Habitual be is the use of an uninflected be in African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and Caribbean English to mark habitual or extended actions, in place of the Standard English inflected forms of be, such as is and are. In AAVE, use of be indicates that an entity repeatedly does an action or embodies a trait. In Standard English, the use of (an inflection of) be merely conveys that an individual has done an action in a particular tense, such as in the statement "She was singing" (the habitual being "she sings").
It is a common misconception that AAVE speakers simply replace is with be across all tenses, with no added meaning. In fact, AAVE speakers use be to mark a habitual grammatical aspect not explicitly distinguished in Standard English. For example, to be singing means to sing habitually, not to presently be singing. In one experiment, children were shown drawings of Elmo eating cookies while Cookie Monster looked on. Both black and white subjects agreed that Elmo is eating cookies, but the black children said that Cookie Monster be eating cookies.