RELIGION AND EBONICS
The phrase “you know”[1] could well become the Black person’s Ebonics word for God. That way, other non-Ebonic speaking peoples will become accustomed to perceiving Black people as religious. Every time they hear another “you know” from an Ebonic speaker, they would know the speaker was praying.
[The same goes for its kissin’ cousins: “You see what I’m sayin’?” “You hear what I’m sayin’?” and of course “You know what I’m sayin’?” These are all different forms of the same prayer.]
Frankly, I believe Ebonics will become a new religion in time. Besides “you know” other names of gods could include “i dunno” and “huh?” but these would have to fill the role of lesser gods.
“You know” will remain the Chief Deity without question. Like way back in Greek and Roman times, Zeus was the Chief God and all the other Deities hanging around him were powerful but never quite as powerful as him.
“You know” would take the place of “Zeus” and become the Number One Deity in this religion. When you hear this phrase over and over, it means the person is praying a lot.
Other very religious phrases might include terms such as “Man!” “Hey Man!” or “Oh Man!”
Another set of prayerful phrases could include “Woman!” “Hey Woman!” “Oh Woman!”
And if one gets into a religious frenzy, the last prayer set would be “Baby!” “Hey Baby!” and “Oh Baby!” (People who have sex a lot tend to pray often so that is a good healthy religious practice.)
Other lesser deities up for nomination could include “Brother!’ “Sister!” “Mother!” “Father!” and so forth (up through the family ranks) plus “That’s Hot!” “Get Lost!” “Up Yours!” “Go Suck an Egg!” and “My zipper’s stuck!”
The emotive power with which such phrases are uttered is part and parcel of the Ebonic speaker’s new-found spirituality. (“It don’t mean a thing / if it ain’t got that zing”).
Even expressions normally associated with sinful sexual endeavor, if given sufficient vocal intensity, expand into this religious dimension. “Yeah, I like it like that!” is sort of like “Amen!” in the Old Church. No need to get too specific. I’m sure the reader’s imagination can fill in some of the hot fresh new prayer words being uttered in somebody’s bedroom or on the living room couch or floor. Ebonic praying, like talking, will take many forms.
Ebonics undoubtedly will develop its own catechism of proper religious terms, given enough time. “Jesus!” is already very present on the lips of many would-be Ebonics speakers; it’s really just a small step from there to teach a teenage kid on the streets that he’s praying, not swearing.
When kids shout out answers in the classroom rather than raising their hands–the bane of all teachers–this should be interpreted as a form of group prayer.
“Hey, teach, what time is P.E.?” is actually Ebonics for “What time can we go outside and be holy?” As such it is a very religious utterance and should never be mistaken for anything less!
EBONICS AND CUSSIN’
Now as we all well know, there are many slang terms for parts of a person’s body and most especially one’s “private parts”. Some boys nickname their testicles the “crown jewels”.
For both boys and men, the word “dick” is used instead of “penis” and “boobs” or “tits” instead of “breasts” for girls and women.
Such slang can be extended well beyond: “buttocks” and “rectum” translate as “ass” and “asshole”. All these gross words, under the new Ebonics grammar guidelines, would cease to be thought of as vulgar since they play an integral role in the vocabulary of the new dialect. In proper ceremonies of linguistic investiture, such words will be given official recognition as proper terms to use and enjoy.
A kid in school who might say, “Give me back my dollar before I kick the crap out of your black ass!” would no longer need to be censured, let alone disciplined, for using bad language. Under Ebonic guidelines, there can be virtually no more bad language. Everything spoken in the home and on the street becomes proper speech.
As such, all such slang should be considered a normal part of the everyday Ebonics classroom, whether mono-lingual bi-lingual tri-lingual poly-lingual or whatever-lingual. What used to be considered god-awful street slang under the old rules of English–vulgar, obscene, naughty, and an ugly MIS-USE of the language–will now become the proper grammar of Ebonics.
There could still be some uncertainty about what might happen if a student cussed out a teacher with “Get off my back you no good goddamn mother-fucking bitch!” and whether that student would receive an “A” or a free trip to the principal’s office for reprimand and beat down.
