you be hot shaw-ty baby.

frqkblak on August 6, 2007 at 2:47 pm

How do these people get around with ebonics? I actually find it to be degrading.

Jew Chick on August 6, 2007 at 3:18 pm

While “shawty” is a rather benign term, the plain fact of the matter is that contemporary “black” culture is a throughly degraded — and degrading — expression of an intellectually and spiritually lost group of Americans.
Since the noble, and quite necessary, reforms of the Civil Rights Era, black and white America have diverged, not converged. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr., had much more in common with mainstream America (in terms of language, religion, dress, politics, etc.) than his modern doppleganger, Al Sharpton. So did his followers. Simply compare archival footage of the Freedom Riders to today’s rappers or athletes. Far too many contemporary blacks are a disgusting disgrace, both to their race and to this great nation.
The problem is that mainstream (i.e., white) society will not criticize black culture in all its infantile and pernicious manifestations. Instead, we remain cowed and silent by the threat of being charged with racism, all the while we harbor ever harsher thoughts about blacks in our heads. You know it’s true. Every time you encounter an urban thug loser, or see some ridiculous gold-toothed celebrity on TV, or read about yet another violent shooting in a black neighborhood, you think, What is wrong with these people???
Black America truly has lost its way. And white society is complicit in this downward spiral.

RepublicanPatriot on August 6, 2007 at 3:28 pm

Patriot,
Very well said! The entire white race cowers, deathly afraid of the “R” word. The result is supressed resentment and further division, just the opposite of what Dr. King fought and died for. Courageous Americans like Bill Cosby address these issues, but is not taken seriously by his own race. So sad.

spiffo on August 6, 2007 at 3:54 pm

RepublicanPatriot, Black America hasn’t entirely lost it’s way. It’s when real black americans like me finally give in to the brainwashing of what the death busters want blacks in america to be…then it really has lost it’s way. But since I’ll never give in, and many other real black americans will never give in….we’ll contiune to be silenced by the mainstream and not considered black enough. Why…for not being apart of their plantation.
Where ever I go, I feel bad all the time when someone looks at me…when I’m not wearing my Orioles gear or my patrioric clothes, and be mistaken for a urban thug loser. Becuase of how deep the death busters put in their negative stereotype…somehow all young blacks like myself somehow is into rap and such so-called music. It’s sad, and I can’t be seen more as an indivuial.
But luckly for me lately….I’ve been getting a look that says I’m different…that’s becuase I made modifications to the way I dress. And that of course makes me look “too white” for some people. Well they can all go drop dead!! I have a white friend that does critize this so-called black culture…cuz he pretty much says everything I say about it. It doesn’t make him raaaacist, it makes him a person who understands what the hell is wrong and why my race has the image that it has.
And oh yeah…white society is going down that same road. Even they are considered too white for not acting black enough!!

Squirrel3D on August 6, 2007 at 3:58 pm

Humerous old Mike Royko article on Ebonics at http://www.angelfire.com/folk/benjo4u/Royko/010897g.html

dm60462 on August 6, 2007 at 4:20 pm

Squirrel3D —
Thanks for the feedback. I sorely wish this society could have a frank discussion about race, but it is near impossible due to the perfectly understandable defensiveness of blacks and the equally understandable guilt and lack of moral authority felt by whites. I think Shelby Steele explains this with great insight in his writings.
I am especially saddened by situations like yours, where a good person is tarnished by the degraded images and all-too-true stereotypes of black youths perpetuated by our contemporary culture.
And, yes, you are quite right that white America is traveling down the same road in terms of experiencing, accepting, and ultimately glorifying personal and societal dysfunction. It’s a shame and a tragedy. We should be doing so much better as a country.

