By Tandy Versyp
I am white. Really white. I’m so white I stereotypically shop at the Gap, listen to Billy Joel and wear briefs. However, I say things like “keep it real,” “mind ya business” and “I’m a grown-ass man.”
The title of this column is a reference to the popular song “Candy Shop.” (Not the song on Madonna’s new album but the old 50 Cent song. Her lyrics: “I’ll be your one-stop candy shop … have some more … my sugar is raw, sticky, sweet.” Fiddy’s: “I’m tryin’ to explain, baby, the best that I can … I melt in your mouth, girl, not in your hand.”) I am definitely the 50 Cent version. Unlike Madonna, my sugar is fully cooked.
Madge is trying to reinvent herself, once again, as an R&B Superpop Diva. (Watch out Rihanna.) When I saw her popping her false “hip-hop” in and out in her new video, I wondered if that was how I looked when imitating my friend Quita, “All up in da Kool-Aid! Don’t even know what flava!”
White people have been stealing aspects of black culture for decades, like their music and even their slang with “rock-and-roll.” Although I think I’m different, I am just as bad as the white upper-crest grandmas that refer to their Tiffany’s jewelry as bling. I’ve gotten so bad that Quita didn’t start using the term “you are dismissed” until I overly used it in front of her. She’s heard it before, and I didn’t invent it, but now, like Webster’s, she’s re-added it into her cache of vernacular.
I’m not trying to be cool. I just love the creativity and simplicity of the slang. “Who told you to cosign on our discussion?” “Why are you tryin’ me?” “She is ‘bout it ‘bout it and rowdy rowdy.” “Stank.” Holding up a hand that is lighter and pinker on the palm: “Talk to the white girl, ‘cause the black girl ain’t listening.” “OK.” (OK can be used to convey sarcasm, jubilance, anger, or any emotion. It is all about stressing the first syllable and your tone.) These are iceberg statements, like Hemingway, that are just the tip of their meaning, a colorful economy of language.
It’s not ghetto-speak, but a mash-up of country-folk-speak and inner-city-speak. Growing up in rural Texas, I’d never heard anything as inventive as “all up in da Kool-Aid.” I only heard redneck lingo: “I’m gonna beat the tar out of you,” “like a bull in a china closet,” or “I’m fixin’ to.” Those phrases went out of style in the ’80s, along with the country music scene.
Moving to Savannah, I sank my teeth into every flavor of the “Kool-Aid.” I don’t use the lingo out of disrespect or to gentrify it into white culture. I love it, and I use it sparingly and only in the perfect situation. There is something distinctive — black and white — about it that gives a definitive punch to your meaning.
Not all black people talk like this. Quimma, a co-worker of mine, once corrected my grammar. I apologized and thought nothing of it, but she told me that her mother always made her “speak correctly.” “You just don’t understand. For black people to be taken seriously, we have to articulate all the time.”
That’s why I drink the “Kool-Aid.” There are too many imaginative flavors out there for us to stick with plain old water.