Of course, we know how hard this will be for some people, both Black and White, to accept and adjust their little ol’ minds around. There will be a few old fuddy-duddies who no doubt will get indignant ev’ry time they hear an Ebonics speaker swearing. The Oldsters no doubt will reply along these lines of reasoning:
“Swell! Legitimizing street slang is like tracing one’s pedigree to a family of crooks and thieves! Some of the roughest street slang clearly derives from thugs, whores, pimps, addicts, and criminals since most such slang originates as secretive jargon among thieves and crooks!”
There is some truth to this point of view. For people who do not normally use vulgar or swear words, it is not at all reassuring to meet and hear people who use a hell of a lot of it. For myself, I do not swear frequently but only on certain occasions. Like other Old Schoolers I believe that such powerful words should be used sparingly. That way, when these words are called upon to deliver a verbal punch, they are full of vim and vigor! Saved for “special occasions”, such words can help unleash the strongest indignation and condemnation imaginable (while still short of fisticuffs).
Such provocative words tend to lose their potency through over-use, misuse, and abuse. Strangely enough, not more than one-in-a-hundred teenagers ever figures that out. The over-reliance on swearing seems to undermine their capacity for thoughtful reasoning . . . or maybe they are still the same young lazy students who didn’t care about learning in the primary grades now “grown up” . . . well, grown taller and wider physically if not more mature emotionally and intellectually.
MORE WORDS, MORE EMOTIONS
I am not here to criticize the younger generation, however, so much as to try and understand them. I want to help parents and teachers figure out the best way to give them a good education. I do not intend to use vulgarity in this paper as a way to express my own opinions or prove a point, with one exception.
It is well-known that a mature person with a calm disposition can say such words in an objective manner as part of an attempt to describe these words without being tainted by their stench. I am not using them personally in anger to attack but poise them in the following sentences only to explain. I will try to discuss these words calmly and dispassionately, in other words:
The word “shit” refers to human excrement.
The word “hell” was first used as a theological term, a geographical location, meaning the hot fiery place “down-under” where sinners were condemned to burn for eternity if they had lived immoral lives. The Greeks called it Hades.
The word “bitch”, which meant a female dog, also came to mean “a bad-tempered, malicious, or promiscuous woman”.[2]
From a mere descriptive term for dogs, therefore, “bitch” became a cuss word with which to insult a woman. The word was not done transforming itself even then, however. After its first expansion, this nasty word entered AND WON the all-purpose, most-useful competition for bad words.
Now it’s like the Swiss knife of vulgar words. It can be used in more ways than you can shake a stick at. It can be used in many diverse situations. Today, “bitch” goes far beyond a strong condemnation of a woman’s behavior.
For example, if a mechanic is working on a car engine and repairs are not going well, the exclamation “This is a bitch!” refers to the unwieldy and difficulty nature of the job itself.
The word has come to mean anything unpleasant or difficult, beyond the original dog-to-woman gender insult . . . it’s also used by comedians for laughs, strange to say!
A note to the wise for schoolchildren: using the word “bitch” freely in anger or just to show off and then quickly claiming the word you just used is “okay” because it only means a female dog, is a trick that does not normally carry much weight with teachers. You cannot pull this old switcheroo so easily nor duck your final culpability by insisting it was the “other meaning” you had in mind.
Likewise, “damn” may sound and look like “dam”–built to hold back water on a river or lake–but the two words remain distinct enough in meaning and usage for people to know which one is which. Most teachers are not usually fooled by the “switch” retreat . . . though luckily a few are!
In any case, if such a word like “bitch” is used frequently enough on the streets and in the homes of Black neighborhoods, why must we even bother to label it as vulgar? Ain’t it proved itself many times over as regular Ebonics speech?
Likewise, the associated phrase “son-of-a-bitch” can be used by almost anybody at any time and frequently is! I believe it also qualifies under Ebonics as regular speech. The only weakness around “bitch” that I can find is its slight gender bias so there is yet a chance of a linguistic melee due to the possibility of a protest being raised by the fairer sex . . .
[1] *Note: I give the Olde Style English spelling for this phrase and those to follow, whereas these words would probably be pronounced somewhat differently in Ebonics you know? Ebonics will become a musical language and people will sing these phrases in songs, doo wop dee doo wop, rather than just utter them in a flat atonal monotone as people do now.
[2] Note: As long as the members of the National Organization for Women don’t stand around protesting outside my door, there’s no sense to challenging this word: it becomes ipso facto a STANDARD part of Ebonics which seeks to capture and legitimize authentic street language among Black people. “Now ain’t that a bitch?!”
