Jasmine Crockett, Queen of Ghettospeak
By Stu TarloweI’ve spent a good bit of time in Dixie. After all, for at least ten years I was an exhibitor at fairs, shows and expos throughout the South. I have great memories of my times in the South and had some great friends and acquaintances there.
Although I was clearly a New Yorker, and was even jokingly called a carpetbagger (because I was down there to peddle my wares and make money), I was always treated well and warmly, perhaps even better than some other Northerners because, as some of my friends once explained, “You’re not one of those Damn Yankees who come down here and Y’all us to death!”
They were alluding, of course, to Northerners who affect a “Southern” style of speech, the most obvious sign of which is the frequent utterance of “Y’all,” which invariably comes out sounding unnatural and a sign of shameless pandering.
Which brings us to Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D, TX) who has been in the news a lot lately, and who has evidently (and apparently correctly) assumed that such shameless pandering, far from offending her constituency, actually resonates with her targeted audiences.
She goes far beyond merely injecting Y’all into her speech whenever possible; she has chosen to affect thoroughly inner-city patterns, tone, rhythm and even vernacular. I can guarantee that her current mode of speaking is not the way she spoke when she was attending the Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School in Ladue, one of St. Louis’s toniest suburbs.
Her “new” manner of speaking is a prime example of the “ghettoization” of America, which is surely not limited to black Americans. It probably had its origins in the paradigm shift that took place in the ‘60s, the age of the anti-hero. Whereas the lower classes had always aspired to emulate the upper classes, in dress and in mannerisms (poor parents might not have had a lot of food to put on the table, but By Golly! they made sure their kids knew which fork to use!), that notion was stood on its ear, and the lower classes were glamorized and romanticized to the point that the upper classes began to emulate them.
Consider the “gangsters” of the ‘20s, whose sartorial style was almost a caricature of the “swells” they sought to emulate; nowadays it’s not unusual to see denizens of executive suites and boardrooms whose wardrobe is “Straight outta Compton.” And don’t get me started on how privileged white kids from the suburbs wear their hats backwards, their trousers sagging, and ride around behind tinted windows, on 22” rims, and listening to the THUMPA-THUMPA of gangsta rap.
One major casualty in this shift has been the very notion of propriety. We seem to no longer have a notion of what is acceptable or not acceptable in “polite society.” When was the last time you heard of anyone being censured (or even seen eyebrows raised) for exhibiting a gutter-mouth or latrine-mouth? When was the last time you heard someone ask “Do you eat with that mouth?” or “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”
And while this phenomenon is not limited to black Americans, it is surely more obvious and more prevalent in that demographic. The mindset that black American culture is the culture of the inner city has achieved enormous traction and is accepted prima facie by far too many ordinary citizens and by the so-called arbiters of taste and fashion, of what is hip and edgy vs. square and lame.
And while Jasmine Crockett is the one using that affectation to make headlines currently, she’s not the first nor the last. We saw it recently in the way Kamala Harris shifted her speech patterns and rhythms; Barack Obama did it too, albeit somewhat more subtly; of course, his wife, Big Mike, does it, without a hint of subtlety. And of course, there was Joe Biden with his “Corn Pop was a bad dude,” “You ain’t black,” and “They’re gonna put y’all back in chains.”
I could mention Hillary Clinton also, considering her famous invocation of “I don’t feel no ways tired.” But, although I harbor not an iota of fondness nor respect for the Hildebeest, in this case I have to defend her. Not that Queen Hillary is above such shameless pandering, but when she uttered those words, it was not an affectation, but rather an accurate reading of the lyrics of the spiritual by James Cleveland. Were I to recite one of the poems of T.A. Daly, e.g. “Da Leetla Boy,” would I be shamelessly affecting an Italian immigrant’s patois, or would I be reading the poem the way it was written?
In any event, it’s probably far too much to hope for that the ones being patronized and shamelessly pandered to would bristle at being played in such a manner and take offense at such disingenuousness. But that isn’t likely to happen. Unless, of course, the panderer were a Republican; that would be unforgiveable.
Original Here |
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