Everytime I drop some Southside lingo (e.g. Hittin Licks, Swangin and Bangin) into the mix, all of the natives (what's up LaGette!) from the Southside of Houston get HYPED!!...
Holeup dawg!! Yo az is a d’mn fool!! (laughing)
What??
‘back for a nuddin’, mane??!! (laughing) I had to close my door at work cuz you had me laughing so hard!!
I really appreciate all of the support I get from my Southside family because they know when I get my time under the spotlight I’m going to represent my hood. Judging from some of the comments I receive, it’s obvious that everyone doesn’t understand all of my vernacular. Some of the people who know me only in the business realm have even commented,
I didn’t know you knew how to talk like that.
Talk like what?
You know..saying, ‘mane’ or ‘a nud-den’, what exactly is a ‘nud-den’ by the way?
It’s an ebonic contraction for ‘another one’.
So let me get this straight, instead of saying ‘another one’, you say, ‘a nud-den’?
More like nuddin..it’s not chopped up, it flows like one word.
‘Nudden’?
Nuuud’n…hard on the ‘uh’
Watching an Ivy League educated white woman say ‘nuddin’ is actually quite amusing to me. Although I use a lot of my native Southside dialect when I write, I try to make sure to throw in enough context clues so that those who have never seen or heard the word can pick up on its meaning. I figured I’m not the only one who’s completely clueless when I read classical writers such as Shakespeare, so I might as well get down like I know how. If I don’t get down for the Southside, no other writer will.
The real strange thing, is when I get feedback from people in Southeast DC or Oakland, CA and they’re right there with me. It seems my native tongue works in more places than just the Southside of Houston and for that I’m grateful. A lot of Southside readers recognized the location where I photographed the car ‘swangin and bangin’ because the pictures were taken directly in front of Worthing High School on Reed Rd. Worthing is the neighborhood public school for an area known as Sunnyside located deep on the Southside. A picture of Worthing students in a hallway was on the cover of this past Sunday’s Houston Chronicle newspaper. The story centered around the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that mandated public school integration.
When Thurgood Marshall presented the case of Brown vs. Board of Education to the Supreme Court in the early 50’s, the infrastructure of America was still rooted in white resentment. There was a lot of white folks in power who were still pissed that the slaves were freed and they’d be damned if they were going to have their kids sitting in the same classroom with those ‘niggers’. The landscape in Houston was deeply rooted in Jim Crow laws, as was most cities in the South. So after the first blacks started integrating into the Houston public school systems, a lot of old school white folks said, ‘It’s time to move somewhere where we don’t have to be around no niggers unless they’re serving us.’ This phenomena is what some call ‘white flight’. White folks started sending their kids to private all-white schools or moving to all-white suburbs so they wouldn’t have to deal with all the integration madness.
On the other end of the coin, you have a large and growing black community that was finally allowed to send their children to schools that weren’t overcrowded, under funded and neglected as so many of the ‘colored’ schools of the South were. Both my parents attended segregated public schools in Arkansas, even after the Brown ruling was made into law. My parents taught my sister and I about the pains and struggles black folks wentthrough just to go to school. From the National Guard having to be called in to Central High School in Little Rock, to all of the young black kids who had to be pioneers in their communities since they were on the frontline of integrating our nation’s school system. Obviously these stories aren’t all pretty, young black kids had to endure taunts, being spit on, ridiculed, cursed at and even objects thrown at them, just because they were trying to get an education equivalent to what the white folks had.
Now we’re 50 years from the ruling and activist are decrying the fact that schools like Worthing are too segregated, or ‘too black’ in this instance. Most of the kids that attend Worthing are neighborhood kids, they can walk to school or take a short bus ride. Obviously everyone should have the right to attend their neighborhood school if they want to, but the deeper problem is the inherent lack of diversity in the student body. Living in an all-black environment is one thing, but at some point, everybody needs to be able to communicate to the larger world. The Southside dialect and lingo is fine close to the house, but once you get in front of them white folks trying to get a job, they’re not trying to hear all that, ‘Mane, I messed up my paper! I need a nuddin!’. That’s the kind of bullsh’t that will keep a n’ga trapped on the Southside like a prisoner. So at some point black kids need to learn how to feel comfortable and communicate in environments in which they’re a minority. Because no matter how black you are, or how much your blood is screaming ‘Southside4life fool!’, at some point you’re going to be around folks that don’t look like you, who are going to judge you by how well you can communicate your thoughts.
I don’t see this happenstance as cruel, or racists, I just see it as a reality. When you look at the landscape of American business & politics, you’re going to see boardrooms and societies dominated by white men. Those who are intimidated in environments such as these are going to have a lot lower ceiling of earning potential, compared to those who aren’t afraid and ready to get in the mix with them white boys. So my suggestion to all those students at Worthing, Sterling, Yates, Jones, Madison and all those predominately black schools on the Southside as well as across the country, is to make sure you learn as many languages as possible. Read some Shakespeare and see how that Olde Englishe flows, it’s not just a malt liquor ya know?!! Take Spanish classes, learn sign language, learn a computer language, whatever it is you have the opportunity to LEARN?? Do that sh’t n’ga!! If they don’t have what you want to learn at your school, then you need to get on your hustle and find out where you need to go to get it. School isn’t about playing and looking fly, school is about learning. A lot of high school students who are ‘jus chillin’ now, will learn soon enough when it comes time for them to find a way to put food on the table and keep the lights on. All that playing when you should have been learning will come back to kick you right in the az, just like the rapper Lil Flip (Worthing alum pictured at the top of the page) says, ‘Game over!’
