The racial "code-word" revealed!

Alright the old Coates-humor seems to have gone awry in the post below. For the record, the "125th street" line wasn't a gang sign--I live six blocks from 125th. I wasn't being cryptic, seeking cred, or speaking in code. I literally was referring to my own neighborhood. Besides, anyone who knows Harlem knows that the days of using 125th street to garner cred have long passed. If they ever existed in the first place. If you're worried about me "seeking cred" and being exclusionary, you should be flaming those posts on D&D. To the uninitiated, they're indecipherable.

The term I was actually thinking of was "project bourgie" or "ghetto snob." They both generally refer to people who revile the neighborhood for its alleged close-mindedness and ignorance, evidently unaware that their very revulsion marks them as close-minded and ignorant. So, like, old girl is steady pushing this idea of Barack as un-American, and unable to connect with "ordinary Americans," while taking jaunts from New York to London and having journalists address her as "Lady." There is a lot of projecting going on--the ghetto snob is always more ghetto than the people he/she dismisses. Ditto for our friend. To the extent the term exists, who really seems un-American here?

For obvious reasons both of those terms are sort of un-PC. And by noting 125th, I meant to say it's the sort of phraseology that I might be more likely to use face to face, as opposed to on a website read by thousands of people who may now feel free to call any old upwardly mobile black person a "ghetto snob."

That's all there is to it. No terrorist fist-bump. No cry for the Maroons to descend from the hills. No secret drumming meant to convey a racial flame-war on the internets. It's just Ta-Nehisi--as always--too clever by half.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2008/08/the-racial-quot-code-word-quot-revealed/5680/