Since when is a word, that has been in the dictionary for over 100 years, relegated to use by only one ethnic group. Thank god you are there to protect us from urban hipsters of whatever color. Why don't you discuss why african americans can't properly spell holler?

'...but I do it to be a bitch who makes her white friends uncomfortable in a way in which they can't respond. What's their motivation?'

To get you to be a bitch and make an issue out of it to attract more attention to their low rent publishing company?

That would be a pretty good motivation, I would think.

I use "holler" all the time. With friends, with clients, with family. They use it with me. I'm not black. Nor are a lot of the people I use the term with. I never even thought of it as a black term, or meant to be ironic, or... the mind boggles at all the possibilities of subtext that I hadn't used. The thought never even crossed my mind until now.

Like a lot of black slang and black culture, it's gone mainstream. We have no idea which English words we use all the time are of French origin either. What makes you think this was a racially self-conscious signoff from the publishing company?

And purposely making your white friends uncomfortable just for the hell of it ... gotta say I think that's crappy. Friends don't do that to each other.

The earliest entry for "holler" in the OED is 1699, so I don't think it can be considered a modern (black) slang.

The word "holla" is even older, 1523, but specifically indicates a cry meaning "stop".

"Hollo" is nearly synonymous with holler, and is cited back to 1542.

So, no, I don't see where you are going with this post.

the comments on this post are wack... white people misappropriate black slang cuz they think it makes them sound hip and cool and down, and then it becomes part of the regular lexicon of words white people use... like "dis" or "bling" or anything with "izzle" in it, or "wack" like i used above. no, no one "owns" a word but we all know that it wasn't till fabolos rapped "holla back" (and then gwen stefani sang "holla back girl") that white people started saying "holla" (or, "holler" if they didn't really get it)... but i bet most of the people who left comments above have no idea fabolos ever rapped holla back, thus throwing a new twist of meaning and coolness on the word "holla" which was then taken up by the public, or have even heard of him...

you've sure have gotten a lot of annoying comments. actually, i think it's kind of funny that you sometimes do things to make your white friends uncomfortable. i'm white and we're not even friends yet and i'm uncomfortable just commenting on it, actually, but i do think it's funny. and i think friends who expect each other to make them comfortable all the time are pretty crappy.

i don't know these folks at soft skull, or where they're from, so i definitely can't guess at their motivation. however, i do know my many older white relatives from the midwest who have used the term "holler" (never "holla" and never or "holler back") since i can remember. they use it like this: "ok then, you're all set, holler if you need anything" or "that should take about an hour. holler when you're finished."

in my experience, motivation for the use of "holler" by white people tends to be regional. in the midwest, a lot of white people have just used it their whole life to mean something akin to "let me know." on the east coast, younger white people have been appropriating it in the last 5 years (?) to seem "cool"* at least to each other. (incidentally cool is another term with a similar history--in this case i'm using it for the definition that was appropriated by white people from black culture).

based on the little i found out from this company's website (they're in nyc, one guy is from ohio, ages vary--but not that much), who knows? if you ask them, i'd definitely be interested to know their response.

Oh please. I grew up in lily-white suburban Utah. My lily-white relatives, Mormons descended from Scandinavia, most of whom had probably not ever been anywhere near a real black person, and this was decades before you cool black people started saying "holla" anyway, used to say things like "Holler if you need anything," all the bloody time. I wasn't aware that as soon as a word becomes black slang, nobody else is allowed to use it... Says who?

The folks in Spivey's Corner, NC, will be surprised when only black folks show up at the Hollerin' Contest.

http://www.ibiblio.org/hollerin/

White folk appropriate black slang because it's so freakin' funny that people who live in the USA cannot even put a subject and verb together correctly, even by accident!
It's not so much slang as it is willfully uneducated people who use the excuse of the "Man" holding them down as as a reason not to study or try.

"but I do it to be a bitch who makes her white friends uncomfortable in a way in which they can't respond."

Hee hee, as a white woman who likes to make her overly comfortable white friends uncomfortable, I salute you. And it isn't mean, we don't learn 'til we're made to squirm.

