Friday, April 13, 2007
Imus in the Twilight [John Derbyshire]
The wisest thing I've heard yet on the Imus scandal:
"Derb—-Imus is an institution. Imus' show is how normal people talk. People who have at least a foot still in blue-collar culture. I grew up there, in mixed racial working areas, and people jokes across racial lines to one another all the time.
"Imus being fired feels like a part of America has died and we're moving closer to the modern day sanitized England.
"In present-day America, this is how slang evolves:
"1. A slang term originates in black culture.
"2. Whites catch on and start using it humorously. Not making fun of black people, but consciously appropriating black people's 'coolness.'
"3. The slang becomes the norm. See 'dissed.'
"Imus got caught in step 2 by a perfect storm of race mongers. Now no one will put the slimy Al Sharpton in his place and tell him to go pound sand.
"I'm sad."
[Me] I have never heard or seen Imus in action, so I speak from ignorance; but I bet this reader is on to something. If he is, we should all be sad.
The writer's point about nonblacks appropriating black slang for the fun of it (as opposed to, for the offensive power of it) is well-established linguistic fact. Many language communities have a preferred "source" of slang like this. In England, the Cockneys of London's East End were the source for some centuries, until their home district was colonized by Bengali immigrants in the 1970s. That accounts for my occasional use of Cockney rhyming slang, common among middle-class Brits of my generation. This topic is covered in several books on language, e.g.
this one.
04/13 10:30 AM
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