Monday, January 19, 2009

Words Part Deux

You may recall Visions of Ypsi's pledge to bring new & exciting words to the English language this year in the run-up to April 29, the day The Global Language Monitor claims English will gain its 1 millionth word. You got "Chimilicious" on Dec. 21, so now, nearly a month later, I'm ready to break out another 1. This term was actually coined by Solstice & seems fitting for Inauguration week... a week that has suddenly gained some sort of Mardi Grasesque status. I'm sure people are walking around topless & throwing beads @ each other in DC which suggests that even if that is the only change Obama brings about, we can call his presidency a success. That said, I gotta say I'm pretty sick of the overt racism associated w/ the waves of Obama-love that are sweeping the country. A guy I work w/ said his in-laws wanted to go to a Black Church to celebrate the election. That's fucked up! I saw a tribute to Yo, MTv Raps on which Flava Flav & Snoop Dog suggested that we'll all be eating collards & neck-bones, which was funny, but people have taken that idea much too seriously. He's just a politician... we can't all lose out shit over him; we must remember the 11th Commandment as explained by Mr. Weinberg, my 10th grade history teacher: Thou Shalt Get Re-Elected! His Blackness is tertiary in relation to his politics. So before you go assuming you'll see George Clinton & Kanye West on stage w/ the President tomorrow, remember you'll actually see Yo Yo Ma & Itzhak Perlman playing the music of John Williams. Along w/ Obama, we'll have the 3 whitest non-white people in the history of white non-white people on stage together... if they can find a way to get Will Smith up there they'll create some sort of whiteness wormhole which could possibly unmake creation.With this in mind, & w/o further ado, I give you the new word (from Solstice) which takes us all 1 step closer to our 1 millionth word: "Barack-a-lack-a-boom." The pseudo-blackness taken on by white people who are loving Obama to the point of enacting racial stereotypes about dancing, food, or religion. It can also relate to the racial swagger people assume Obama has while he rarely actually displays this. Remember, as we learned in Annie Hall, a racist for the left is still a racist!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's all this "whitest black people" stuff? Are Will Smith and Barack Obama taking on a pseudo-whiteness then? It may be you, and not these people you are calling out, that is stereotyping.

Andre said...

Obviously, but it's a reaction to the beliefs that so many people are projecting on to Obama and others. It's "Whiteness" based on their definition of "Blackness" which is in turn based on swagger and bad-ass attitude. But then again, race has always been a culturally defined thing.