Well you KNEW the racists would come out on this one. I think you have a good point to make here, and it would be interesting to do a longer piece, talk to some linguists, delve into the identity aspects of ethnic slang and the politics of appropriation. You might get a better response (and supply some interesting answers) to your question, which if you take it out of the personal, is universally interesting.

I also think that there's a positive spin to be had here - that black culture is so ingrained in the US that the language (along with the music, the fashion, etc) is splashing over onto the majority population. Always a struggle, between the need/desire to assimilate and the need to keep one;s distinct identity.

Actually Soft Skull press is a pretty great small publisher.

I'm a 'white folk' who came of age at 14 in 1961 during a bus trip from Syracuse NY to New Orleans.

In the Washington D.C. bus station I witnessed for the first time in my life 'colored only' 'white only' signs on water fountains and bathrooms and I suppose lunch counters, but I do not recall that.

I asked my mother: "Aren't we in America any more." I knew that DC was not a state. I was 14.

She told me that is the way it is. Or words to that effect.

That experience and the subsequent bus stops on the way numbed me to the extent that when I saw a sign on Canal Street 'White Sale' I had to ask don't they want Negroes to buy things? My mother explained they meant sheets etc.

Later in 1968 I had a black friend who was rapidly becoming aware of 'Black Pride'. This drove us apart.

He told me I could not understand his experience. He was transplanted from Greenville NC. It is true I could not understand his experience. But I did not think of him as different from me in any way other than his skin color and I regarded him as a friend. We played cards together on Wednesday nights at my home for nickels and dimes with others from work.

Well, his growing self awareness with the movement he was associated with caused him to withdraw from me. I understand it now. I did not then.

I liked the guy. I regarded him as a friend. As a white person I cannot identify in any way but in that of empathy and sympathy. And according to the ideology of the day in 1968 I agree with him. He needed to find an identity.

It has only been a generation since the U.S has grudgingly agreed that Black Americans are fully human (1964)

All I can do is care for people. That's what I try to do. Sorry this turned into an essay.

Maybe the name of the publisher says it all. Soft Skull.

I'm originally from Texas, and I still have my accent; I can't tell you how many white people try to a) piss me off royally, or b) make me think they're cool, by taking on a pseudo-Texas accent when they're talking to me. Funny thing is, nobody else ever does this, black, Asian, Latino, [insert another ethnic group here]. Usually, what those people do is to piss me off royally because they're not being themselves. They're trying to be something other, or better than. They tend to be the same people who would probably say, "Oh, you're not like 'the others,'" with a serious look on their faces when they say it!

Keep doing what you're doing, Ms. Dickerson. Or as the Rastas would say, "steer it up!"

I heard holler before holla used in the sense of "Please respond".

I like to use words of all kinds because that's my passion. Not because I'm trying to be cool, or at least I don't think so. Often it's to be funny. I studied Spanish, Italian and French at college and love new words. I love rap and funk because it's alot about word play. It's also so descriptive and evocative. Like Public Enemy describing the slave ship experience from Africa in the song, "Can't Truss it". Rhymes like "Rollin' in my own leftovers, when I roll over I roll over on somebody else".

It is cool, it's poetic and takes you at least a little closer to an historic experience.

Language has always changed and evolved. It is rich and beautiful. I love the fact that English is such a hodge podge of other languages, German, French, Latin, Spanish etc... "Ebonics" is another form of influence.

Language will always grow and change - I love that! Belee dat' what a great expression, it just rolls off the tongue!

"If that sad benny is is meant to offset . . "

You used "is" twice in a row.

The rest of your blog is unworthy of commentary.

DD, What's so hard to figure out? White folks have been adopting black slang and culture to make a buck since the early 1920's. White guys imitating minstrels, Elvis singing Otis Blackwell, the Stones, et.al. taking from Muddy Waters and Howling Wolf, now white rappers imitating Blacks...
A no-brainer! $$$$$$

I have to say, from my experience, that they were probably using the word "holler" to express that if you needed something, to let them know, or "holler." Coming from a family with a Father from Jersey, a Mother from the South, and growing up in the Midwest, this happens all the time. My relatives in the south use it often enough, especially when laying on some of that down home hospitality. Can't beat it.

