Beyond Greys

A white man who attended a Negro civil rights rally as a spectator might well be puzzled to hear a speaker say "Now let's get down to the nitty-gritty." The white would probably also be baffled to hear Negroes in the audience murmur "He's facking!" when the speaker made a telling point. But the Negroes present would know perfectly well that the nitty-gritty of a situation is the essentials of it, and that facking means speaking facts, telling the truth.

When U.S. Negroes talk to one an other, their speech is often marbled with expressions incomprehensible to whites. Since slavery days, Negroes have created an ever-changing argot of their own, full of ambiguities, tinged with humor and sorrow.

As might be expected, the Negro ar got abounds in terms for the races: greys, whities, paddies. Whites.

Mr. Charlie. A white man.

Miss Ann. A white woman.

The Man. Whites in general, or white policemen in general, or a particular white who wields power, as a police man, an employer, a landlord.

jig, spook, member, brother, sister, soul brother, soul sister. Fellow Negro.

Uncle Tom, uncle, Tom, handkerchief-head, hanky-head. A subservient Negro (or lately, one who warns against violence in civil rights demonstrations).

Mr. Tom, Dr. Tom. A middle-class Tom.

Aunt Tomasina, Aunt Jane. A female Tom.

butter head, chili bowl, ditty bob. Terms of contempt, used to refer to Negroes whose behavior embarrasses other Negroes.

The Negro push for equality in recent years has produced a plentiful coinage of in-group expressions:

wheels. Civil rights leaders. innocents. White liberal supporters. clean, safe and certified. A Negro negotiator who is acceptable to whites--a Tom or Tomasina, very likely.

upside-downers. Militants who reject the idea of nonviolence.

outsiders, sleeping beauties. Negroes who stand aside from the civil rights movement.

brotherhood hustle. Civil rights rally.

untouchables. Demonstrators who have never been jailed.

home (as in "come home" or "back home"). The state of having recognized and accepted one's Negroness.

Terms for the slings and arrows of life are abundant in the Negro argot:

burned. Humiliated, rejected.

put down. Insulted.

put in the wind. Given the gate.

shot through the grease. Made a fool of.

busted. Arrested.

wasted. Beaten up.

snaked. In any of various kinds of trouble.

shoot a blanket. Fail in something.

quit it. Die.

busters, nabs, fuzz, Charlie Goons, Charlie Nebs, blue boys, bluebirds, do-right daddies. Policemen. shoe. Plainclothes detective. snifter. Police dog. rosewood. Policeman's nightclub. fall. Prison term. charge account. Bail bondsman. woogy. Quarrel (verb). gin time. Time to fight. But life is not all sorrow: fox, flavor. Pretty girl. ace boon coon. Girl friend or buddy. short. Automobile. ragtop. Convertible. stallion. A man who is handsome or husky or prosperous; also, a buxom woman.

mellow, phat, stone, boss. General adjectives of approval: a stone fox is a very pretty girl; a boss short is a big car.

big car. Party.

Some Negro terms are virtually untranslatable into ordinary English. To bag means (among other things) to pursue one's own pleasures. Hummy (as in "I went there hummy") means, roughly, "with expectations that were disappointed."

Like other varieties of language, Negro argot is always in flux. Terms that are widely adopted by whites go out of style among Negroes, or take on radically different meanings. Square has lately come to mean cigarette, is losing the meaning--not hip--that is familiar to whites. "When it's hip among whites," says one white investigator of the Negro argot, "it's already square among Negroes."

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