RepublicanPatriot on August 6, 2007 at 4:33 pm

RepublicanPatriot,
Those are some good comments you’ve made, especially your point of how Dr. King has more in common with western mainstream America than what we see today. And back then, we were fighting to become part of the mainstream…now we seem to be drifting further from it. As a Black man, I appreciate your honesty. The hyper-defensiveness and misplaced guilt that define today’s race relations stifle any kind of honest feedback and debate.
Last year I went on a trip to Africa with my Church for missionary work. The Aficans we encountered were very surprised to see American Black folk who spoke well, were educated, and dressed nicely. The only images many of them had of American Blacks were those perpetuated by the media internationally….inarticulate thugs, rappers, and criminals. Keep in mind that these aren’t White folks I’m talking about…..these are AFRICANS who held these stereotypes because of what they read and see in the American media. And a friend of mine who recently returned from doing business in Mexico encountered the same thing….the people there were surprised and very curious to see an American Black man dressed in a suit and doing business. Again, media and entertainment images there emphasize the part of of our culture that comes up with words like “shawty”.
There used to be a time when Black “popular” culture was fun and gave society some of its greatest pop music (every young girl I know still loves to do the Supremes “Stop in the Name of Love” routine!), dance, fashion, and flair. Now it has become one of the sources of our internal decay and the destruction of our image internationally…..

JibberJabber on August 6, 2007 at 5:07 pm

Teaching kids ebonics in schools is such an insult to them. Kids are smarter than the loony liberal leftists want to give them credit for.
If black america were led by the likes of Bill Cosbyinstead of a hoodlum such as jesse jackson and pathetic al sharpton, they’d be way better off.

Highrise on August 6, 2007 at 6:00 pm

Patriot, Spiffo, Squirrel3D, thanks for your incite. I hope others caught the truth in your exchanges. I agree. As I’ve said before in other venues, the rest of the world gets it’s image of America from one primary source, Hollywood and its media streams. No wonder the surprise to see you articulate and well dressed. Didn’t square with what Hollywierd tells them. So sad, but it will take a lot of blood, sweat & tears to change the perceptions foisted by HW. HW’s marketing is very strong and well organized, obviously. No matter that it’s lie, if it makes them megabucks, they’re on it, and push it hard. It’s another situation of a small number of jerks tarnishing the entire group. And, Debbie, I’m with you on “ignorami”. Much better word. Even if it isn’t one. If they can use “shawty”, we can use “ignorami”. Thppbbt! to them who object (whoever “them” might be!)!

Floyd R. Turbo on August 6, 2007 at 6:05 pm

Ghetto slang is always short-lived. In six months, “shawty” will be obsolete, or at least moribund, while other ghetto neologisms will come into temporary usage before, once again, dying away in the wake of replacement underclass argot. The ephemeral nature of hip hop/ghettoese makes it hard to keep up with, but then again, why bother?

commonsense on August 6, 2007 at 6:54 pm

Debbie,
Another good one. Of course it’s all about black and white denial. Blacks won’t face fact that they are their own worst enemies. (Check out even Africa after exodus of white “oppressors.”) And US whites won’t look in the mirror and see the spineless, patronizing putz.) So everybody smears themselves with politically correct grease. No matter how much it stinks, at least it doesn’t burn, like the truth.
FYI. ‘Ignorami’ is good, although gringoVision hasn’t used it in a long while. For those who can actually read and write and make college without libdom’s affirmative action and fake high school grades, we now reccommend ‘ignorascenti,’ i.e. the untutored mob, which hates and fears the ‘cognoscenti.’
Will resist temptation for a joke on Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream Speech.” It’s funny, tells a truth, but might hurt the tender feelings out there,
THAT FRED TRAIN, referencing your Spencer Abraham expose, has also been posted at AMERICAN DAUGHTER.
Courtesy, gringoman.com, The most penetrating blog never read.

gringoman on August 6, 2007 at 7:06 pm

We’re either going to stand together in this country or we’ll fall apart. Language is the one common denominator we have/had and if we speak different dialects how in the hell are we going to communicate with each other? The MSM is doing no one (not noone) any favors by perpetuating all of this crap. I live in San Pedro CA (Los Angeles Harbor District) and it’s a virtual tower of babel when it comes to some of our government offices such as the DMV. I can’t believe some of the dialects I’ve heard from my Daughters friends over the years. It’s ridiculous. And,,,, it’s getting worse. When I returned to College at the ripe old age of 46 to earn a degree in Computer Information Systems I was astounded at what passed as colloquial English in my courses. Instructors are just as guilty (with the exception of my English 101, 102 proffesors) It’s all dumbed down and it’s showing.