Why do you assume that the Soft Skull folks know you're black? Because you share a last name with a great LA Rams running back? Or do you think you're so famous that everyone should know what you look like?

Also, I'm having trouble believing that this is mean to be black slang when it ends with a Canadian interjection.

Maybe this was meant to be funny, but it's too bitter.

In the mountains of the eastern US - going up the holler means something else entirely.

hey, it's the anal-retentive thing and i'm sayin' it's somewhat curable. people are not thinking of you anywhere near as much as you might like to think. who gives a crap with such smallness?

Yawn. Slang "white people" like. Yeah, cause we're all, like, the borg...you know, connected to one big brain. The same. One. 'The White Man.' No unique, individual histories, no unique thoughts. Just 'white people.' Fastinating way to 'combat' racism. Very, ummmm....last century.

Why the sweeping generalizations about white people? Not all white people try to emulate black culture in speech or in other aspects. But for those that do, why cant they? Should I point out to the young black man in punk leathers and bleach blond hair that hes is taking from what belongs to white people's culture and that perhaps he should not use it. Or when I see black people at a NASCAR event, should I point out that this is traditionally "white people culture".

Also, I am a firm believer that language forms its self by incorporating words from a myriad of cultural influences. Black people don't talk the way their ancestors did nor do white folks. But really, aren't all the different words and uses of words really just colloquialisms? And, would it be inappropriate for an African American to have a chin wag. I mean really; when it comes down to it, we here in America share the same culture. I am not asserting that regional and ethnic differences do not exist. I am just saying that people can talk how they want and and if one choses to emulate people who sound like they are illiterate, so be it. Stupid is, stupid does!

Wigger talk is annoying as hell, and so is jive talk, to hell with the color of who's saying it. Slang has been around a long time, and some of it is black slang. But 'holler' isn't one of them. Are you the type to make everything about race? Because that's a boring life to have. Could you stop playing their game and say things to bring us together rather than divide us?

Yo Homestain, why you got to be hatin on Whitey like dat?

Way to elevate the dialogue. Maybe your next post can be about your white friends' lack of rhythm or their incessant use of mayonnaise.

The only thing you got going for this post is the query about the cabbage patch dance. But I don't think it has anything to do with race--I think it has something to do with banal, suburban, cubicle "fun," where everybody is required by law to act irreverent about some utterly mundane bit of joy in their otherwise meaningless lives, whether it be an Klondike Bar, Best Buy sale, or insurance rebate.

Otherwise, I don't know what you're getting at. English is a rapacious polyglot, i.e. we are obsessed with integrating all words and variations of words into our lexicon. If this takes on the quality of fashion, then so be it. Who are we to argue with the processes by which American English has developed over the past 500 years?

Words we use are also linked to events so remote from our experience that something as ever-present as the black-white slang issue you bring up seems easily understandable. For example, the word "jingoism" has its origin in the prowar song "By Jingo!" which was written to express British support for the Ottoman Empire in its fight with the Russians in the 1877-1878 Russo-Turkish War, and the 1875-1878 Eastern Crisis in general. Should, for example, the American media stop using this word because they had almost zero to do with this piece of history?

Language is a negotiated piece of culture; and nobody likes a person, regardless of color, who shuts them down in their being a part of the negotiation.

1) I think the "white people" line is a reference to the "Stuff White People Like" blog, not to some kind of White Borg.

2) I think the Soft Skull people could probably tell from, oh, the PICTURE by the column that the author is black. So yes, it's probably true that they knew who they were emailing.

Thanks for the column. I'm white, and am always a bit uncomfortable when white people use slang in the way you've described. It's good to know that my instinct was right.

You know, Deb, as black as you pretend to be, you're more honky on the inside than most whities I know.

