Something I Said-Book Review Of Mahmoud El-Kati’s The Hiptionary — A Useful Guide To Black Jargon
Something I Said
Mahmoud El-Kati’s The Hiptionary
Dwight Hobbes
MN Spokesman-Recorder Scholar, historian, educator, lecturer, activist and community griot, Mahmoud El-Kati is a living, breathing resource. He has taught at Macalester College, Metro State University and Minneapolis’ North High School, enlightening classes and workshops regarding, among other subjects, African American History, American social movements, Afro-American folklore and the social history of jazz. Co-founder of the annual Pan-African Conference at Mankato State University, he received the Stairstep Foundation’s Sankofa Award from sustained, unwavering commitment to the Twin Cities’ African American community. El-Kati has written countless articles, essays and reviews for the New York Times, St. Paul Pioneer Press, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Minnesota Spokesman Recorder, Insight News and The Nigerian Times on gang activity, African Americans and sports, Ebonics, the “Myth of Race” and more. Recipient of the National Association of Black Storytellers’ Zora Neale Hurston Award, his books are Apartheid: Why and What Is It?, The Myth of Race/The Reality of Racism and the children’s book Little Zola Shine: A Kwanzaa Story. The Hiptionary: A Survey of African American Speech Patterns with A Digest of Key Words and Phrases (Papyrus Press, $12.00) is new from Mahmoud El-Kati’s. It’s a fascinating examination of what, on first glance, is idle occurrence – everyday language that well could be called Americanese. As what is spoken in the United States significantly varies from English as spoken in England, El-Kati explains how profoundly African tongues and black culture (both African and African American) have effected and continue to effect that variance. It is, for instance, difficult to find a slang word or colloquialism that didn’t originate in an African village, on a slave plantation or in a ghetto. This, anecdotally, is common knowledge. The Hiptionary traces the anecdotal to the actual. “English, as spoken by all Americans”, Mahmoud El-Kati notes, “is also partly African in vocabulary, tone, quality and form.” He specifies, “[South Carolina] transported a seemingly limitless supply of rice-growing Africans from Angola to Sierra Leone and Liberia. African people in South Carolina and parts of other Atlantic coastal regions profoundly influenced the way that all people of those regions spoke. Hence, white speakers of English (There were a few French speakers) in rice-growing regions consciously or unconsciously adopted or adapted to African speech patterns.” He sums up, “The ‘Southern accent’ of white people from Charleston…sounds like no other southern accent.” Illustrating that it’s a matter of an oppressive culture absorbing those it subjugates, El-Kati also acknowledges that such words as Minnesota, Michigan, Chicago, tobacco, potato and many more were co-opted from Native America. He connects modern day Black America to some of its more fascinating roots. “The foundation of African American culture by nameless, faceless people, a people defined as American slaves, as a ‘species of property’ and not simply created by individual genius of a Duke Ellington, a Ray Charles, Charlie Parker, nor the individual genius of Kurtis Blow, nor the group genius of The Sugar Hill Gang, nor Chuck D, nor Afrika Baambaata, nor Cool Urch, but rather they are individual inheritors and bearers of a rich [and] intangible culture, so beautifully articulated by W. E. B. DuBois.” Once El-Kati is done shedding light on America’s linguistic history, he offers a roughly 50-page thesaurus of words and terms that will come in handy for white people trying to figure what black folk mean when they use certain turns of phrase and, indeed, for black people who have an instinctive handle on but can’t quite explain words they use, themselves. It’s also a useful guide for blacks who are alienated from some aspects of black culture and, accordingly, as in the dark as white folk. El-Kati closes with a handful of chapters devoted to phrases and their historic advent. “A Teachable Moment about Nigger/Nigga, Richard Pryor, Hip-Hop, and Rap” begins “Of all the sordid legacies bequeathed to black people by the “peculiar institution” or “Negro Slavery”, nothing is more vexing, painful, confusing, and pregnant than the word Nigger/Nigga. The word is almost beyond category because of its evolving, adaptive, and complex meaning.” He then goes on to contemplate for several pages, the in, outs and far-reaching impact of that one word. It’s easy, without being the least bit insulting, to dub Mahmoud El-Kati a know-it-all, because, quite honestly, whatever information his mind doesn’t hold, pretty much isn’t worth having. Such is his devotion to comprehending and appreciating society. That said, The Hiptionary is a splendid addition to his body of work. The Hiptionary A Survey of African American Speech Patterns with A Digest of Key Words and Phrases is available at:www.Amazon.com.
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