Rich B on August 6, 2007 at 9:27 pm

I don’t get why you guys are all freaking out about some dialectical slang popping up here and there. A couple hundred years ago there were articles about how English was being degraded because people were using the word “like” to mean “as.” (As in the sentence, “He’s so big, he’s like an elephant.”)
Go read any article from the past 500 years about how English is falling apart because of how “degraded” it’s becoming, and every single one of them sounds ridiculous.
400 years ago, English was deteriorating, because people no longer used “thou” properly. Earlier than that, English was deteriorating, because people stopped using case-marked versions of “what” and “that” (similar to how we have who/whom, all of the pronouns used to have different cases. The only reason whom even exists today was because the first books that codified grammar came out before it went away like what happened with all the other wh-pronouns. Judging from how poorly most people are at using “whom,” the distinction really should have gone away a long time ago).
In 50 years, this too will also seem ridiculous, mostly because “shawty” is just a stupid word that’ll disappear in a year or so. And if it does miraculously enter the standard vernacular, it’ll just be a regular word, and people will be baffled about why anyone would even care. Language is going to change over time, no matter what anyone tries to do to it. Look how successful France has been in keeping their language “pure” by keeping out English loan words.
You might as well just save yourself the trouble and not complain about this stuff.

LibertarianBulbasaur on August 6, 2007 at 9:49 pm

LibertrianBulbasaur, there is something theraputic about a good vent.
You made a good point about “like” as opposed to “as” in the English language. I can remember forty years ago in my Junior High School Spanish classes when my teacher brought up the old “Winston Taste Good Like A Cigarette Shoud” ad campaign. He raved on and on about it being incorrect and how it should have been “as” a cigarette should.
I do think there’s a profound difference between “slang” and what’s passing for English. Read some of the UPI and AP articles posted on the web. They are so poorly written I have flamed Yahoo for posting them. It seems that some people aren’t being taught the difference between “their”, “there” and “they’re” in today’s English classes. I could go on and on but I’ve bitched enough.

Rich B on August 6, 2007 at 10:11 pm

I love English in all its variations because I think it’s unique because one can make it up as one goes along. I know because I beez one. Anyone, there’s one, again, that’s been around a lot of Ebonics notices that they put s’s where they don’t belong and don’t put them where they should. I was once in a bar sitting across from two black guys that were speaking very suburban English because that’s where they were from. The conversation went to a discussion of a mutual female friend of theirs. One said to the other, “she certainly has some nice breasteseses”. Get it, suburban English black doing a play on words, slipping over to Ebonics. Oh, never mind, you’d of had to have been there.

John Cunningham on August 6, 2007 at 10:36 pm

Well, I thought it was funny.

John Cunningham on August 6, 2007 at 10:38 pm

Hey Rich….you only said there, they’re, and their…only three one them. Here’s the 4th one and you’ll hear this often: “THAR”