So, you must be the flip side of this argument you're presenting. Black, trying too hard to be white.

Until I noticed the link you provided to Stuff That White People Like, I was going to suggest that you look into it as I'm sure you'll find much there to be interested in. It's perfect for you.

Axe me no quessions, and I be tellin' you no, no nuffin', mah shizzle.

I do not have a freaking clue as to what you are talking about. AT ALL. cr

It's hilarious that Debra uses words and phrases like, "I dunno", only to turn around and ask why certain white folk use words like, "Holler".

Too rich!

Who is your audience? Are you asking "white" people for clarification on something? If so, do you really think racially dismissive references to the "Cabbage Patch" is really a great way to engage someone in a conversation about racial sensitivity?

Off the subject at hand, but Soft Skull Media looks like a cool-as-hell publisher. So thank you for bringing my attention to them, so-called inappropriate use of black slang aside.

Does the author not realize that "holler" is an actual word in regular English and that its use in that type of context is etirely normal? "Be sure and holler if you need anything." "I'll give you a holler when I get there." Or is she just being deliberately obtuse. If you are going to write an article about white people using black slang, how can you use as your jumping off point a phrase which is not black slang. Kinda wrecks the whole article.

Kinda ridiculous! I tended bar in a pub frequented by blue collar workers and those that really dug country music. "Holler at me on Monday when you have the lumber for that job" was only the most popular way this word was used. In this context it was used as a folksy way to say call me on the telephone. So theft of slang, not so much, regional slang could be. Oh yeah....the year? It was 1995!

unity or diversity?

"Cabbage Patch" ? Please! Snoopy's "Happy Dance" has been mimicked by white people for decades, from Steve Martin ("Happy Feet") to the current guy doing a version going around the world. Let's also not forget James Taylor's SNL "Antler Dance"; as to language, how about tricky Dick Nixon saying "sock it to me" on Laugh In? Enough to gag a maggot...
SoWhiteItHurts!

Debra, I'm a person of Eastern Appalachian descent...what many people call a "hillbilly." The word "holler" has been in use as both a verb and a noun in my culture for centuries.

By the way, when you think of "hillbilly" what images come to mind? Inbred simpletons plunking on a banjo settin' on a porch wearing bibbed overalls? Backwoods moonshiners ... barefoot girls who marry at age 15 and have five or six babies before they come of age? The cast from "Deliverance?"

In America it's still acceptable to openly voice stereotyped prejudice against people of my culture.

Even so, if I had received the email you described I would not have thought anything of it, would not have wondered about the motivations of the sender.

Regional and "specialty" dialect is constantly flowing into the main body of our language - it enriches English and our acceptance of new words and new uses of old words has made our language amazing and large.

I had to look up the word "wiggerness" -- it's an interesting concept, hopefully only transitory. Black culture cannot have it both ways. If it is accepted by the larger population it cannot keep its elitist, isolationist stance.

I think it's time that the American conversation about race also consider culture. A person of black racial background is not necessarily a person of American black cultural background. The two are not the same.

It is said that "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." I ask you what is wrong with these young white mostly-male people embracing the American black culture? If it's "out there" in the mainstream atmosphere in the form of music, dance, and yes, language -- why would you deny someone the experience of it?

I had a friend in college who was preparing for a year of school in France and for several months before his trip he became French in every way he could - he lived in an immersion language house on campus where the residents spoke only French. He ate French food, dressed like French men, listened to French music and even dated a French woman. No one gave it a second thought, because embracing another culture is a way of learning, a way of expanding one's horizons.

Culture and race although intertwined are not the same thing. Culture is chosen. Culture is open for discussion.

I can feel empathy for the troubles and needs of the black race and at the same time call for changes in black culture. Disagreeing with some element of black culture does not make me a racist.

It's high time for American Black culture to deal with these elitist tendencies. Do you see where a stance of "blacks only" might be cut from the same cloth as the old "whites only?" Is this what you want?

