Athlete > Basketball player >Runner >Soccer player
Skater > “hipster” > eccentric
Artsy > photographer
Black American > Hip Hop > Underground > “gangster” rap > rap
Black friends > non-secondary education > college student > HBCU student > within the top 100 colleges student
Church > Christian > Catholic > Episcopalian
Friends > out spoken > frequent user of curse words >associated with weed heads
Drink > Parties
Student > College > Hospitality & Tourism Management
American > First generation > Perspective of people not born in America
Cars > automobile maintenance > repairs > racing > watching races
Jamaican > Jamaican friends > Jamerican (American Jamaican)
Family > Very proper > Church orientated > Picky
Token Black Kid > Preppy Friends > Punk/Goth friends > Nerdy Friends
Hospitality students VS student in my English class (general class)
Rock music > Hard > Alternative > Soft
Music > classical > some country > pop > R&B > Reggae
This is not the first time I’ve thought about taboos, and how they are with different groups I’m associated with, especially with my friends. I don’t really dress differently around anyone, but you might hear a change in how I annunciate words, or notice that I’ve excluded things from my vocabulary or have expanded my vocabulary. I’m not one to say the N word every 2 seconds, but if I’m singing a song or something of that nature, I wouldn’t hesitate to say it around my Black friends. Then I have 2 groups of friends who are dominantly White but there are Asians and Hispanics, and different things are said around them too. The more “preppy” group tends to be the kids I’ve grown up with and went to school with but there wasn’t too much unintentional segregation going on so if you were to only hear a group of us talking, it would be very difficult to point out who is white and who is black. Then I have my group of friends who are more alternative in everything they do. So I won’t bring up stuff about comedian Dave Chappell all the time, or reference many rappers (if any at all), but I will talk about piercings and tattoos, and playing music, and listen to different music (rock) with them.
But the most intriguing thing to me about my different groups of friends, are the differences within the black community. When I come home, I’m around more classmates who only went to junior college or went straight to work after high school. I still speak “proper” compared to them, and my accent isn’t one of a south sider’s, and I’m dressed like a white kid or hipster to them. Truthfully I’ve caught myself saying something that I thought wasn’t too complex, but apparently it was, and I’ll be frustrated in my own mind trying to figure out how to break down what I’ve said even more. Then I have my friends who go to HBCU’s and most of them go somewhere in the south, and that’s like a completely different world lol. Then I have my friends who go to top schools, most of them going to schools within the Big Ten. These friends of mine are still very different, but they all have this mentality of “I’m black, I’m smart, and I’m better or going to be better than the kids that surrounded me in high school, and I’m going to be a major figure in the Black community”. They’re more closely related to me as in they’ll speak in slang, but not all the time, they know how to speak properly and with good diction, and they use that when they’re around parents, teachers, and other leader figures.
When I’m with certain family members I talk MUCH differently than I do when I’m around friends. Curse words will be completely omitted from my vocabulary, and I’ll speak more properly and use “good” diction. But they know that I don’t speak to them how I speak to my friends. I’m sure they would say that speaking in a good manner to them is respectful and fair being that they speak kindly, properly, and aim good intentions to me. Fair trade.
This wasn’t too recent, but it sticks out in my mind the most. When I first got to my first school I was lucky enough to live in a dorm which was a very inclusive community and truthfully if you asked anyone about my dorm the typical thought from people who didn’t live there was “isn’t that where all the artsy and weird kids live”. Well sure it was, and I loved it, but I knew I belonged to other communities that didn’t exactly have members present within the one I was living. I was fresh out of high school, in really good shape and could have easily walked on to the track team and MAYBE even the basketball team, but that wasn’t something I really wanted to do in college (at the time ->dumbass). So lucky enough for me my dorm was right next door to the main gym that was open and by the 2nd week of class I was compelled to walk in. I say main gym because really the other gym that was undergoing this huge renovation project was the preferred gym of the basketball players, and after it reopened the next year, the preferred gym of all work out enthusiast and athletes. Anyways, so I walked into the gym next door and scoped it out. The track and all work out equipment were upstairs while the soccer/roller hockey court, racquetball courts, squash courts, and basketball/volleyball courts were downstairs. So as I was checking out the upstairs, there’s a huge gap between the work out equipment and almost half of the track. That’s so you can look down at the basketball and volleyball games going on bellow. So I went downstairs and stood on the sideline. Now I didn’t know what “up next” meant, didn’t have a “squad”, I didn’t know anyone, but hell I was dressed the part and was the only female down there ready to hoop. These two kids who were in my calculus class noticed me by myself after they had finished playing a game and picked me up on their team. So when it comes to rules, since I’ve played basketball I know the official rules, and I know what goes and doesn’t go in street ball. Only thing I had to ask was how were they scoring? Everything is one point, except field goals, those are worth two, and we’re playing to 11. Each team plays until they lose or until they’re too tired to keep playing.
So I already had a common language/slang, I learned the procedures very quickly, everyone has a winning attitude, all I had to do was prove I was worthy of being on a team. Luckily for me the two guys who picked me up on their team didn’t play the same position I did. Brandon was a very dominant point guard, Norman was a power forward, and as I proved myself was a very fast shooting guard with a guaranteed 3 after I got warmed up. Needless to say, from that first game they picked me up, we played 10 more games straight. In between each game we won and during the games, I notice what people would do and what they would say to pick up on the terminology and behaviors. People would say run it back, if there was a discrepancy in the play (a do over), or if they wanted to play that group again. Teams were called squads, people would just say oop referring to alley-oops, “boomin” on someone was dunking over someone, and so on. Those 2 guys that picked me up, ended up being my best friends, and they pointed out who all the dominant figures were. We were all technically new to it because even though they had been playing for about 2 weeks before I showed up, we were freshman, and we were good so the older students wanted to try and “break” us in. Going to the gym everyday also showed that there were only about 4 other girls who frequently came to play and I was definitely able to emerge as a top figure, of the girls at the time at least. I wouldn’t consider myself a leader though. I wasn’t one to really pick up players for a team other than the people I always played with. To be a real leader in that group not only did you have to be good, but great and be able to play outside of your comfort zone. It’s pretty hard, I think, to get kicked out of the basketball community. You would have to really suck, or be rude to everyone, or start a fight to not be wanted there. Talking shit was more than welcome, because it made someone not like you, but also made them want to play you even more.
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