Author Archive

I’m in a seminar for the next three days. May get to post, may not. So what we have for you today is some extra goodness.

With all the talking about language that’s been going on over the last couple days, I decided to sit down and have a chat with my “tag-team partner” in this endeavor, Ambra.

here are the links to the “discussion” as it’s taken place over the last week or so.

me - 12 August - Stats Is High
Ambra - 16 August - So You Say I Talk White
me - Talkin’ Black

So what we have today is an edited transcript of an IM conversation we had on the topic of language and “talking white” and whatnot. So before you get to the goodness, here’s a couple things you need to know. Ambra is the one speaking standard English. I’m the other one. I’m big on idioms and shortcuts. Here’s the breakdown:

Yahmeen = you know what I mean
y/m = yahmeen
jawn = can hold the place of any noun, most frequently refers to a woman, however it could be anything. Watch the context carefully.
iono= I don’t know.

Avery: so the other day, you was talkin bout you talk white, right?
then I started breakin it down into regional differences, as well as
racial. yahmeen, so you think sometimes them two get confounded? like I
had a reader point out that within MS, black folk and white folk got
different vocabs, cadences, and whatever, so within that specific area, i
could be said to be talkin “white” even though if i went up to illadelph
soundin like ‘an one of em, they’d say i sounded anything but white.
Ambra: Right. So yes I do think that there are regional
distinctions that are separate
Avery: but then race can also layer on top’a that. cuz you got
the traditional new yawk accent, right…the BK jawn.
Ambra: Yes and that’s thick
Avery: but even wit a white cat and a black cat from BK, you gon’ hear the
new yawk jawn, but you still more’n likely gon be able to tell who’s who.
Ambra: Okay you’re pullin’ strong Gully talk right now
Ambra: But I think for me the distinctions are more with words and
phrases and less with accents
Avery: yeah, vocab’s a big part of it too…but y/m, wit hip-hop takin over
like it has, the lines are blurry.
Ambra: The lines are blurry how?
Avery: cuz hip-hop give “black” speech, which for you means mostly vocab and
idioms, a wider audience and it’s appropriated on more levels.
Avery: Zack be tryin’a keep it real so he talk like Fiddy (50 Cent).
Avery: cuz you know it’s white cats that be usin nigga self-referentially.
Ambra: That’s a whole other phenomenon
Ambra: But what about the Puerto Rican aspect of hip-hop’s roots?
Avery: what about it?
Ambra: Umm, nevermind, just wondering if you thought there are ways
their
speech filtered itself into the genre or if hip-hop is 100% driven by
black culture
Avery: naw, the latino brothers and sisters definitely made some
contributions and done been integrated, y/m.
Avery: hip-hop, at least the MC’in portion is still mostly driven by colored
folk cuz look, there’s only a certain type of hip-hop speech that’s gonna
get mainstreamed, anyway.
Avery: i done heard white cats call themselves nigga, but i ain’t never hear
no 5%-type talk where they callin each other ‘god’
Ambra: This is true
Avery: or ‘wise intelligent’ or whatever.
Ambra: Yeah now you’re gettin’ deep…but back to the topic
Avery: so yahmeen, it’s all a matter of proximity.
Ambra: Expound
Avery: so aiight, if craig done lived his whole life around molly and zack
‘nem, that’s what he gon sound like cuz that’s what he always hear.
Avery: ain’t no affectated element to his speech, y/m, that’s just him.
Ambra: but see I somewhat disagree because I think there are often
built-in differences in vocal range by ethnicity
Avery: Nope.
Ambra: You’re just gonna say “nope” and leave it at that eh?
Avery: naw…
Avery: i’m sayin’, let me adopt li’l young lou or whatever…i bet that joker
sound just like me.
Ambra: perhaps
Avery: not the specific vocal range, but inflection and diction…guaranteed.
Ambra: I absolutely believe that children/people/etc. easily adapt to the style of speech they’re immersed in
Avery: sho nuff. and they can pick up what they wanna pick up, too.
Ambra: what I’m saying is, I believe that there can be certain inherent vocal
differences based on cultural background.
Ambra: this is what I was getting at in my last post
Ambra: hmmm…okay the only example I can think of is not really related but
hear me out…
Ambra: Samoans…I’m just going to put it out there….they’re big people. They’re not overweight, but they are not built according to the traditional image of the bodily frame our society projects
Avery: yeah…
Ambra: To put it plainly, ’round my neck of the woods, we’d call it “big-boned”, or if you really wanna get real, “big-boneded“. Vocally, they often sound different too. I have a hard time thinking this is just based on atmosphere….