Debra, I don't think you realize how offensive your posting actually is -- perhaps because black elitism is so prevalent it seems normal to you. But these things must be rethought...is there really any harm in allowing some kids to identify with their favorite pop stars? If you get to express and enjoy your rich and varied black culture do you really want to put up "blacks only" signs around it preventing anyone who is not "authentically black" from also enjoying it?

What is this doing on AlterNet?.. degenerating into Salon.com
Take a deep breath, Debra, there are many important issues in the world more worthy of your attention.

What is this doing on MOJO?.. degenerating into Salon.com
Take a deep breath, Debra, there are many important issues in the world more worthy of your attention.

The slang term "holla" goes back even before Fab. He got from Southern rap artists just as Down South rap was starting to heat up.
For those that just refuse to see the point of the commentary (and it's not the writer, it's you): the word "holler/holla" has been around for generations but it only became mainstream thanks to hip-hop.

I can't speak for Debra's motives with 100% certainty, but this just seems like tongue-in-cheek humor to me. To me, the comment stating she likes to make her white friends uncomfortable gives it away. I find these comments about race and race relations interesting, but I think we might be taking it a bit more seriously than it was intended.

Ok, so if I'm 'white' I have to speak only 'white' slang, and if I'm 'black' I can only speak 'black' slang? Tell me, please Ms Dickerson, what is 'black' and what is 'white' slang? While you're at it, why don't you tell me which water fountain to drink from? How about which bus to get on? Please tell me Ms Dickerson, because apparently your racist and segregated mind-set knows all about it. Is this how you really think, "wow, that white person email had black person lingo in it"? So what if it did?! I'm not trying to homogenize cultures; I embrace cultural and ethnic diversity. You, however, point it out as if with a police baton, saying whites over here and blacks over there. This is outright hate-mongering, Ms Dickerson, and you ought to reconsider how you use your authority on MoJo. Try building bridges to connect people, instead of walls to separate people. We are humans, part of a web of life on Earth, and We Are One.

When, Oh! when. will Americans cease differentiating one group from another by their cultural heritage. Are you not just "Americans?" To add to those reminiscences of the onbnoxious practices of the past.

In 1944 I landed in New Orleans at age seventeen, a British Merchant Seaman. On the Greyhound bus returning to my ship I sat next to a girl of colour, well she was pretty and I was young. She immediately rose and went aft, which I found rather offensive.
The next "White" came in and picked up a board, which I had not noticed, and if I had would have ignored.'BLACKS REAR OF THIS LINE." This board progressively travelled further down the aisle as we ourselves travelled down the Mississippi.

Sixty plus years later and many of you are still trying to separate, from both sides of the cultural divide.

Ms Dickerson your quaint umbrage at the terms used reminds me, once again,of Winston Churchill's response when the national broadcaster sent back his speech requesting he change where a sentence ended in a preposition. "This arrant pedantry is something up with which I will not put."

So often people with a lesser standard of education will make simple grammatical and spelling errors. You don't have to emphasise your intellectual superiority, (Snobbery) by embarrassingly
pointing out their shortcomings, as long as you understand, and the educational deficiencies are irrelevant.

P. S. I am an Australian by choice, and would object if I am identified as an Anglo OZ.
After all I have lived here for fifty six years.
An American who insists on being called a Chinese/Afro/Anglo. et al., American is actually denying his own national identity. In many instances he would not speak the original tongue, nor would have knowledge of the culture, if indeed actually having knowledge of the particular area of genesis.

Mind you, with your present Government, I think I can sympathise with the motivation.

P S No!! There are no spelling mistakes. I spell English as I was taught in England whilst acknowledging American spelling is often simpler and more sensible.

tomedgar@halenet.com.au

"Choose sides. Run for your lives. Tonight the riots began." Tracy Chapman, from her song "Across the Lines".
Please listen to that song, Ms Dickerson, and read (or listen:) between the lines.

Some people may not think this is serious, but it is. Why? Because when race, gender, or sexual politics masquerade as empowering when they are effectively divisive and segregationist, theory can be put into dangerous practice. Or are the segregationist politics--which are at the root of Dickerson's post--a stage we have to go through before we reach a period of peace?

