The Ole Black Sayings
Folk wisdom can save your life
One thing I learned in linguistics class at Hunter College is that there are two types of linguistics — prescriptive and descriptive. Both are exactly as their names would suggest. Prescriptive linguistics tells one how to speak. Descriptive linguistics observes the way people speak.
Growing up in New York City, I was exposed to many different languages, dialects, accents and idiolects. I must admit, for all my remorse about what New York has become, I will always cherish the diversity of the milieu in which I was raised.
In the United States at large we have the broad, stereotypical difference between "the way black folks speak", and "the way white folks speak." That distinction alone has been the basis of a good percentage of American comedy.
While it's easy to assume that the grammatical distinctions characterizing "the way black folks speak" is an expression and indication of black folks being historically more prone to poverty than their white counterparts in the context of American history. It is assumed to reflect exclusion from educational opportunities thereby resulting in "poor grammar."
My grandmother, a dark skinned Caribbean woman, was always very adamant that her children and grandchildren spoke well. She frowned upon poor grammar and would say things like, "People will talk like they're from the streets and then blame racism when they don't get hired. If I'm the owner of a business, regardless of my personal attitudes about race, I cannot hire you to work for my company if you do not know how to speak properly."
While I do my best to live up to my Grandmother's high standards and generally avoid poor grammar as well as I can, I have come to appreciate not only the creativity but also functional, practical aspects of the colloquialisms created by American Africans — what I'm calling here “the ole black sayings."
If you knew some of these sayings, they were concepts that could have kept you alive during the manufactured crisis that was Covid-19. I found these sayings appearing in my mind as the corporate media started first cajoling me and then chastising me to take poisonous experimental injections.
1. "I don't have to do anything but stay black and die." For a black person this is generally true, Michael Jackson and Sammy Sosa not withstanding. This saying originated in the Langston Hughes poem entitled "Necessity." It was later reintroduced in the movie "Lean on Me" about the tough love New Jersey principal Joe Clark.
When the government or an employer tells me I have to get an experimental vaccination this saying springs to mind because I don't have to do anything but stay black and die.
I think the more generic, non-racialized way of saying this is "I don't have to do anything but pay taxes and die." But let's be realistic here, and candid, when we acknowledge that the black part of this saying is significant. Historically, people of African descent were brought to this hemisphere and this country en masse and against our will. After hundreds of years of chattel slavery, we were then subjected to legalized segregation under the label of Jim Crow. It wasn't until the 1960s that black people were finally granted the right to vote. And, despite the wealth and fame of certain fortunate individuals, and despite some folks being able to uplift themselves out of poverty into "middle class" status — it continues to be a fact that the wounds and trauma of hundreds of years of enslavement and Jim Crow remain largely unhealed (generational trauma).
So when the same society that attempted to reduce my ancestors to property demands that I take an experimental injection (on a novel platform with no long-term testing) it is immediately viewed as what it is — an attempt to reduce me, once again, to property. When said injection is a requirement for me to return to my place of employment (after lockdown) I am being denied my right to exist. The eloquent Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said it poignantly and succinctly when he said, "To deny a man a job is to deny that man's right to exist."
2. The concept of a Fool, or for emphasis a Damn Fool — When you grow up in a harsh, unforgiving economic and social environment it's important not to be a fool. What is a fool? Well simply a person who is not using his or her head, a person not applying intelligence, a person likely to get conned. As my Great Grandmother used to say, “Take the fool a little further.” Intelligence isn't just for doing calculus and trigonometry it's also for survival.
A Damn Fool is a person who's not just being a fool but a person who is seemingly going out of his or her way to be foolish. It's a hard headed person and people with really hard heads learn the hard way. To quote my Great Grandmother Edith Rodney Lee again, “Hard heads make soft behinds.”
I'm not trying to hurt anyone’s feelings here (in terms of people who made the mistake of taking the shots) but it's stated like that, with emphasis, to save "yo damn life." And if you're not looking out for yourself, then who the hell is going to look out for you?
3. Having sense, or again for emphasis, having some damn sense — Having some damn sense is required in order to avoid being a damn fool. Having some damn sense means having a clear and working gauge of when to trust and when to distrust.