Avery: do they still be speakin they native language or just english?
Ambra: English, well, both, but mostly English…so I’m still
working on this theory, but I believe God really has created different races of people for specific purposes..
Ambra: This is rather politically incorrect to say I know, but it
only makes sense
Ambra: I use the Samoans as an example because some of the differences are so blatant. I know there was/is/will be a greater purpose for why He created them to look and sound they way they do. Okay so that was rather scattered, but I’m hoping you kinda catch where I’m going. In some of my travels I’ve come across black people of varying backgrounds. It AMAZES me that no matter what country, there is still that tinge on the vocal chords that resonates in me that they actually sound
black…..even with british accents
Avery: sorta…but not always. look at’cha boy Keyes. if you heard him
before you saw him, it’a be over when you came around the corner.
Ambra: Right, I call him out as an exception
Avery: but it’s a whole lotta them.
Ambra: And there are lots of exceptions
(said simultaneously)
Avery: yahmeen.
Ambra: That’s why I’ve never made it a blanket statement. I say “often” you can tell, but not always
Avery: but what i’m tal’n bout is, they ain’t really exceptions. Real deal
is you can’t really separate language from other interactions.
Ambra: okay then, 50/50
Ambra: Can’t separate language from other interactions? Explicate
Avery: cuz like at Parablemania last week or the week fore last or some’n,
Jeremy was tal’n bout Black folk in Nova Scotia and how they ain’t have NO trace of nigro speech, but they a self-contained community and been that for a long time.
Ambra: Define Negro speech
Avery: sbv…or for you, the “black” sound in the voice.
Avery: however you wanna take it, y/m.
Avery: they sound like white canadians, i’m sayin’.
Avery: can’t distinguish em from around the corner.
Ambra: NOOO
Avery: yeahhh.
Ambra: see this is what I’m saying…SBV and the black sound in the voice are
not one in the same in my opinion
Avery: i get that. that’s why i said however you wanna define it. No matter what criteria you use, you can’t tell the differnce.
Ambra: But often I can.
Avery: aiight, holmes.
Ambra: I’m not saying it’s a straight shot. But I do think it’s worth consideration. I find it hard to believe that if voice is not affected by the body you’re born into.
Avery: peep game:
Ambra: Your eye color is, hair grade is, why not voice?
Ambra: (peeping)
Avery: when a baby is born, it babbles in all the sounds the human voice make.
Avery: so you know it’s certain sounds that’s made in the chinese language
that native english speakers can’t hardly make
Ambra: yes.
Avery: but if you take young tyrone, before he learn to talk, when he still
babblin, and send him over to shanghai or whatever, then when he start talkin, he gon make them exact sounds.
Ambra: (you and assigning these names…it’s hilarious by the way, this conversation has been politically incorrect for about 25 stanzas now.)
Avery: and then when come over here, his english pronunciation is gon’ be
dictated by the fact that his throat muscles is used to constrictin themselves in certain fashions and not others
Ambra: I’ll give you that…..but
Avery: so when he get around craig and smokey ‘nem, he gon sound chinese.
Avery: same thing wit my li’l rainbow tribe.
Ambra: Males and females have different sounding voices.
Avery: right, but that’s a matter of pitch and frequency.
Ambra: are you sure that’s it?
Avery: R Kelly can’t sound like Marvin Gaye under NO circumstances, y/m.
Ambra: And Jaleel White can’t sound like Barry White
Avery: zackly.
Avery: but they both black.
Ambra: But they both have deeper voices than I do
Avery: right…
Avery: which is a matter of frequency. they got longer vocal chords.
Ambra: soooo then, it’s not just a matter of pitch and frequency, and what determines who gets born with longer vocal chords?
Avery: how? the frequency of the vibration of the vocal chords is what
determine the “depth” of the voice, holmes.
Ambra: I’m not as dumb as I may be letting on….holmes
Avery: naw, hardheaded…look at it like this:
Ambra: so frequency and vibration of vocal chords comes via the stork?
Avery: riiiight…
Ambra: wrong
Avery: how don’t they? Joker born w/ that.
Ambra: Exactly
Avery: but a racial “sound” ain’t based on frequency.
Avery: watch this:
Ambra: Are you going to turn on a television or something?
Avery: when them british “soul” singers make a record, they take black mannerisms and stylizations.
Avery: e’ry once in a while, one of ‘em do it so good you can’t really tell.
like lisa stansfield back in the day.
Ambra: Oh brother