Making generalizations about the behaviour/or preferences/or beliefs of an entire culture/ethnicity/race is racist.

Racism is illogical and unjust.

It is racist to take a generalization about a race, then imply that only that race can act etc in only that way, else be suspect of ill motives due to (inevitably) acting like another race.

In other words, if one says 'this race acts this way,' it can follow--as it does in Dickerson's post--that only that race can act in only that way.
Which means that if that race acts in any other way, they are intruding on another race's particular set of permissible actions.

This is going towards dangerous ground. Who decides who acts in this way and who acts in that? You might say, 'we see certain races act in certain ways'. But observations are often wrong; to perceive something does not necessarily mean to perceive truth.

If we generalize about people's thoughts and actions, then we can generalize about their inherent capabilities.

Think, oh, only purple people can be doctors.
Think eugenics and Nazism. Is this the result you wanted?

Do I need to be more blunt?

Generalizations= stereotypes=
unfounded opinions= prejudice

Exclusionary tendencies lead to elitism lead to grave injustices and violence.

Please allow any perceived differences amongst people to be shared, enjoyed and embraced.

This doesn't have to be a power struggle.

Ms Dickerson, I truly hope one day you will see differently. Please reconsider whether the opinions you seem to uphold are actually beneficially to yourself and to other people--and in extension to all life.

So why do vernaculars in the English language "belong" to black people? If you want to get technical about it, "holler" originated in the South. "Holler for yer Daddy to come to Supper.He's down in the holler, "I realize that most "Black" folks made their unfortunate introduction to America through that particular route, but PUHLEEZE!....stop claiming parts of the English language as "Black Slang" when it's just poor speech. Since you already made your claim to ignorance you saved me the trouble of pointing it out.

This is a typical white response. So fixated on the particular "word" (o lo que sea) and yet missing the overall message entirely. And so concerned with defending what they view as some egregious attack that they appropriate the content of the discussion and make it about themselves. The meanings of words, as we all know (yes, even those of us illiterate fools who can't speak English properly), like their usage, change over time. . .

The point, I think, of this post was to inquire what it is about black slang, and possibly black urban culture more generally (or at least stereotypical images of it), that white people find so appealing that they feel the need to appropriate it.

Additionally, I wonder what really animates white people, especially those 70 previous posters, to defend their usage of the wordS. (White appropriation of "black urban culture" does not stop at employing "holler" in their everyday speech.) This boggles people of color, partly, because there is such a vehement denigration of such culture (as expressed in previous posts), on the one hand, and yet an obnoxious fetishization of it, on the other.

One can only speculate what motivates white people to do all the crazy things they do. . . Must be all that delicious privilege. . .

Language is a living, breathing thing that cross-pollinates and produces hybrids. You can't own it and you can't keep it from changing.

The only way to keep "your" words from being changed by people of any shade is to communicate only with those who will share your standards for linguistic purity. But if you can't stand the heat, get out of the verbal kitchen.

Holler?
I'm from Texas, and say holler fairly regularly. I had no idea it was a "black" word. I saw it as a "south" or "down home" word. I don't know if i would have used it in the context it was used unless I knew you personally as it also seems like a friendly word rather than a professionsal one. Oh, I'm in a Chinese AMerican family.

Cross Post from the 2nd Part of this article:

Slang White People Like, Part 2: The Bro-ening
http://www.motherjones.com/riff_blog/archives/2008/07/8981_slang-white-people-like-bro.html

Seriously?? A lot of people who have no idea who Missy Elliott is use that word on a regular basis.

Had Debra of used another word as an example I would have been able to sympathize, but only slightly. Those white kids that blatantly use/overuse Ebonics can get annoying at times. That being said, I'm not going to be the one to tell them that they have no right to explore whatever identity or culture they are inclined to explore. (Try telling an intellectual black person (or other minority) that they shouldn't be using words over 10 letters long (as I have heard stories of) - least they sound "too white" or a devoutly religious African American they don't belong in a Christian Church -because Christianity, historically, has its roots in European America and see how far you get with those arguments.)

