non-black people. So I’m not surprised that you hear “rednecks” using a few of them.
The association between those features and African-American speakers is still there, though. If you see someone on the internet saying stuff like “I be working”, the typical person won’t picture a redneck, they’re going to picture a black person, you know?
The internet does seem to have changed the language landscape a fair bit, but I think that those features slowly leaking into the speech of non-AAE speakers is more about social changes than just tech.
A lot of AAE features are actually shared with Dixie English as spoken by non-black people. So I’m not surprised that you hear “rednecks” using a few of them.
The association between those features and African-American speakers is still there, though. If you see someone on the internet saying stuff like “I be working”, the typical person won’t picture a redneck, they’re going to picture a black person, you know?
The internet does seem to have changed the language landscape a fair bit, but I think that those features slowly leaking into the speech of non-AAE speakers is more about social changes than just tech.