Why do so many African Americans use the word "axe" in place of "ask"?

It's part of African-American Vernacular English (i.e. AAVE or Ebonics). My guess is that it developed because "aks" is an easier phoneme to pronounce than "ask" for people of some native tongues like those from West Africa where most African-Americans originate due to the slave trade, so the Africans who were kidnapped and sold into slavery by English speakers said it that way and it just stuck. It's already been more or less proven that the grammar system of AAVE borrows from native African languages, so it's not much of a stretch. It's kind of similar to how English took words from other languages and modified the pronunciation to make it easier for native English speakers (e.g. bologna is pronounced "bolonia" in the original Italian but English speakers say it like "baloni").

Also, yes, I know at least one White/European-American person who says it as well that I can specifically think of off the top of my head, but I'm sure I've heard more than just one.

I have heard plenty of White people do the exact same thing this "new age" we live in is full of lazy people that don't even care to speak proper English. It is not only African Americans although I don't have many black friends, I can say that it's most Americans in general that live in areas below the poverty line. The reason you may be running into a lot of people saying "axe" instead of "ask" is because, you may go to a school that is in or near a area of poverty. It is common to find anyone below the poverty line black, or white with poor communication skills poor = less resources, and most likely a poor environment that doesn't place importance on education.

First off it ain't just Black Americans who say this, it's people of all races you can find with this specific PRONUNCIATION of the "sk" sound... secondly, that's just what it is, a different pronunciation of a certain syntax, bruh... do you pronounce the word "where" like "wair" or "hwair"? Because guess what? The technically the "wh" syntax is pronounced like "hwa".

And don't get me started on how languages evolve... and different accents... y'all is damn ignorant and most likely racist because you just nit-pick at pretty BASIC stuff... you can find different accents and vernaculars across well... almost every language that is spoken among a huge geographical land-space.

You learn to speak by those around you... if you're around people who pronounce the "sk" sound like "ks" "ss" or "sk" it's how you most likely gunna end up speaking as well.... if a kid from China immigrated to the USA at age 2 with his family and he moves into a neighborhood where the "ks" pronunciation is common... guess how is he prolly gunna end up speaking English?

Most White Americans, especially in the south, pronounce the word in the same way.

White boys who stink will ask, purchase, and conquer with AXE*.

That said we might assume non-whites keep some "axe" to offend.

* AXE: also known as LYNX in the UK is a male grooming product

owned by the British-Dutch Unilever Corporation. Stop stinking..

Stop the troll racism. There are plenty of whites who are now rappers acting black, and no one is prejudice about that. Get a life!

This is what southerners say. Only southern blacks say this. Probably more whites use the term than blacks in the south.

*sorry for the typo in the last part. AFRICAN not "Afican." oops!