Back to the word at issue; as a Midwesterner with strong Southern roots, I have grown up with folks (or is "folks" another word too "black" for me to use? If so I apologize.) proclaiming on a daily basis, "Holler at me when you get back from the store.", "Gimme a Holler when you get into town.", and a classic in my childhood home- "Don't make me Holler at you one more time to get your ass back in this house and clean your room up!" Grammatically correct or particularly eloquent? Perhaps not, but I wasn't about to correct the language of my parents or elder relatives. (Thanks to that wise decision I sit here responding to this inane discussion with all 32 of my natural teeth still remaining in my head.)

I take more offense with those trying to make a racial issue of something without having tangible evidence there was a racially motivated intent behind it to back them up than I do people using "anther's" language. (Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups they say.) No one likes to be profiled- black or white. Those of us who have grown up with that expression in our lexicon have every right to take offense at Debra's insinuation that we are trying to emulate or "white-down" black language. If Debra is justified in her irritation that white people™ seem to have assimilated black language do white Southerners (a/k/a "rednecks") have the right to be indignant that black people™ seem to also have assimilated or "blackened-down" white language?

Language and its meanings are merely social constructs. None of us really have any right to claim that our mental representations of each others actions, words or the roles we cast for each other are more correct than another. There is a danger in pervasive institutionalization of language and socially acceptable roles. And one wonders why this country seems so damned divided at times...

Wait a minute. Who's being self-conscious here and trying to be hip? First of all, I'll acknowledge that "white people" use "black slang". So what? Once it is part of pop culture, it pretty much belongs to the culture as a whole, not just a sub portion of it and can become a unifying thing-not negative or "dis"ingenuous. Also, slang evolves, sometimes in very rapid fashion as it goes viral. Who gets to own language really? Secondly, I agree that "holler" has been used be the "white community" et al for as long as I can remember as in "give me a holler". This particular "white person" is weary of being scrutinized by certain "black persons" when most of us are just trying to go about our business and be as unoffensive as possible to those we socialize or do business with in general. How about giving it a positive spin for a change?

Does MJ continually allow this racist to vent simply because she is an "educated" by-product of white institutions? Do the editors feel as if this gives her, as a black woman, superior insight into modern day racial divides?

I'm looking forward to her column in which Debra finally comes out to admit that, in reality, she is the incurable racist she seeks in her white counterparts.

It'll take guts but I'm sure that one day she'll realize that admitting to being her own 800 pound gorilla could bring her readership to new levels.

Well.... I used motherfucker before you did!!!

"Holler, not holla, but in either case: ironic wiggerness in the workplace"

Who owns that word "wiggerness" ? Define it please?

i've been following this thread for awhile and i've noticed that most of the comments focus on word-ownership, segregation, etc. it seems that what bothered dickerson (and only one or two people besides dickerson, so far) was the idea that white colleagues might have consciously or unconsciously used a word that they (not dickerson, not you, not i) associate with "black slang" because they knew she was black and wanted to.... what? that's the question dickerson asked: what's their motivation? however, the readers seem unconvinced about this #1 scenario. instead, they largely propose two others:

#2) the pleader uses "holler" to mean "tell me" or "let me know," just as their white parents and grandparents did, and might not be aware of the term "holla" (a level of oblivion that is, in itself, annoying);

#3) the pleader has absorbed a cash-english spelling of the term "holla" as in "holla back" into their vocabulary and uses it freely, with black people, white people, any people, regardless of audience;

dickerson seems to be most disturbed by the possibility of scenario #1 where the pleader specifically uses a cash-english spelling of the term "holla" in the plea to dickerson because she is black, but eschews the term in pleas to persons of other ethnic backgrounds.

roughly half the commentators(mostly the self-identified white folks) seem fixated, often defensive, on possibility #2. roughly half the commentators seem annoyed about the reality that possibility #2 has happened and continues to happen, with and without economic profits for white people who adopt and popularize (appropriate) cultural elements with non-white (and often not-for -profit cultural origins).

mostly i just really want to write these folks and find out why they did use the term holler. but no matter their motivation, i think it's disingenuous to suggest MOJO censor a writer because of the questions she asks.

