Who you callin a bitch?
I am a grammar snob. Just ask my students. If I get a paper with noun-verb disagreement or the inclusion of anything besides the Oxford comma, I have a mini convulsion.
So when I got an update on my phone this weekend indicating more preposterous rhetoric spewed by he-who-shall-not-be-named (HWSNBN), I shrugged it off as yet another CNN alert designed to give me heightened anxiety.
But then I read it again.
“Son of a bitch.”
As I began to analyze the sentence in which that phrase was enveloped, I had but one question that the great Queen Latifah posited decades before: Who you callin a bitch?
“Son of a bitch” is a colloquialism. If you stop at that, you will miss the pattern that HWSNBN is saying in the NFL (and growing MLB) protest, has been saying throughout the election, and indeed, has been showing throughout his adult life.
The “bitch” here is not America. She would not have such disrespectful, ungrateful children. Nor would she encourage her children to do anything besides smile gracefully at what she has afforded them.
The bitch here is undoubtedly Black women.
How dare their sons have the gall to demand respect amidst their hefty earnings? Isn’t it enough that they’re not in the field, doing back-breaking work? (Rather, just on the field, doing back-breaking work?)
Throughout the transcript of HWSNBN’s speech to the roaring applause of Alabama residents, he referred to these sons as: son of a bitch, that guy, and those people. Conversely, he referred to another set of people as: our (i.e., our flag, our great national anthem), yourselves, and you.
HWSNBN’s use of in-group bias is not new or inherently unique, however, it is the primary basis of out-group prejudice. If he sees himself as distinct from “those people” on the field, he can lambaste them and their actions indiscriminately. Moreover, their mothers, whom he disparaged on camera at the press conference and behind closed doors on buses, are nothing more than the women (if he would use such language) who let these spoiled children feel entitled enough to break free of their chains to voice their own opinion.
Indeed, the goal of parenting is to promote your child’s individuation, autonomy, and growth. The mothers of these men, therefore, did precisely what they were supposed to do — encourage the maturity of their sons to speak out when things are not right. When people of color are being disproportionately killed in a country that has encouraged their use and disposal since their displacement and/or arrival.
And yet, these mothers are bitches?
These mothers, their sons, and the rest of us (them?) have no claim to “our flag” or “our national anthem” according to HWSNBN. I wonder, then, who can say that America is facing a dilemma, one that will forever plague our citizens if we cannot see the we inherently impacted by our neglect of race relations?
My mother is not a bitch. She raised someone who will raise her fist at any time and in any place to signify her discontent with the world around her. Likewise, my athlete brothers do not have bitches as mothers. The predominantly Black athletes kneeling or interlocking arms in protest are human and did not come from a canine species to which a bitch refers.
No. They are sons of women. Sons of royalty. Sons of America.
