Miami Student

Issue date: 3/22/05 Section: OpEd Page

Over spring break I had the pleasure of visiting my friend, Ian, who attends the University of Pittsburgh, as well as the pleasure of spending two days in a semi-coherent alcohol and drug-induced haze. Even in the midst of a state of mind where the burning embers of an incense stick appeared to be an entire world where an apocalyptic firestorm was sending the terrified villagers screaming for their lives and begging their gods for mercy, I managed to make an observation (warning: it will be an entire rambling paragraph before I actually get to that point, if you'd like to skip ahead).You see, my friend Ian has several black friends because Pitt, unlike Miami, has actually taken the radical step forward of letting black people attend their school. Furthermore, we hung out with Ian's neighbor, who happens to be all Big East First Team forward, Chevon Troutman. In an interesting side note, Ian became acquainted with "Chevy" (which is my nickname for him; he calls me "Mr. Sprinkles") because Ian's female roommate hooked up with him. I have since decided to pursue a similar strategy with Miami's best basketball players by trying to get my roommate, Dave, to hook up with one. So far, the results have been mixed at best.Anyway, the observation I made was that whenever Chevy or another of Ian's non-Caucasian friends were around, he suddenly became Carson Daly hosting the BET awards. Every word or sentence out of his mouth ended in "yo.""Iverson was looking good last night, yo.""My parents were in town, yo.""Parmesan cheese, yo.""No, it's a special moisturizing lotion because the harsh winter air dries out the skin around my cuticles, yo."What's worse is that I found myself falling victim to these pitiful attempts at "whebonics." Pretty soon, I was throwing out words and phrases that I'm positive no English-speaker, black or white, has ever uttered."Naw, man, Lebron's got it frosted with a jelly glaze, yo.""Yo, that flick was mad defibrillated, yo.""He just burned that guy like he was putting on some flapjacks and left the stove on too long cuz his gramma, who's incontinent, soiled the bed, yo!"However, even after all this, neither Chevy nor any of Ian's other friends seemed even mildly fazed by our whebonics. It all sounded normal to them. This led me to the unfortunate conclusion that this must be how black people think white people talk. If aliens came from another galaxy to ask the average black college student to describe how white people speak, he would probably shrug and say, "Sorta like us, only every syllable is like you're trying to impress your older brother by wearing his jock strap."So I guess the conclusion I'm drawing here is fairly familiar: that despite having conquered, raped and pillaged most of the known world, white guys continue to be enormously lame. My only hope is that my roommate, Dave, gets on his assignment and starts seducing Danny Horace.

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