I have copied the following from a post on FB. This spoke to me, gave me quite a wake up.

See, I was one of those folks who figured the speaker was just ignorant and uneducated. They are not, it is actually common usage historically. Now I know better, and I will do better. I may even add aks or ax to my vocabulary. This may cause my grandmother to roll over in her grave, and that is a risk I am willing to take.

Copied text:
I cannot put words on how important this thread of Tweets by Abraham Piper is. SO important, in fact, I'm just gonna copy/paste right here.

Why do some people say “aks” instead of “ask”?
It’s not “just their accent” and it sure as hell isn’t a mispronunciation.
There’s a linguistic reason and a cultural reason. Let’s quickly look at both:
First, “ask” and “aks” are the same word because of metathesis, which is when two sounds in a word trade places.
For example, nobody corrects you when you swap the T and R sounds in “comfortable” and say “comfterble,” instead.
It’s the same with “aks” and “ask.” They’ve always been interchangeable.
Both “ascian” and “acsian” were used in Old English.
But then over time, for no reason having anything to do with “correct grammar,” “ask” became the pronunciation of those in power, and therefore became “standard,” whereas “aks” was the pronunciation of…the less powerful.
And here we arrive at the cultural explanation…
When enslaved Africans learned English, they learned it mainly from European indentured servants…who’s dialect included “aks.”
Thus it became a perfectly natural — and therefore correct — element of African American Vernacular English.
But, still, languages change. So why hasn’t "aks" been standardized?
I’ll quote John McWhorter, a black linguist, to answer that (https://t.co/RuFpxbW42t).
He writes:
“’Ax’ is a word indelibly associated not just with asking but with black people asking…"
“‘Ax,’ then, is as integral a part of being a black American as are subtle aspects of carriage, demeanor, humor and religious practice. 'Ax' is a gospel chord in the form of a word….
Yet nothing can stop people from hearing 'ax' as illiterate.”
And now a painful irony:
“When a black speaker gets the most comfortable…the most herself — that is exactly when she is likely to slide in an ‘ax’ for ‘ask.’ Immediately she sounds ignorant to any nonblack person who hears her, not to mention to quite a few black ones.”
So…when she’s most honest, a linguistic bias in us means she won’t be taken seriously.
But that doesn’t have to be true!
And a very basic way to begin changing that is to not call other people’s native language “bad grammar.”
It's rude.
And ignorant.
But mostly rude.
Anyway, thanks for reading another tiktok-as-twitter-thread. I appreciate it. Come along for more if you feel like it. ‍

The link attached is another article in support of this story.