Avery: but sooooon as the record go off and don cornelius get to interviewin’
em, you know what the deal is.
Avery: and f’real-f’real, it ain’t even gotta be soundin black necessarily,
they just sound american.
Avery: when the needle come off, they sound british as they did in the first
place.
Ambra: I agree with all of the above
Avery: that’s somethin’ you learn how to do.
Ambra: So you don’t believe that under any circumstances a person’s
vocal intonation is determined in the womb?
Avery: nope.
Avery: they hear they mama talkin that way, but until they start tryin’a talk, they don’t drop the unused sounds. That’s howcome you supposed to expose your kids to as many languages as possible as early as possible.
Ambra: So if I’m a male, and I am raised purely around females, I
will have a female-sounding voice?
Avery: they don’t know NOT to use they voices in certain ways.
Avery: nope. a woofer can’t be a tweeter no matter what you do to it.
Ambra: translate please (for the other sane people who may read this)
Avery: …well, as long as it’s not surgically altered. woofer=bass part of
the speaker. tweeter=treble.
Ambra: duh.
Avery: the woofer is bigger cuz it carries waves on a longer frequency.
Ambra: So then you admit there is an aspect of vocal intonation
that is determined in the womb.
Avery: nope. that ain’t intonation.
Ambra: Okay, then let’s pick a different word. I’m not liking that one either
Avery: put it like this: i’m bout to make up a number.
Avery: say my voice is 970 khz.
Avery: that don’t change.
Avery: whether i call my mother’s sister “aint” “awnt” or “ant” depend on who
i grow up around.
Ambra: Errrrrr
Avery: yuuup. cuz if you hada growed up in ms’sippi, you’d be talkin bout
aint janie just like er’body else down there.
Avery: what’s an accent?
Ambra: Yes, the above is agreed. What I’m saying is that if your 970 khz voice is formed in the womb (well, actually way prior to then if you want to get
theological about it), and clearly it is based on being male or female, but why couldn’t race play a factor in that just as it does with all our other features?
Avery: nope.
Ambra: “What’s an accent?” Save that convo for another time
Avery: cuz race ain’t really what we think it is.
Ambra: Of course it’s not, which is what I’m getting at.
Avery: we categorize people based on a certain set of phenotypical traits, but it could be a whole other bunch of things.
Ambra: It’s entirely socially constructed, in fact I think there are more distinctions between “Earthsuits” as I like to call them then we give credence to
Avery: iono…we like .2% different or some’n.
Ambra: This is because it’s politically incorrect to say such things like certain races of people may be more physically inclined in certain areas
Ambra: But why not?
Ambra: This earth is huge and God created different groups of people for
distinct purposes
Ambra: Black Africans are dark for a reason
Ambra: Samoans are big for a reason
Avery: yeah, cuz they be in the sun.
Avery: and high yellow is high yellow cuz they got some white in ‘em.
Ambra: White people don’t get as easily cold as we do
Ambra: I mean these are all things that are DIRECTLY related to ethnic origin.
Avery: maybe not, iono. i be the first one gettin cold.
Ambra: Don’t argue me on this one…I’ve read numerous studies..HA
Ambra: In which case, you’re really a white man
Ambra: Ah HA! I knew it.
Avery: sorta, but i bet a white person born in africa get cold before a black
jawn born in seattle.
Avery: why? cuz that’s what they used to.
Ambra: Remember, there are no black people in Seattle
Avery: yeah…cept sir mix-a-lot, the sonics, and the seahawks.
Ambra: But the point I’m making is all evidence proves that the
lighter persuasion didn’t originate in Africa. Okay, well actually that’s
a slippery slope…but again, the Garden of Eden is not what we’re talking
about here, but you see what I’m gettin’ at
Avery: everybody from africa. awwwwlll y’allll. (c) Tre Styles.
Avery: yeah, but i’m thankin that on the real, it ain’t that much science to
it. it’s all a matter of variety.
Ambra: Whatever you say Avery. You’re the man.
Avery: God coulda made it so every man was 6′, 175 wit 7% body fat.
Ambra: I’m just opinin’ here.
Ambra: Stretchin’ the mental capacity
Avery: so anyway, he could’a made it so e’ry woman looked like Halle.
Avery: that ain’t how it went, tho.
Ambra: It really does us no good to speeculate on how God coulda made people. Point is, he didn’t…so why did he do what He did
Avery: hypothetically speakin, yes– i can see the argument that different
peoples may have developed different talents/abilities.
Ambra: I shall spend the rest of my life on that particular quest for
knowledge…such is the process of Him restoring humanity back to Himself
Avery: i read some stuff on this before.
Ambra: I’m sure you have

