Way I said it to folk on the shop floor, today . . .

(that is how I refer to the office, mostly) I usually get that shitty, ignorant, meant-as-a-compliment-but-it ain't-ya-shitheads . . .


"Gee you ain't really BLACK."


But anyway . . . great article about the core issue behind the Joe Biden, Foot In Mouth incident, focusing on that A word???


ARTICULATE!


New York Times . . . Articulate


Here is a taste of the article:




A series of conversations about the word with a number of black public figures last week elicited the kind of frustrated responses often uttered between blacks, but seldom shared with whites.
“You hear it and you just think, ‘Damn, this again?’ ” said Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of humanities at the University of Pennsylvania.

Anna Perez, the former communications counselor for Ms. Rice when she was national security adviser, said, “You just stand and wonder, ‘When will this foolishness end?’ ”

Said Reginald Hudlin, president of entertainment for Black Entertainment Television: “It makes me weary, literally tired, like, ‘Do I really want to spend my time right now educating this person?’ ”

So what is the problem with the word? Whites do not normally object when it is used to describe them. And it is not as if articulate black people do not wish to be thought of as that. The characterization is most often meant as a form of praise.

“Look, what I was attempting to be, but not very artfully, is complimentary,” Mr. Biden explained to Jon Stewart on Wednesday on “The Daily Show.” “This is an incredible guy. This is a phenomenon.”

What faint praise, indeed. Being articulate must surely be a baseline requirement for a former president of The Harvard Law Review. After all, Webster’s definitions of the word include “able to speak” and “expressing oneself easily and clearly.” It would be more incredible, more of a phenomenon, to borrow two more of the senator’s puzzling words, if Mr. Obama were inarticulate.




Please read the rest.

Personally I do not need any twit or nitwit to tell me I am articulate.

However, feel free to compliment me on either my slightly-diluted Beacon Hill accent (my mid-level professional speaking voice), my Midlantic (my higher professional speaking voice), or my Larchmont Lockjaw (I only pull that one out for special occasions! Watch out, Bill Buckley!!)


Anyway, without making some OBVIOUS statement about the black middle (and upper) classes (that article does well enough, thank you very much) I can speak with authority about me:

Undergrad, B.A., Theatre, UVM, followed by a J.D. from Pierce Law, of Concord NH.

Hell, not only can I tell the difference between a Montpelier, Vermont stacatto, and a Pembroke New Hampshire Semi-Fr. Canadian nasal tatoo, but on a good day I can do either rare Northern N'England accent without hardly trying.

I did not mention the Down Easter, Maine Accent there, as for some reason that one is always effortless for me . . . not only from hearing it, but I have read way too many Steven King books and he is prone to writing his native state's accent in dialect.

Ayap!