Squirrel3D on August 6, 2007 at 11:42 pm

Some philologists here are taking Debbie to task thusly: Hey, what’s the problem? Language has always had the demotic, the slang, the argot, the “people’s speech” as opposed to the academy. Yesterday’s reprehensible sometimes becomes today’s acceptable.
That’s a valid point, only it’s not the point of the post. For one thing, most street talk does not make it to the acceptable. It stays in the street. The low-bred will sometimes surpass the well bred in terms of vitality, freshness and significance. Very often it will not. It’s not meaningful enough to overcome its vulgarity. The low bred usually stays in the street, except in unusual circumstances like today’s Fat-Ass America.
The point of Debbie’s post, as penetrated by gringoVision, is that the ghetto garbage is a symptom of American—especially black American—social decay. It attracts little white boys precisely because of that. For them the garbage offers a release from their Wonder Bread backgrounds. Economically, post-War U.S. prosperity has enabled the white middle class to do what only the rich used to do—go “slumming,” and “let dat cocaine run all down mah brain” etc ad hoodzlum.
Of course black dialect, like jazz, born of bordellos, can make a contribution to the culture without debasing it too much. Words like ‘cool,’ have been around for more than a half century, (now over-used practically into meaninglessness.)
There are even phrases, possibly of African derivation, which I’m sure Shakespeare would have appreciated. Eg. “I hear you.”
However, I doubt that even American culture will ever embrace words like “poontang.”
Black American culture, ironically, reached its apogee of sophistication in the pre-Civil Rights era, as seen in Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Duke Ellington, The Invisible Man etc etc. Spin away from that fact as cleverly as you can. It still remains a fact. As for what came later, with The Great Liberal Society….Hey, I’m through for now. Let others eat that hot potato.
Courtesy gringoman.com, The art of leadership without readership.

gringoman on August 7, 2007 at 9:05 am

Debbie – My boo, you sho is one hot shawty, mmm mmm.

hdg40502 on August 7, 2007 at 9:12 am

Some philologists here are taking Debbie to task thusly: Hey, what’s the problem? Language has always had the demotic, the slang, the argot, the “people’s speech” as opposed to the academy. Yesterday’s reprehensible sometimes becomes today’s acceptable.
That truism is a valid point, only it’s not the point of the post. For one thing, most street talk does not make it to the acceptable. It stays in the street. The low-bred will sometimes surpass the well bred in terms of vitality, freshness and significance. Very often it will not. It’s not meaningful enough to overcome its vulgarity. The low bred usually stays in the street, except in unusual circumstances like today’s Fat-Ass America.
The point of Debbie’s post, as penetrated by gringoVision, is that the ghetto garbage is a symptom of American—especially black American—social decay. It attracts little white boys precisely because of that. For them the garbage offers a release from their Wonder Bread backgrounds. Economically, post-War U.S. prosperity has enabled the white middle class to do what only the rich used to do—go “slumming,” and “let dat cocaine run all down mah brain” etc ad hoodzlum. This is the democratizing of the degenerate. There will always be a white liberal to defend it and a white conservative who fears the lib’s “bigot” charge if he doesn’t shut up.
Of course black dialect, like jazz, born of bordellos, can make a contribution to the culture without debasing it too much. Words like ‘cool,’ have been around for more than a half century, (now over-used practically into meaninglessness.)
There are even phrases, possibly of African derivation, which I’m sure Shakespeare would have appreciated. Eg. “I hear you.” (Although, if truth be told, Shakespeare did use it.)
However, I doubt that even American culture will ever embrace words like “poontang.” (Who can better defecate on romance than The Boyz From Da Hood?)
Black American culture, ironically, reached its apogee of sophistication in the pre-Civil Rights era, as seen in Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Duke Ellington, The Invisible Man etc etc. Spin away from that fact as cleverly as you can. It still remains a fact. As for what came later, with The Great Liberal Society….Hey, I’m through for now. Let others eat that hot potato.
Courtesy gringoman.com, The art of leadership without readership.

gringoman on August 7, 2007 at 9:24 am

Slang is slang. But since it’s Black slang it’s a HUGE problem? Great sarcasm in this piece, why don’t you be fair across the board and look into some so called “white” vernacular and teach us so of their slang? Or is is just ” great popular celebration of illiteracy.” when it’s Black slang?
Why are you so interested in the first place?

