A Glossary for the Nineties: Chapter 14 - In black and white
[Taken from A Glossary for the Nineties, by David Rowan (Prion Books, 1998), based on the column of that name in The Guardian's Weekend magazine through most of the 1990s. © David Rowan]
CHAPTER 14: IN BLACK AND WHITE
Some black terms that went mainstream - and some that are still causing difficulties
AFRO-SAXON n. A new term for black Britons. Lord Taylor of Warwick claims to have coined the term to define "all the black people who want to contribute to Britain, who aren't scroungers or muggers". But others suggest that Professor Rex Nettleford coined it 30 years ago as a pejorative term to describe West Indian migrants' emphasis on their "Englishness" to gain acceptance.
AUDI 5000 sl. Having taken one's leave. Don't follow? It means "out of here", as in the line from the phat rap film, Fear Of A Black Hat: "She'll be Audi 5000." Presumably you're not too wack to know that phat (see below) means exceptional. Or that wack means boring.
B-BOY n. mus. Street slang for a close (male) follower of the hip-hop scene, named for the beat or break-beat boys who hit the rap scene first in New York and then, suitably diluted and sterilised, in every white suburban bedroom that displayed a Beastie Boy poster. A girl B-boy is not a B-girl, but a flygirl.
BLACK adj. a) An adjective that continues to caused unimaginable problems among the politically correct. A couple of years ago, the Black Dyke Mills brass band, celebrated in Yorkshire, was due to play Carnegie Hall in New York. Until the hall detected that "black", as well as "dyke", might offend both the race and gay lobbies in one. The solution it suggested - rename it the British Mills Brass Band - was turned down as "a national insult, an outrageous suggestion . . ."
BLACK adj. b) A word that no longer exists - at least, if you work for the Sussex police force. The chief constable has decreed that phrases such as turned black (police talk for a fatality) are, like accident black spots, "no longer appropriate" - and so he has blacked them.
BUTTER adj. sl. Smooth and cool, in the latest rap slang - as in "My shorty has a butter flavour". That's shorty, as in the hot way to describe a girlfriend, and flavour (or, in all likelihood, flavor) as in style. And, yo, if your peeps (friends) still don't have the four-one-one (information) on the latest street talk, they can now get it in a new slang dictionary from Random House. But you'll have to be quick: this language changes fast. We're told that last season's phrase for "That's the truth" - No doubt - has now become No diggity. Chillin'.
CABLINASIAN n. A new racial classification, combining elements of Caucasian, black, Indian and Asian backgrounds. Coined by Tiger Woods, the American golfer who previously would have been thought of as black. In the melting pot of complex inter-ethnic weaving, such simple descriptions are no longer acceptable.
CASH ENGLISH n. The formal, grammatical language used in places such as inner-city Los Angeles to differentiate it from the so-called ebonics (qv) heard on the streets. Why? Because, as one teacher puts it, unlike black dialects it's the type that can get them through job interviews.
DIS v. To insult or dis-respect - and perhaps hip-hop's greatest contribution to mainstream slang. It started as black slang in American cities, and then took the familiar route - through music and then TV programmes - to white suburban consciousness. Bet your grandma now knows what it means.
EBONICS n. The "black English" street slang spoken in many US inner cities (where "She will be first in line", for instance, becomes "She-uh be firs in line"). The school board in Oakland, California, recognised it as a distinct second language in 1996, on the grounds that to disparage it would disparage a culture. Needless to say, the decision became a hot racial and political issue.
MISS THANG n. sl. US rap's contribution to feminist studies - it is a woman who appears to be pretentious, flirtatious or falsely charming (as in "Will you just look at Miss Thang . . .?"). Thang started as a Deep South pronunciation of "thing", the snobbishness of that long, leisured drawl finally making it up to Harlem.
NIGGER n., offens?. A bad word that in the nineties became a good word, at least among some black people who sought to reclaim it (qv queer) - but don't try this one if you're white, please. The term's re-creation began with hip-hop music, with rappers proudly using it to describe themselves (remember NWA - Niggaz Wit' Attitude?). And it stuck - despite campaigns by the likes of the Reverend Calvin O Butts, a Harlem pastor who in 1993 tried to ban the word (along with those other rap favourites niggas, bitches and ho's). He failed, needless to say.