So that’s where I’ll cut it off for now, although the actual conversation went on longer. Please don’t hesitate to weigh in. There may be some actual hard research out of this eventually. In the meanwhile, enjoy.

It’s August, the days are getting shorter, and the semester is about to start. Summer will be over soon. Buck Whylin’ by Terminator X came on the ole MP3 player and it reminded me that Valley of the Jeep Beets was my album in the summer of ‘91. I listened to some others, but I literally wore the writing clean off that tape before the summer was out. That got me thinking: how far could I go back? I think I bought my first recorded music in 1987, so I’ll start there.

1987 - Bigger And Deffer - LL Cool J
1988 - Benny Carter Meets Oscar Peterson - Benny Carter, feat. Oscar Peterson Quartet
1989 - It Takes A Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Public Enemy
1990 - Fear of a Black Planet - Public Enemy
1991 - Valley of the Jeep Beets - Terminator X
1992 - The Low End Theory - A Tribe Called Quest
1993 - Slaughta House - Masta Ace
1994 - Street Level - The Beatnuts
1995 - Return To The 36 Chambers (The Dirty Version) - Ol’ Dirty Bastard
1996 - Stakes Is High - De La Soul
1997 - Funky Good Time Anthology - The J.B.s
1998 - Here, My Dear - Marvin Gaye
1999 - Sons of Soul - Tony Toni Tone
2000 - At The Turn of the Century, disc 1 - Stevie Wonder
2001 - Purposeful Design - Fred Hammond

In the spring of 2002, I bought a (then) brawny computer with CD burning capabilities, so I stopped listening to pre-recorded albums. I had ripped most of my CDs to the hard drive, so the concept of listening to a whole album kind of stopped right there. What follows are my top 3 jams, as evidenced by being burned to multiple discs.

2002
Scorpio - Dennis Coffey
Ashley’s Roach Clip - Soul Searchers
Watch Out - De La soul

2003
Simon Says (Remix) - Pharoahe Monch
A Touch of Jazz (Playin’ Kinda Ruff pt 2) - Zapp
Thought @ Work - The Roots

2004
Get Out of My Life Woman - Joe Williams
He Can Hear Me Sing - Milton Brunson
One Monkey Don’t Stop No Show - Joe Tex

Thanks to Alan Keyes, I’ve had the opportunity to sit down and think about reparations. Nothing too in-depth, still, because it’s such a distant prospect that it doesn’t warrant my immediate attention. That’s like me worrying about what brand of shoe I’m gonna endorse when I’m running back kickoffs for the Eagles. Even before I stop to consider the likelihood of it happening (or the lack thereof), I think there are lots more pressing things to worry about. Even more, there’s something we can do in the meanwhile.

I don’t think I’m against reparations in principle. I’ve seen lots of arguments, both pro and con. I’m not gonna rehearse them all here, and I’m not gonna borrow anybody else’s points. I’ll just say that labor deserves to be paid. Don’t tell me about the Civil War, like that was payment, because the enslaved fought in that war, as well- on both sides. My great-great (great?) granddaddy can’t pay his own reparation. And don’t tell me about Affirmative Action, like that’s supposed to fill the bill, because it’s not like Jim Crow didn’t happen. If anything, Affirmative Action was meant to redress racist actions in the 20th century, not the 19th. But whatever. Labor deserves payment. If it’s not, then a debt is incurred. The debt remains until it’s paid. I don’t really see a whole lot of room for debate in that aspect.

As a practical matter, it’s something altogether different.