MOJO exists to challenge--not drive--the frightening narrowing of the range of what is and isn't acceptable to discuss and to question in this country.

correction: my post should read...

"...roughly half the commentators seem annoyed about the reality that possibility #3 has happened and continues to happen, with and without economic profits for white people who adopt and popularize (appropriate) cultural elements with non-white (and often not-for -profit cultural origins)."

Now at the risk of being accused of pedantry may I stick my nose
in, when the area is not exactly mine?

When I look at the publicity portrait of Ms Dickerson I see a woman who in all probability is more white than black as are so many other Americans of colour.

So what makes you "Black"?
Even in Africa many tribes are not truly black even when racially pure.

I once had an altercation with
a lady who said. "I don't mind the Blacks. (Australians)It is the brindles I can't stand." She an Anglican (Episcopalian) Minister's wife.
My response was to demand which part she objected to. The white or the black. Or was she offended that there was evidence of a mixture that couldn't be denied.

Until you stop using this ridiculous nomination of ethnicity as an identifier before the "American" you will never be wholly American.
Where does your allegiance truly lie? If it is in the country of your ancestral roots then get the hell back there. If Not, work like blazes to make your country
into the beacon of equality, justice and fairness you imagined it was once before.
You won't do it when divisiveness on ethnic grounds
keeps rear its very ugly head.

tomedgar@halenet.com.au

I holler at my kids and they like it - LOL! No really, they laugh when I holler at them. Black women holler or have hollered at their kids, they've been hollering at them for years. My mother hollered at me and my siblings, her mother hollered at her and her siblings.

Now "holla" is a different story, now thats slang.

And to tell you the truth, I don't care who is using slang, it denotes a tad bit of casualness that not everyone is comfortable with.

I work in what some would call a corporate environment and whenever a white employee is hired, and have the need to make themselves feel comfortable working with me, they say something stupid, like "Whats up Miss Thang".

This has happened more times than I can count. Its as if Black people are one big Blob of a race and all we understand and accept this type of speech, whether we're janitors or rocket scientists is slang.

I used to get angry -- LOL but not anymore, too much energy.

Seriously though, I don't encourage this kind of talk from children, whether speaking spanish or english, or asking for a slice of bread.

Debra, you might want to consult an editor the next time you make a post. I can understand you -- vaguely -- but please understand that sentences like "Or have white folks developed several sets of 'pitch' macros with labels like "black, but an Uncle Tom who'll find this ironic," "white, but living in dream world wherein they're cool," and "confused, but too cowed to make waves."?" just don't make a whole lot of sense. You're trying to cram way too many self-consciously-aware-Gen-Y-market-consciousness thingies into one sentence.

I must be an Uncle Tom because I find their use of "holler" and "eh" in the same sentence hilarious and ironic as all get out.

?This has happened more times than I can count. Its as if Black people are one big Blob of a race and all we understand and accept this type of speech"

That's funny. Seems to be exactly how Debra views white people.

There lies that 2 edged sword! What are humanoids to do? LOL

Peace

The only reason white people here in the states rip off other people's culture is because that is what has been going on since the birth of this nation. We have been a melting pot, but most white people today are totally seperate from there roots in culture from another land, and today's globalization is beginning to really kill regional identity in many parts of the United States........white americans are some of the most uncultured people on the Earth, not necesarrily all of them, but the majority of them yes I dont care what any of you whities say.

I wish I wasn't more than a month late to this posting. Most of you are idiots. As far as I know "holler" has long been commonly used in the South by both Blacks and Whites. For example, my folks would fuss at me if I didn't come in for supper. They'd often ask, "Where have you been? We've been hollerin' for you forever."

Besides, everybody knows that "yo" is the proper ending for any sentence that contains "holla," yo.