Is “Shuck and Jive” Racist? Only if You’re a Conservative?

If you are not a native English speaker, learning English can be terribly difficult since it’s a language made up of many languages. Words and phrases that were unique to one culture have become part of the English language – everything from the French bon appetite to slang like “bling,” “threads,” “crib,” and “shuck and jive.” The following is from an article about “Black Slang”:

“Since the English language draws its inspiration from a variety of sources, it should come as no surprise that a number of words that were once considered part of African American Vernacular English are now commonplace in our culture. As aforementioned, these words often stream into other groups and a wide variety of people begin using them.”

It’s seems that there are some liberals who believe that only liberals can use black slang and not be thought of as “racist.”

The latest racist charge comes from Chris Matthews (naturally) of MSNBC who said that Sarah Palin’s use of “shuck and jive” to describe President Obama’s dodging the issues was done to send out racist signals to white voters. He described her use of the commonly used slang as a racist “dog whistle.”

Matthews have been calling anti-Obama voters racists for four years. It’s a common part of his liberal schtick. Oops! Did I offend Jews by using “shtick” which is derived from the Yiddish word shtik (שטיק)? (Yes. I can read Hebrew.)

It turns out that only liberals can use “shuck and jive” without being charged with racism. Here’s what Palin said about using the slang phrase:

“For the record, there was nothing remotely racist in my use of the phrase ‘shuck and jive’ – a phrase which many people have used, including Chris Matthews, Andrew Cuomo, and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney to name a few off the top of my head.

In fact, Andrew Cuomo also used the phrase in reference to Barack Obama, and the fact that Mr. Cuomo and I used the phrase in relation to President Obama signifies nothing out of the ordinary. I would have used the exact same expression if I had been writing about President Carter, whose foreign policy rivaled Obama’s in its ineptitude, or about the Nixon administration, which was also famously rocked by a cover-up.”

The good folks at Newsbusters tracked down how liberals used “shuck and jive” without anyone charging them with racial bigotry. Notice the first one on the list:

As NewsBusters’ Scott Whitlock pointed out, Matthews used this phrase himself on July 7, 2010, while talking to Rachel Maddow.

On top of this, in 2008, then-New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said of Barack Obama: “You can’t shuck and jive at a press conference.”

Adding insult to injury, on September 7, 2011, Jay Carney, a spokesman for Matthews’ beloved Obama, told the press corps, “Sorry. I’m going to shuck and jive! Time to shuck and jive.”

You’ve got to love the Internet. The liberal gatekeepers are no more. Liberals are at the mercy of truth. I love to see them “shuck and jive” when they get caught being hypocrites.

Friday, October 26, 2012