Whenever I hear about reparations, the first thing I think of is the Reparatons Day skit on the Chappelle show. In Alan Keyes’ formulation, there wouldn’t be any money actually distributed, there would simply be no witholding of income tax. This way, General Motors and Phillip Morris (or whoever sells Newports) won’t get all the money and there won’t be 20,000 new record labels. (That skit is classic. I highly recommend it.) Again, I don’t have a problem with the proposal in principle, but some questions remain. Principal among them being the matter of who would get the exemption. Last spring, Carol Channing came out and said that she had a Black relative, and there was no money at stake. I’m betting that for a 40 year tax exemption, people all over the country would be finding that one drop. But again, that’s so far down the line (?) it’s not even worth worrying about.

The question the Chappelle Show toyed with is really something we can concern ourselves with right now. Yesterday, Booker Rising fixed the GDP of Black Americans at 728 billion. That’s a lot of money, y’all. What are we doing with it? And I’m not really coming at it with some nationalistic bent, like all Black money should be spent in the Black community, although I definitely believe it should stick around a while before it leaves. For a lot of us, the money is gone as soon as we get it. There are many possible explanations; the truth is probably some combination of all of them. Certainly conspicuous consumerism plays a role, as does lack of home ownership, bad credit, which leads to higher interest on loans, and other, more general unwise spending decisions. That’s a point we can start on right now.

I remember a few months ago, Jabari Asim of the Washington Post pointed out that even though the income gap between middle class Blacks and whites is closing, the gap in wealth remains the same. Quoting researcher Thomas Shapiro, he says:

Income is the money people receive from our jobs or substitutes for jobs such as Social Security or unemployment,” he said. “For most people it’s a paycheck, which the majority of us use to reproduce our existence,” i.e., buy basic necessities and keep a roof over our heads. “We use wealth as much more of a storehouse of assets rather than a stream,” Shapiro said. Wealth typically takes the form of home equity plus savings accounts, stocks and bonds.

Wealth doesn’t come quickly, cheaply, or easily. Given that the Black middle class is really just now achieving income parity, I don’t know that it’s reasonable to expect parity in wealth yet. However, this should be our focus. We know it’s attainable.

Not that I’m not planning to wear adidas if I ever make it to the Linc.

6 People Beat Up Alleged Peeping Tom

NORTH ROYALTON, Ohio — An alleged peeping Tom is in the intensive care unit after reportedly being assaulted with a tree branch, NewsChannel5 reported.

Officials said Mario Russo, 44, was attacked after he was spotted outside a bedroom window wearing his pants around his ankles and watching a 5-year-old girl who was sleeping outside the Bunkeridge Apartments.

Russo was reportedly hiding in bushes.

Police said after he was discovered a group of six people, include the girl’s mother, aunt and their boyfriends attacked him and brutally beat him for more than an hour.

I’m ambivalent about this one. I’ve got a 5 year-old daughter, and I know if I caught some fool with his pants around his ankles watching her, there would be trouble. That’s grounds for a two-piece with a biscuit. I don’t have the patience to beat somebody for an hour. Once I’ve knocked him out, either I’m gonna call the police or I’m going to jail. If it were just the beating, I wouldn’t have too much of a problem with this. However, they did more than beat him. They sodomized him with a tree branch. That’s a little extra.

Pimp and Ho Halloween costumes for kids.

What more can I say? (c)Shawn Carter.

(but I am kinda glad the models ain’t Black.)

The sneaker v. gym shoes v. tennis shoes situation developing in the Talking Black comments reminded me of a similar discussion up at Parablemania a couple months ago. He links the results of a dialect survey, showing a regional breakdown in different names for common items. I know it’s the former English major in me, but this stuff is hot to death. Check it out.

I’m not big on politics and breaking down what the Democrats or Republicans are doing because I think that large-scale movements are necessary for overhauls in policy, but have very limited effect in the life of a given individual. Whether Bush or Kerry is elected in November, the kids I tutor will still need to shore up their basic skills (or get some in the first place), people that were hungry before the election will be hungry after the election, and so forth. And even if all the President’s (new or incumbent) policies are enacted exactly as he is proposing them now, it’s gonna take a while before it means anything to the average person on the street.

Casey Lartigue expresses my ambivalence beautifully. He’s talking about the difference that the new Superintendent of the DC School system will be able to make, but I think it applies to any bureaucratic entity.

