On Friday, the Black Surgeon General gave a speech about how colored people are dying of the corona flu virus more than whites. This is very simply because they are fatter. It’s not some mystery. Every year more black people die of the flu than whites (2018 study here), and for whatever reason, not very many liberal publications have thought to complain about this before. But now they are complaining about it, so the Trump Administration felt they needed to respond, because they’re trying to form a vague narrative that Donald Trump is using this virus to kill minorities.
General Jerome Adams, who usually goes by “Mister Jerome,” is trying very hard to be white-presenting. He has a gay-sounding lisp. And he is of course married to a fat white woman with bleached eyebrows.
During Jerome’s speech on Friday about how this is affecting blacks, he advised his kinsmen to stay home and not do so many drugs, using a few black slang words including “big momma” and “pop pop.” I guess “pop pop” means “dad,” but you don’t hear that one very often for some reason.
This was maybe funny, or cringe, or whatever, but it was such a brief line that I probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. When I first heard about it, I thought he recorded an entire video in full-on ebonics, but he just slipped it in. I suppose it is weird to use language he doesn’t usually use, during scripted remarks, because whoever wrote that speech had to have thought “we need to send a message directly to the blacks – let’s talk about big momma and pop pop.” In fact, I think the speech writer might have invented “pop pop.” He probably asked Mister Jerome what black people call their fathers, and Mister Jerome just stared at him blankly, so he said “we’ll just call him pop pop.”
Twitter, however, has gone apeshit over this.
It’s a relatively bizarre dynamic at work here, which is hard to grasp initially. But what they are saying is that he is not really a true black, because no true black would work for Donald Trump, so by betraying his race he’s given up his right to use black slang. At least, that is the sentiment as I understand it.
But who knows. I feel like I’ve got a pretty good handle on neo-leftist thought, better than most people and certainly better than most neo-leftists, but it is getting so esoteric so quickly that it is going to reach a point where no one is able to explain what the rules are, it will just be a vague feeling.
I can tell you right now that not a single one of those people posting those tweets could explain the sentiment behind it.