>>So gross mocking, taunting and screaming is OK now? I can come to your house and start ranting about my pet causes, imitating another ethnic group and insulting anyone I don't like, and it's your problem if you can't deal with it because I decided I had street cred?<<
Dale -
I wanted to respond to the "imitating another ethnic group" charge.
I lived in Oakland, CA, for a time. It's a city that is 80% black or more. I would go for days without seeing another white face that wasn't on television.
In Oakland at that time, I encountered a lot of white people who talked like black people. They had been raised there, and they had adopted the prevalent accent of the place. Nobody thought anything of it.
Here's a little story about that. After living there for several months, I was on the phone with someone (a black man), trying to remind him of where we had met previously. It took a while. He kept saying, "Was it in the park?" and things like that.
Finally, he exclaimed, "Oh, yeah! The white dude!"
I said, "Right. The white dude. Couldn't you tell that from the way I talk?"
He responded, "Say no, Blood. You sound like a niggah."
Just as I have done when spending time in places like east Texas, I had unconsciously picked up the Oakland accent. I had been talking like that for a while, apparently. Black people I had been working with thought it was very funny when I came in "talking white" the next day.
In Oakland it is perfectly normal for white people to talk that way, and I would guess that is also not uncommon on the south side of Chicago.
I know this is probably a perception problem for people who have never spent time in Oakland and such places. I can see why they would think that Pfleger is doing it consciously.
- Allen |