I’m someone who is skeptical that public policy can do much to help a person advance in life. The best thing public policy can do, rather than trying to create jobs, is to remove barriers. We should be pleased that the schools are safe and that kids learn the basics, forget about higher expectations about what a superintendent can do. No child left behind? Sounds fine, but no child should be left behind on purpose. It sounds cruel to say it, but if you’ve worked with kids, you know that some are more motivated than others. The Board of Education of the 1980s may have been led by politically motivated misfits, but could a Board of Education led by altruistic geniuses do much to motivate the unmotivated to become motivated about book learnin’?

Having said that, I’m just a little dismayed by President Bush’s embrace of Don King as a campaign spokesman. Don King, though? Seriously. Don King? Bush might as well call Snoop to see if he can link him up with Bishop Don Magic Juan. Don King, though? Man, if I was running for public office, I wouldn’t want Don King telling people that I love babies and puppies, let alone trying to advocate my policies.

I understand that the Republican party is trying to reach out to the Black community, but dag! If they think Don King is a figure with any type of credibility, they’re more out of touch than I had imagined possible. Don King has name recognition, but that’s about it. The opening paragraph from this article at Alternet pretty much sums him up:

Don King is a hustler who rose from the depths of a manslaughter conviction to the heights of boxing promotion by dint of a well-honed ability to play the angles. So, it’s really no surprise that King has thrown his lot into the reelection campaign of George W. Bush; he’s playing the angles.

Don King is a hustler, baby. If I had any game at all, I’d write him talking about I was his nephew. Even if he didn’t believe me, I bet game would recognize game and he’d take me on anyway. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not necessarily anti-Don King as a person. I mean, everybody knows he’s dirty but nobody can prove it, so that has to count for something. He’s right there with Al Sharpton as public figures that most people find contemptible but for whom I have a limited admiration. Say what you want about Don or Al, but the fact that you say anything about them at all means a lot. If there’s one thing to learn from them, it’s that cojones and game can take you as far as you want to go.

All that notwithstanding, come on, y’all. I’m really not sweating the outcome of the election either way, but really, though…Don King? Whoever promoted this match needs to be in the soup line right behind the people responsible for Oreo Barbie.

Unlike Ambra, I have never been accused of talking “white.” Never. When I was 14, I called a rental car place and the agent thought I was a woman, but that was about all the vocal mistaking I’ve ever had to deal with. To my knowledge, nobody has ever heard me speak and then turned around and been surprised when they saw me. And in my case, it’s by choice.

Ambra does a good job of separating the components of “talking white” into elements of linguistic strucure and vocal intonation. That’s an important distinction to make. When I hear some knucklehead talking about standard English synonomously with talking white, I have to check him real quick. Those two are not the same.

Now, right up front, I’ll tell you that I don’t use the phrase “proper English” or “talking proper” or any construction that suggests rightness or wrongness. Language, like water, is shaped by its container. What’s right and wrong or good and bad depends almost solely on the context. When I wrote about cussin a couple months ago, I used the shoe analogy. Just like I can’t wear sneakers (or gym shoes if you grew up in the Midwest like I did) when I go to the club on Saturday night, I can’t jump out talkin any which-a-way in certain situations. It’s just improper. At the same time, I can’t rock my Stacy Adams wing-tips when I get ready to shoot some ball. That’s just not the way it’s done. Likewise, when I hafta do a presentation, there’s a certain manner of speaking that I must appropriate in order for my ideas to be received. Same thing goes on the corner, though. Or if you remember Airplane, that brother would’a died if that old white chick hadn’a known how to talk Jive. So as far as I’m concerned, there is no such thing as proper English. The English language is a hodge-podge amalgam of countless sources. There is almost no universal consistency. (I have two homes with rodents, so I have houses with mice. What? House -> houses but mouse -> mice? And that’s just the first one that popped into my head. Everybody who reads this and everybody they talk to can come up with at least 5 examples of their own.) I know the rules of English because I grew up speaking it, but that don’t mean the rules make sense. If it’s arbitrary, then there can no good or bad, only appropriate or inappropriate. Recognize.

