Filed under: News, Politics, Race and Civil Rights
"They saw a need for this in a couple of their investigations," Special Agent Michael Sanders said. "And when you see a need - it may not be needed now - but we want the contractors to provide us with nine people just in case."
Yes, this story is making me laugh as much as you are. When I heard that the DEA was considering such a move, I could almost appreciate their intentions, but I think they might be a bit misguided. The first thought that came to mind was whether or not they are presuming that drug dealers speak a dialect of English which matches that of the rest of urban black America? Sure, there are going to be similarities, but most of my urban friends don't understand drug dealers either. Dealers don't just sound like rappers, but actually structure a variation of language and sophisticated codes that nearly anyone would have trouble translating. Rather than hiring an ebonics expert to understand the lingo of drug dealers, they'd be better off hiring a former drug dealer.
Urban language in general has a very dynamic dimension to it that changes with the release of every new album, the start of every new school year, and with each new season on BET. I personally think that the idea of grabbing some Harvard Linguistics professor to translate wire taps might be an expensive and counter productive way to reach the DEA's objectives. Instead, they would likely need someone with their finger on the pulse of the streets where the dealers live and work, to understand how things change as time goes by.
Personally, in my old man quest to keep up with black teenager ebonics, I rely a great deal on my daughters. I literally ask them to define terms for me, or I'll confirm my understanding of a word by using the context. "So, getting murked means getting killed, right?" I also find that my collection of TI, Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj songs helps me to stay in rhythm with the changing nature of communication. But while I feel comfortable listening in on black teenagers talking about almost any topic, I would probably be confused by a good drug dealer.
I can close out by making reference to a scene in one of my favorite films, "ATL," starring the rapper TI. In the scene, a young drug dealer is in the car with one of his potential clients. The client is going on and on about why he needs some "good weed," using so many slang terms that the film actually translates the words beneath him like a foreign film. Then, the dealer stops the man in mid-sentence and says, "I don't understand a DAMN thing you just said! Do you wanna buy some weed or not?"
My point in bringing up this example (other than finding an excuse to discuss one of my favorite films) is to make it clear that while many of the inner city drug dealers are black, most black people are not drug dealers. Also, urban black America is different from non-urban black America. So, lumping drug dealer lingo in with Ebonics might be the pot calling all the kettles black. In other words, "What the DEA's doing really don't be makin no damn sense."
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.