Having some damn sense means having awareness — awareness of your surroundings, awareness of the circumstances, awareness of the people or entities involved in the given situation. If you have some damn sense it will help you notice when something is askew, afoul, or amiss. Having some damn sense was the only thing required to notice any one of the 1,000 red flags* that should have alerted one's intuition to the realization that somethin' ain't right about the Covid narrative as it was being unfurled before us.
4. Somethin' Ain't Right — Something Ain't Right means something is ajar, something is askew, something is afoul, something is amiss (which applicable words with the "a" prefix did I leave out?). You can see when somethin' ain't right. You can smell when somethin' ain't right. You can taste when somethin' ain't right. Like a violin that is out of tune, you can hear when something ain't right. Depending on the circumstances, it could be any one of the senses that alert the mind to notice that — somethin' ain't right.
5. Let me find out — is another way of saying, "Well that piece of information changes my understanding of the situation." It can be used positively or negatively, depending on whatever the new information happens to be.
As it pertains to Covid — let me find out that Pfizer was involved in the largest settlement in the history of the Department of Justice. Let me find out Moderna had a criminal record before ever even bringing a product to market. Let me find out that Johnson & Johnson is being rewarded with its first foray into vaccine making after their notorious baby powder scandal in which they willfully harmed the public, most notably babies. (As I stated in a previous Substack, Johnson and Johnson was well aware of the harm they were inflicting yet continued to promote their deadly product for decades.) Let me find out your novel "vaccine" "platform" is based on the mad science of inducing the body to produce foreign proteins totally unnatural to it. Let me find out the lipid nanoparticle can cause thrombocytopenia. Let me find out about plasmid DNA contamination. Any rational person who finds out in earnest, about any of those things, would want nothing to do with poisonous Covid injections.
6. Ain't nobody got time for that — remember the tragic row house fire in Oklahoma City, where the lady, when questioned by a reporter said, "Ain't nobody got time for that!"? That lady was Sweet Brown aka Kimberly Wilkins. She brilliantly capitalized on that iconic moment and became an entrepreneur as a result of her ability to transfer the notoriety she received from her sincere, "ain't nobody got time for that!" moment into a customer base for her delicious barbecue sauce.**
To say, "Ain't nobody got time for that!" is kind of a strange thing to say in reaction to a fire but everyone knew exactly what she meant. It spoke to the fact that so many of us are using all of our energy to just barely survive in the first place.
"Ain't nobody got time for that!" means ain't nobody got time for senseless ongoing PCR testing. Ain't nobody got time to keep going back and getting endless boosters. And most of all, ain't nobody got time for dealing with the 1,291 "side effects" associated with these injections from hell.
This isn't exactly an ole sayin', but it will be one day, so it makes the list.
7. Miss me with that — miss me with that means I don't even have one second to entertain the nonsense that you're talking about. Anyone who had the wherewithal to say, "Miss me with that" in the face of covid propaganda is a person with a good head on his or her shoulders. If you said miss me with that about PCR tests, masking, and fake vaccines — I salute you.
Likewise, the government can go ahead and miss me with any more pandemic scare tactics. The poison pushers can miss me with all of their new vaccines they're cooking up as they go rummaging around in sewage systems, pig sties, and bat caves to try to find new viruses they can label as "potential pandemic threats."
8. Nah, man I'm good — "nah man I'm good" is what that talented young man who's going to avoid the gang life, get an education, and get out of the ghetto learns to say when offered drugs. Nah man I'm good was the coolest way to turn down marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes and other vices which are all just day-to-day creature comforts in the inner cities of America.
"Nah man, I'm good" is exactly what one should have said when offered dangerous experimental drugs, by the US government and the criminal corporations with whom they colluded.
* Vol I:
Vol II:
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Bravo!
Thank you for this thought-provoking essay. I plan to send it to a few people who are not yet awake to the abusive COVID lies.
You are a very gifted writer and speaker : )
These are great -- I'm definitely using some.
"Oh, I need full mouth X rays again? Ain't nobody got TIME for that!"