Vocal intonation, on the other hand, more closely approximates my concept of what talking white means, if it actaually has any meaning. Ambra uses the example of Alan Keyes as one of those brothers who would shock you to death if you heard him before you saw him. She’s correct in saying that there is no genetic pronunciation. There is, however, regional dialect. You can take the word “region” however you want, because at every level there are some linguistic distinctions, whether you wanna talk about national, groups of states, individual states, counties, metropolitan areas, cities, neighborhoods, blocks, or households. People talk like the people who surround them. Period. As anybody who’s studied linguistic formation in children can tell you, babies babble in all languages. That is, they make the sounds necessary to speak in any language. It’s only as they are spoken to by their parents and the people around them that they repeat certain sounds and drop off the others, which gives them their native tongue. For a long time, I wanted to adopt an Asian child so he could grow up talking with the same rubber band tongue as me. In that respect, then, he might be said to be “talking Black,” although he really wouldn’t, because that would be his natural speech pattern. To say that someone is “talking [insert race]” insinuates a certain degree of performance; “he don’t really talk like that, he just tryin’a front for those people.”

But when I said it’s regional dialect, I meant more than just the way certain words sound. The other element of dialect is vocabulary. Vocabulary is a subject that’s near and dear to my heart. I’m a word nerd. I read Zora Neale Hurston and Mark Twain with highlighters, so I can jump on hot expressions when I come across them. Now most Black folks are at best 3-4 generations from the South, so that Southern dialect is still a major influence. I think it was Hurston who described Southern speech as coming from the land and being particularly picturesque and thick with simile. I don’t feel like getting up and finding the exact quote, but it’s out there somewhere. And it’s the truth. That, I think is one of the great limitations of that New York-Washington axis of Standard English. There’s no real creativity in it, no room for delicious new variety of speech to tickle the tongue. I think that’s partially why hip-hop has taken hold the way it has, because in addition to all the other elements, sometimes it’s just nice to say things because they’re fun to say or because it’s a creative way to express a common thought. Nobody tried to holler at me when I brought it up before, but truth be told, talkin’ fly part of what makes people think it’s cool to be a pimp. You gotta have game to be a pimp; your verbal dexterity gotta be stronger than Bluto. And this is not to make some binary pair out of the issue, like black talk is creative while white talk is rigid and inflexible, because it doesn’t break down along racial lines like that. However, there’s a reason I liken Standard English to a Stacy Adams shoe while SBV (or just about any non-mainstream dialect, for that matter) is a sneaker. The latter is much more flexible and much, much more playful. That’s why there aren’t that many white cats who can do the dozens.

My own use of language is informed by the fact I just like words. Some proper, some vulgar, some long and very literate-sounding, some monosyllabic grunts. I just like the way some words taste in my mouth. Once in a poetry class, I made, in haiku form, Doritos a metaphor for the word “motherfuker.” Other people may not like the residue, but it just tastes good. Same thing goes for “callipygous,” only callipygous has the added benefit of being an uncommon word for a very common thought, so I could be ribald and cerebral and speaking in code (talking sanskrit, one of my friends calls it) all at the same time. But even beyond regular words, I like to make up words when I just feel like it. In some post over the last couple months, I broke out “exorcistic,” as in the exorcistic beating Jack Johnson laid on Jim Jeffries; he beat the devil out of him. So for a while I was talking about being exorcistically confused or whatever. Then I took it to the scatological next step, laxativistic. I don’t care if it’s not a “real” word, it gets my point across. Same thing with the seating chart. They’re just words, there for us to play with and enjoy. Water’s good for work, but it’s also good for play. Same thing here.

The idea of “talking white” is both understandable and utter nonsense at the same time. If I had grown up with a white family from suburban Chicago, I would sound like they do. If I had grown up with a white family from Biloxi, I would sound like they do, but I bet I’d only get 1/2 as many comments about sounding white. Based on this construction, I believe that “talking white” has as much to do with class line as racial lines. In other words, if you read Huckleberry Finn, it’s clear that Huck and Jim don’t talk the same. But neither of them sounds anything like the narrator in Tom Sawyer. Likewise, I know of students who take classes to scrub the Southern dialect from their tongues so they can sound more “white,” if you will. It’s not about race, it’s about power. Northern Standard English acts as a gatekeeper. If I want access to certain levels of power or prestige, I must communicate in a certain way, using a certain pronunciation and certain idioms. It just be’s that way sometimes.

What the devil? They lost to Puerto Rico?!