Latisha on August 7, 2007 at 9:30 am

LibertarianBulbasaur,
Good post. This whole discussion reminds me of that British comedian I saw on The Tonight Show a few years back. He had this great routine where he said, “I’m glad to be here in the United States, and while we share a lot of customs, we also have quite a few differences. For example, a lot of you Americans hear me speak and think I speak with an accent. But it’s not an accent….that’s the sound of English being spoken correctly!”

JibberJabber on August 7, 2007 at 11:45 am

LibertarianBulbasaur,
Good post. This whole discussion reminds me of that British comedian I saw on The Tonight Show a few years back. He had this great routine where he said, “I’m glad to be here in the United States, and while we share a lot of customs, we also have quite a few differences. For example, a lot of you Americans hear me speak and think I speak with an accent. But it’s not an accent….that’s the sound of English being spoken correctly!”

JibberJabber on August 7, 2007 at 11:46 am

Gringoman you have some rather “interesting” insights on Black Cultural decline. But I think it’s important to that even the great Black jazzmen of the early 20th century caught flak from other Black folks who felt they were contributing to our community’s cultural decline. As much as I love Jazz (especially that of Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Duke Ellington), I was not allowed to play jazz or bring jazz records into my Great Grandmother’s home in my younger days. Because as she was growing up in Louisiana, Jazz was the music of, as she put it, “prostitutes and them cut-n-shoot Negroes”. In her era, no Black family striving for middle class respectability allowed Jazz to be played in their home (Duke Ellington was able to change that somewhat because of his image and the fact that he came from a “respectable” Black middle class Washington family).
It was the same with the Blues. Today I own a fairly large Blues collection. But to the day she died, my grandmother was puzzled at the way me and other young folks were flocking to Blues music. Back in her day, Blues was viewed as low-down Juke-Joint music, and respectable Black folk, certainly not those with college educations, should ever venture to a venue where such music was played. She told me some wild stories of stuff that used to happen every time, BB King, Howling Wolf, and Muddy Waters came in town to play at the local joints. “I remember them and how they acted before they became all glitzy for them White folks”, she used to say. She never could understand why I, a young Black man with a college education, would be interested in such “gutbucket” music!
As far as language, I don’t even want to think about what would have happened to me or my sisters if we had walked in the house using a word like “ain’t” in front of my parents. I probably would not be around today to write this post! From “ain’t” to “shawty”….Yes, times have really changed!

JibberJabber on August 7, 2007 at 11:52 am

JibberJabber, you tell him. Gringoman, I know it will be scary, but, you must get out of your mother’s basement and go outside. You sound like someone absolutely without a life. What a paper phoney. You’ll be dead without ever having been alive.

John Cunningham on August 7, 2007 at 12:37 pm

I have a simple question for you guys: Why is it that actions of a few blacks speak for the whole, whilst actions of white individuals are just that – individual actions?
(Rational answers please, no dumb ass “victim” answers).

