WHOSE BLACK SLANG ?

Let’s look at the meaning of the word 'slang'. As it denotes, the meaning is 'secret language'. Notoriously, the east end barer boys used it to mask their criminal activities in the face of the law' e.g. "Put a sock in it sunshine, geezer's old bill ". Obviously, it carries a communal tag. When i was a teenager in the 70s and black community/ establishment tensions were very intense, patois provided us with a sense of association like a sanctuary from an omnipresent oppressor. It was a black thing. In that climate, the film 'Babylon', emerged like an eagle , and Brian Bovell's character , Beefy, cemented a lot of sentiment when he attacked Karl Hoffman for using rastafarian phraseology. His words, accompanied by head butt were, "Don't talk f**king black" Decades down the road, we have wide boys talking cockney peppered with terminology such as ’man dem'. I saw an Irish lad cursing the staff of a Chinese takeaway in the words, 'ya p***syole' over and again with appropriated gesticulations as though he really meant it, in his attempted Jamaican accent I know a northern Albanian whose English is fickle though he greets all his associates with a 'wha gwan', and checks them a fist; also a graphically used hip practice of suits in the city Not that anyone has a patent on modes of communication, but I remember when the fist was a symbol of the intensity of our resilience within our diasporic struggle; no more, no less. See album cover 'The Front Line', produced in the 70's and re released in 2002 Surely those suits don't address each other like that in the office, or cement financial agreements, or all these white, Asian, and all the other racial denominations, speak like that to their parents. Here though, we have generations ill dressed, who would probably have a difficult time stringing together two grammatically correct sentences, and they'll hold on to that paradox like it's their baby On their wings, the cast of thousands, caricature the caricatures, with their alternative cultures awaiting them behind closed doors. But slang is supposed to keep the user ahead of the game, not left behind by it.. The tool of planners, not by products,excluded from nightclubs, for example, because we don't know how to come correct It's surely time to smell the coffee, pull our socks up, drop the slang, and move on