PHAT adj. Phat means more or less the same as ill, massive, dope and bad - in other words, good, in the gangsta-rap slang of the late nineties. Our lexicographical usage department advises that a musical offering by Nine, called What D'ya Want, Nine?, offers a typical usage: "What d'ya want, Nine?" "Phat beats for ma rhyme" (a good, solid backing track for my lyrics). Nine also wants some ammunition for his 9mm Uzi machine gun, but that is rather unphat of him.
PIM acr. The Positive Image Mentality that is much talked of among black people. Underlying the philosophy is the view that anything that reflects well on the black community should be stressed, and anything that reflects badly, ignored. That's why magazines such as Ebony focus on celebrities, success and upward mobility.
SNAP n., v. A black tradition that went mainstream in the mid-nineties, involving swapping insults that get progressively more abusive. Start with "Your family is so poor, they go to Kentucky Fried Chicken to lick other people's fingers," and move on to "If ugliness were bricks, your mother would be a housing project." There are entire books with details of what you can tell someone to do with their mama.
WHITE n. One of the uncomfortable targets of the politically correct movement in the early-to-mid nineties, keen to ensure words caused no offence. New Yorkers avoided white or black coffee but preferred to ask for "with" or "without"; but the climax was the Washington Post reporter's ingenious method of discussing the film White Men Can't Jump in a way that avoided offending anybody's sensitivities. He carefully retitled it "There May be Anthropological Differences That Account For Variation in Personal Vertical Lift, Though These Do Not Imply the Kinetic Inferiority of One Ethnic Group Vis-a-Vis Another" . . .
WHITELASH n. White middle-America's new outspokenness against those damned pinko liberals. They're sick of taxes, welfare, crime and feminists. And with Newt Gingrich's help, they're on the warpath.
WHITE TRASH n. What started as an insulting way to describe a social class of poor Southern US whites, and went mainstream in the mid-ninteies as a distinct culture to be celebrated. The likes of Roseanne and Tonya Harding put the term into common media circulation, and then films such as True Romance (1993) and Natural Born Killers (1994) made it glamorous. Look for the fast-food bucket and the six-pack of Budweiser.
WIGGER sl. n. A white person who tries to be black - short for "white nigger", and rap slang for the Marky Mark types who borrow black music, fashion or language. And any non-rapper who has ever said dude or chilled out stands accused.
CHAPTER 14: IN BLACK AND WHITE
Some black terms that went mainstream - and some that are still causing difficulties
AFRO-SAXON n. A new term for black Britons. Lord Taylor of Warwick claims to have coined the term to define "all the black people who want to contribute to Britain, who aren't scroungers or muggers". But others suggest that Professor Rex Nettleford coined it 30 years ago as a pejorative term to describe West Indian migrants' emphasis on their "Englishness" to gain acceptance.
AUDI 5000 sl. Having taken one's leave. Don't follow? It means "out of here", as in the line from the phat rap film, Fear Of A Black Hat: "She'll be Audi 5000." Presumably you're not too wack to know that phat (see below) means exceptional. Or that wack means boring.
B-BOY n. mus. Street slang for a close (male) follower of the hip-hop scene, named for the beat or break-beat boys who hit the rap scene first in New York and then, suitably diluted and sterilised, in every white suburban bedroom that displayed a Beastie Boy poster. A girl B-boy is not a B-girl, but a flygirl.
BLACK adj. a) An adjective that continues to caused unimaginable problems among the politically correct. A couple of years ago, the Black Dyke Mills brass band, celebrated in Yorkshire, was due to play Carnegie Hall in New York. Until the hall detected that "black", as well as "dyke", might offend both the race and gay lobbies in one. The solution it suggested - rename it the British Mills Brass Band - was turned down as "a national insult, an outrageous suggestion . . ."
BLACK adj. b) A word that no longer exists - at least, if you work for the Sussex police force. The chief constable has decreed that phrases such as turned black (police talk for a fatality) are, like accident black spots, "no longer appropriate" - and so he has blacked them.
BUTTER adj. sl. Smooth and cool, in the latest rap slang - as in "My shorty has a butter flavour". That's shorty, as in the hot way to describe a girlfriend, and flavour (or, in all likelihood, flavor) as in style. And, yo, if your peeps (friends) still don't have the four-one-one (information) on the latest street talk, they can now get it in a new slang dictionary from Random House. But you'll have to be quick: this language changes fast. We're told that last season's phrase for "That's the truth" - No doubt - has now become No diggity. Chillin'.
