However, over many years, starting in late high school, I trained myself to speak in a more standard form of English to protect myself from the discrimination of the "hillbilly" stigma. This is my formal dialect, and I use it in business and in formal/sem-formal scholastic settings. My father was the one who encouraged me to do this. As a child, I noticed that he spoke differently when making business calls. He told me that, when "you are trying to make money, trying to learn to make money, or dealing with somebody who wants your money, you speak their language." This knowledge of using a non-native, standard dialect in business/government/education communications is extremely common, and is especially common amongst the mainstream African American community. The issue with AAVE is only when children are raised in broken families by parents who are too ignorant/disengaged/etc to teach children the standard, formalized dialect that every other ethnic group in America is expected to adhere to. I can't speak in a courtroom in my native dialect and be taken seriously, even if I'm in Charleston, West Virginia. (The exceptions to this are in identity politics. Lots of deep southern politicians use their native accent, and then there is the Charleston dialect, which uses proper grammar but drops the "r's", so is therefore acceptable in formal settings.)