Yo, see, like it all be startin' wit' dis skit on In Living Color, an' dis woman in like dis Jane Goodall safari outfit ... she comes onto dis talk show, an' she be like carryin' dis brutha on her back and all, an' she like sets him down, an' he jest be chillin'.
So like the host be askin' "Wazzup wit' dat?" An' she be sayin' "He got dis brand new pair of Air Jordans, an' he don' wanna be scuffin' 'em up or nothin'!", so she gotsta be carryin' him from place to place.
So anyway, remember how I be tellin' you 'bout dat voice dat sometimes be tellin' me to do sh*t, and 'bout how sometime I be listenin' to it? Well, when it be talkin' like dis, dat be homeboy sapiens africanus, which be what she called him in the skit. (See also: Abu Hurairah's Rap)
See, I be talkin' to my homey th' other day, one of my computer nerd posse, an' I be talkin' about how I jest come from "chillin' wit' my neighbor", an' he wuz like Totally Clueless as to what I had just said.
Now th' man can' be blamed 'cause th' onliest black folk he ever be spendin' any real Quality Time wit' all be college educated, an' don' none o' dem be talkin' like dis when dey be th' onliest "person of color" in th' room.
But that got into this whole "culture shock" thing that I, a member of Mensa, should espouse ebonics as a ligitimate language, albiet a sub-dialect of American English, which distinguishes it from Carrabian sub-dialects of British English, for example.
It's not just a matter of grammar, although it is much more strict in its rules than regular English, e.g., "I be, you be, he-she-it be, we be, they be" instead of "I am, you are, he-she-it is, we are, they are".
It's not just a matter of vocabulary, which in this case made a gerund from the verb "to chill", which is not a verb in English, so when I said that I was "chilling" with my neighbor, he asked what language I was speaking.
Definitely a Failure To Communicate. ("Shaka, when the walls fell!" :-)
So anywho, there's like this piece inside of me that's left over from what I remember of the Street, because my father moved us to the Gold Coast with the upscale, middle-class black people in our Nation's Capitol when I was in Junior High School. We didn't have grass on all four sides, but we had it on three.
OTOH, the house where I grew up, the one that my grandmother lived in after we moved out, has bars on the windows and doors now, and there are needles and condoms mixed with the broken liquor bottles in the alley where I used to play as a child.
My mother didn't restrict who I could play with, but some kids were distinctly not welcome in the house, although the yard was O.K. for them. It didn't take long for me to figure out that it was because of their speech.
My mother taught me to ennunciate succinctly, and would not tollerate "dis an' dat" for "this and that". I was surprised in school how many of the other children did not know the difference between "can I" and "may I". ("I don't know ... can you?")
Thus was born my introduction to prejudice and discrimination. I was the "uppity" one, "talkin' like a white man", accused of having delusions of being better than my peers simply because of the way I spoke.
But I couldn't help it ... both of my parent's have Masters Degrees, and my maternal grandfather was a Doctor of Pharmacology and ran his own drug store. I myself was a 16 year old college drop-out, and though I returned full-time when I was 18, I was 34 before I accumulated enough credits in one major to get a Bachelors Degree.
So dem times when I be wantin' to call up dat Testosterone Thing and assert some of dat Alpha-Male, bad-ass, don' be takin' no sh*t from nobody kinda Attitude, den you know who I be lettin' speak wid my tongue ... it be dat little boy my mamma wouldn' let set one foot inside her door.
'Cause he be my Best Friend when I gotsta be kickin' some righteous butt on accounta some fool don't believe I could be smarter than his dumb old ass. Sh*t!
That is all I have to say. -=DAH=- 1997-08-28
Last update: 1997-08-28 by dennette@wiz-worx.com