David Oyelowo Apologizes for Linking Black Southern Accents to 'Slavery' and 'Subservience'
David Oyelowo has apologized after saying the Southern Black dialect comes from a Nigerian accent slowed down with "slavery" and "subservience" added in.
The Nigerian-British actor, best known for playing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the 2014 film "Selma," made the remarks during a recent appearance on the One54 Africa podcast with co-hosts Akbar and Godfrey. The hosts had asked the 50-year-old to demonstrate different accents he uses for roles. Around the three-hour mark, his demonstration of the Black Southern accent took a turn.
"If you take the Nigerian accent like this and you slow it down, you put a lot of slavery in there, and then you start to put a little bit of subservience in it, this is what starts to happen to the Nigerian accent, man," he said. The clip went viral. The accent itself was not the problem. The words "slavery" and "subservience" were.
Critics pointed out that the framing flattened Black American Southern dialect into something passive and reductive. Black Southern English is one of the most studied varieties of English in the world. Linguists have traced its development through African language structures, English colonialism, Caribbean migration, and centuries of cultural innovation. It is anything but subservient.
Facing growing backlash on social media, Oyelowo posted an apology on Instagram Sunday.
"I want to apologize unreservedly to all those who were rightly offended by my comments on the One54 Africa podcast regarding Southern Accents," he wrote. "It was the wrong thing to say and it is not how I feel."
"I have nothing but deep respect and great love for Black people of all kinds, especially those from the American South," he continued. "Reducing a dialect born from the richness and resilience of Black Southern culture to anything less was careless and wrong."
The full podcast episode had been an extended conversation about the long-running debate over Black British actors taking on roles based on Black American history, a debate Druski recently reignited with a viral skit. The clip of Oyelowo's accent comments overshadowed everything else from the conversation.