CABLINASIAN n. A new racial classification, combining elements of Caucasian, black, Indian and Asian backgrounds. Coined by Tiger Woods, the American golfer who previously would have been thought of as black. In the melting pot of complex inter-ethnic weaving, such simple descriptions are no longer acceptable.
CASH ENGLISH n. The formal, grammatical language used in places such as inner-city Los Angeles to differentiate it from the so-called ebonics (qv) heard on the streets. Why? Because, as one teacher puts it, unlike black dialects it's the type that can get them through job interviews.
DIS v. To insult or dis-respect - and perhaps hip-hop's greatest contribution to mainstream slang. It started as black slang in American cities, and then took the familiar route - through music and then TV programmes - to white suburban consciousness. Bet your grandma now knows what it means.
EBONICS n. The "black English" street slang spoken in many US inner cities (where "She will be first in line", for instance, becomes "She-uh be firs in line"). The school board in Oakland, California, recognised it as a distinct second language in 1996, on the grounds that to disparage it would disparage a culture. Needless to say, the decision became a hot racial and political issue.
MISS THANG n. sl. US rap's contribution to feminist studies - it is a woman who appears to be pretentious, flirtatious or falsely charming (as in "Will you just look at Miss Thang . . .?"). Thang started as a Deep South pronunciation of "thing", the snobbishness of that long, leisured drawl finally making it up to Harlem.
NIGGER n., offens?. A bad word that in the nineties became a good word, at least among some black people who sought to reclaim it (qv queer) - but don't try this one if you're white, please. The term's re-creation began with hip-hop music, with rappers proudly using it to describe themselves (remember NWA - Niggaz Wit' Attitude?). And it stuck - despite campaigns by the likes of the Reverend Calvin O Butts, a Harlem pastor who in 1993 tried to ban the word (along with those other rap favourites niggas, bitches and ho's). He failed, needless to say.
PHAT adj. Phat means more or less the same as ill, massive, dope and bad - in other words, good, in the gangsta-rap slang of the late nineties. Our lexicographical usage department advises that a musical offering by Nine, called What D'ya Want, Nine?, offers a typical usage: "What d'ya want, Nine?" "Phat beats for ma rhyme" (a good, solid backing track for my lyrics). Nine also wants some ammunition for his 9mm Uzi machine gun, but that is rather unphat of him.
PIM acr. The Positive Image Mentality that is much talked of among black people. Underlying the philosophy is the view that anything that reflects well on the black community should be stressed, and anything that reflects badly, ignored. That's why magazines such as Ebony focus on celebrities, success and upward mobility.
SNAP n., v. A black tradition that went mainstream in the mid-nineties, involving swapping insults that get progressively more abusive. Start with "Your family is so poor, they go to Kentucky Fried Chicken to lick other people's fingers," and move on to "If ugliness were bricks, your mother would be a housing project." There are entire books with details of what you can tell someone to do with their mama.
WHITE n. One of the uncomfortable targets of the politically correct movement in the early-to-mid nineties, keen to ensure words caused no offence. New Yorkers avoided white or black coffee but preferred to ask for "with" or "without"; but the climax was the Washington Post reporter's ingenious method of discussing the film White Men Can't Jump in a way that avoided offending anybody's sensitivities. He carefully retitled it "There May be Anthropological Differences That Account For Variation in Personal Vertical Lift, Though These Do Not Imply the Kinetic Inferiority of One Ethnic Group Vis-a-Vis Another" . . .
WHITELASH n. White middle-America's new outspokenness against those damned pinko liberals. They're sick of taxes, welfare, crime and feminists. And with Newt Gingrich's help, they're on the warpath.
WHITE TRASH n. What started as an insulting way to describe a social class of poor Southern US whites, and went mainstream in the mid-ninteies as a distinct culture to be celebrated. The likes of Roseanne and Tonya Harding put the term into common media circulation, and then films such as True Romance (1993) and Natural Born Killers (1994) made it glamorous. Look for the fast-food bucket and the six-pack of Budweiser.
WIGGER sl. n. A white person who tries to be black - short for "white nigger", and rap slang for the Marky Mark types who borrow black music, fashion or language. And any non-rapper who has ever said dude or chilled out stands accused.
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