one of slang's main purposes is to unite. and it accomplishes that quite well. sadly, it also unties. there are few things that make one more of an outsider than not speaking the same language as everybody else.
one of the rudest and most unkind things a person can do is to speak in a foreign language in the presence of people who don't understand it. they may think they're just jabbering between or among themselves and it's no big deal but it is a big deal. it's saying, we're in and you're out. (i always admired my ex-husband, a swede, for never doing this. i loved him for it, actually.)
i have always thought that what divides blacks and whites in this country as much as skin color - sometimes even more - is how we each talk. i remember taking a cultural sensitivity quiz in high school once. we were given a list of, i don't know, maybe 25 slang words and phrases that blacks typically used in that day. we were supposed to translate their meaning. hardly any of the white kids got any of 'em right. it was like trying to read mandarin.
the whole point of the exercise was to make the white kids more sensitive to the black kids. that's not what it did. what it did was make the white kids feel like outsiders. and when one of the white kids raised his hand and said, this little test of yours makes me feel like an outsider, most of the black students cheered. they cheered one of those "now you have some glimpse into what it feels like" cheers. which is to say, not a cheer at all. because cheers are meant to inspire, uplift, and unite. this one tore us further apart.
i can still hear those cheers ringing in my ears. it was cruel. it wasn't as cruel as beating a slave, but it did nothing to advance our getting along. the whole damned thing backfired. i can pinpoint to that day when race relations got worse at my school.
there isn't anything i can do about the color of my skin and there's nothing you can do about the color of yours. but there's plenty we can do about how we talk to each other.
provided, of course, we really want to.