Emperor on August 7, 2007 at 2:30 pm

John Cunningham,
I realize that at your age you can’t possibly be a dumb little white boy, so why do you want to sound like one? Now if you don’t mind, I’ll have a few words with somebody who obviously knows what he’s talking about and, unlike you, proved it.
Jibber-Jabber,
Excuse me, but having grown up with blacks in Philly (You probably remember when ‘colored’ was okay and ‘black’ was not all that much better than the ‘N’ word) I tend to lose patience with the huffy Wonder Bread types, especially when they want to demonstrate how “to-ler-ant” they are, and how, OMG, AN-Ti RAc-Ist. (And by the way, for that fool, if he wants to call me ‘racist’ or ‘bigot’ let him go right ahead. His opinion would matter to me no more than what we called in Philly a stale hoagie. Yours would matter more, but at least I would probably respect it.)
I understand what you mean, of course, by the church ladies upset with children who’d naturally be attracted to jazz or blues. Of course it was generational, like every era’s. Sure you can draw parallels with the generational rift today in rap etc. No denying that. I will also grant that the boyz in da hood (well, the ones that aren’t really middle class) have demonstrated some ingenuity and orginality. There are plenty of things I did not have time to grant in previous post—and so Mr.crypto-liberal Wonder Bread saw an opening and seized it to show how “knowing” he thinks he is. I know that rap has even hip hopped around the world. I’ve heard it in Mexico by Mexicans. I’ve heard it in Asia. Why do they? Obviously it’s something fresh and new for them, a driving pulse from the street.
That said, I’d still maintain that much of it, Gangsta Rap etc, is of, for and by the degraded. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you called female superiors, whether Mother, grandmom or Aunt, “Ma’m” or something to that effect. They might not appreciate John Lee Hooker twanging away “fer some honey,” but at least most of it was done with real musical ingenuity, and even the risque did not get much further than that hilarious gal singin “I like it like that.” And even that, as you know, was called “race music,” and did not get into the mainstream. Today, what does mainstream America, and by extension the world, get as the message of Black Americans? YO, BITCH? Oh, sure, it’s a little more complex than that, but you get my point.
Here’s a little picture of an era that points up, I think, what’s happened–or not happened—in the lIbdom’s Great Society America. Around the time of the Overcoming (You know, as in “We Shall Overcome,” my best friend, John, came from a black family of many children, Eight, eleven, something like that. They had a mother and a father. I’d say fairly poor. John, very bright, was into doo-wop and stuff. Me, I loved Ray Charles, had parties with about 100 people showing up, about half black. Everything was cool. This was BEFORE things got very “let it all hang out,” you understand. “See that gal with the red dress on….” You go, Ray. (In fact, around that time, a black group in college heard me singing in the shower and asked me to try out with them, for frat shows etc. Like an idiot I didn’t, but that’s another story.) Anyway, the point about John. His older brother was a real musician. I mean a classical musician. Into composing, I believe. What happened with him? I don’t know. I finally hit the road and eventually wound up in the ‘Nam. My point is that in that era, there was everything, and I don’t see it like that in this so-called “liberated” era. With JOhn and his Jewish girl friend we would watch a performance of Carl Orf’s Carmina Burana on my TV, and I mean really dig it. (John, though he loved the jukebox stuff, was a Beethoven man, like me.) And we–JOhn and me and our best cracker friend from Alabama—could discuss anything, sexual, philosophical or what, but it was never really on the level of “Yo, bitch.”
You know what I’m sayin’?

gringoman on August 7, 2007 at 9:56 pm

gringobeyatch, could you tell us why they ran you out of Philadelphia? Now, keep it simple, I’m just a botched kerry joke. Though, I once slept through Dick Wagner’s 16 hour opera they ran on PBS. I got some culcha’.

John Cunningham on August 8, 2007 at 3:50 am

Gringoman, you shouldn’t ever post when you are drunk.
It doesn’t look so witty, the next morning.

No Pasaran! on August 8, 2007 at 3:53 am

Alas, the problem with Internet commenters is that those with something to say tend to be the exception (JIbber Jabber.)
Sadly, the JJ’s are always outnumbered by the insecure and aggressive dunkleheads. It’s the humanoid condition. Poor Cunningham, worrying whether he’s a botched Kerry joke instead of just botched, and feeling the need to avenge himself for himself.
And then there’s ‘No Pasaran’ who, besides some English, apparently knows at least two words of Spanish from ‘The Good War.’ Whether NP also knows that wit is in the mind of the beholder can’t be determined at this time, especially since NP gives no evidence of having a mind.

gringoman on August 8, 2007 at 10:07 am

Gringomeister, I was beginning to think you didn’t have a sense of humor.

John Cunningham on August 8, 2007 at 10:32 am

Gringoman, I’ve read your blog.
You are the last person on planet Earth who should accuse others of not having a mind.

No Pasaran! on August 10, 2007 at 5:33 am