This ain’t fantasy basketball leagues, y’all. This hodgepodge all-star thing doesn’t work, especially when the starriest of the stars stayed home. Come on, now. Seventy-two points? Are you kidding me?

*shakes head in disgust and walks away flapping arms.*

La Shawn has an interesting post on watchdogs for political content in sermons. My initial take is that it’s dicey business, at best. I can easily see a situation like that devolving into a witch hunt based on political affiliation and ideology. We don’t need all that.

What’s more interesting to me is the question she asks about the definition of social justice.

As always, I think there are different ways to analyze things. We can try to dichotomize and isolate things into binary pairs or we can look at issues as if they are on a continuum. I’m with the continuum. There are polar opposites, but most of life, at least as it exists on the physical plane, is somewhere between the two. Social justice is one of them. There’s a way to look at along Democrat/Republican, liberal/conservative axes, but I don’t know that that really gets at the issue. To me, that’s just a means of dismissing it as something not worth interrogating instead of looking at as a potential corrective for complacency and inaction. As I’ve said before, I think that the church is primarily a spiritual institution, but if it is properly carrying out its mission, then it will reflect in ways that register on the social justice scale.

I think that social justice seeks to navigate the space between what is legal and what is right. I think there is a tendency to conflate those terms. For example, to go to one of my favorite examples, Dr. King’s Letter From A Birmingham Jail was not addressed to politicians or to klansmen, but to a group of Christian ministers. Segregation in the South was legal at that time, but that did not mean it was right. Nevertheless, the ministers addressed in the letter were more concerned with upholding the law than confronting the moral limitations of the legal edict. Churches emphasizing social justice follow that model.

That one was easy, though. Nowadays, the issues that social justice concerns itself with are much more slippery. In Ambra’s post on this very topic, she highlights homelessness. I know that some churches look at gay “rights” as a matter of social justice, as well as affirmative action and any number of other challenges. That’s why it normally breaks down to that binary we-they setup, because “we” have our positions on the issues, and “they” have theirs. “Our” position is right because “we” have rightly divided the Word, “their” position is wrong because “they” have allowed “their” own selfish wants to lead them to an improper eisegesis. The problem is that the truth and political opinion rarely converge, especially partisan opinion. It’s a classic case of Who’s Right v. What’s Right.

For instance, on the issue of gay rights, I just don’t believe there’s any biblical justification for homosexuality. I’ve read some attempts to make Romans 1 gay-friendly, but I really don’t think that interpretation is valid. It just seems incompatible with everything else that’s being said there. Because of that, I don’t think the church has any business validating homosexuality as a lifestyle. At the same time, I don’t think it’s appropriate for the church to hate on gays. It’s one thing to speak the truth in love but it’s another thing altogether to use the truth as an excuse to spit venom. You know, it’s one thing to say “That’s not biblical.” Or even to explain the consequences of remaining in sin and say “if you keep that up, you gon’ wind up in hell right with the rest of that lineup in Romans 1:25-32 (which is everybody).” To jump out like “God hates fags” though? That’s not righteous. Neither is it righteous for the church to sit idly by while other so-called Christians spew this nonsense. Jeremy has an excellent post pointing out the inconsistency of the mainstream church in its declaration of the threat gay marriage poses to the institution of marriage while portraying divorce and cohabitation as less-serious threats.

Let’s face it, gays are easy to pick on. They do stuff that the majority of us find physically repulsive and there aren’t really that many of them. Moreover, as a political entity, they’re pretty aggressive. That makes it easy to let the discussion break down into name calling and general dislike. And I’m not advocating for some special treatment for gays, or some special set of laws or anything like that, but let me put it like this: if you saw a gay person being beaten, would you step in to help him? What if he was being verbally accosted? What if the attackers were self-proclaiming Christians?

In some instances, I think the church, on both sides of the political aisle, has become a bunch eighth graders at a dance. We get comfortable where we are, talking to our friends, who think like we think and do what we do, but we don’t get out on the floor and mix it up. Social justice means sometimes dancing with that person we don’t like or the one who looks funny or smells bad. It’s not about the teachers making us dance, we should be out there because it’s the right thing to do.
Sometimes it will take courage to get away from the partisan cool kids who want to play the wall all night, but in the end, we’ll all be better for it.

Somebody go get a record.