Has there ever been an African-American Vernacular English dictionary? I am trying to look for a dictionary for African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) but I haven't found one, not even one. Google Books shows some introductory and general reference materials. I see one book titled A Dictionary of Varieties of English, and another one Dictionary of American Regional English. Neither is really dedicated to the vocabulary of Black English. And if we do have AAVE dictionaries which is the most accurate and comprehensive yet?

There's not really a distinct vocabulary to AAVE so much as a distinct grammar (and pronunciation). A lot of the debate about AAVE is tainted by politics and racism. There's a tendency to downplay it as mere slang rather than a dialect or creolization of English, more from a standpoint of insisting that there's one proper English and all else is unworthy of our attention. The famed Oakland School Board attempt at having AAVE treated as a distinct language was heavily distorted in the media as “teaching Ebonics” when instead it was an attempt at marshaling ESL techniques (and funding) to assist students in speaking and writing standard written English. Again, racism and politics conspired to prevent this from going forward.