Jigaboo, bugaboo: Neither word was necessary to describe taxes
Did Rep. David Trone, a Democrat from Maryland, have a Freudian slip?
I was sitting in a Creative Writing workshop with a group of people of varying ages, including a white couple in their 70s. They’d decided to return to college to get their undergraduate degrees. I hadn’t talked to them much, but I thought it was cool to see them earning college credits together.
That is, until it was time to get an evaluation on a few fiction drafts. Immediately, one of them spoke up about a “colored” character in someone’s story. I raised an eyebrow. The 20 or so people in our class looked unphased while the couple kept talking. I waited until they were done, held my index finger up to get their attention and gave them a hard stare.
“If you want to refer to African-American people, you can say ‘black’ or you can say ‘African-American,’” I responded. “Don’t call us ‘colored’.”
Jaws dropped. The couple looked at me, baffled, as though I’d attacked them. Even the teacher was silent. I was not surprised. This was one of a zillion instances I had on this university’s campus, and I had long ago stopped being quiet about it.
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I was in a town full of people who had never seen a black person within arm’s reach. In fact, a sizable amount probably only saw mugshots on FOX News. I stepped into class some days feeling like Pinocchio: “I’m a real black girl!”
In this couple’s case, they didn’t seem to understand that they’d used an antiquated term. But one white guy, a theater student who had something to say about everything, decided to repeat what I’d already said as if I needed a translator. I watched the couple somehow comprehend him saying it was an outdated term and nodding along. Meanwhile, they’d looked at me like I’d two-pieced them in both eyes. It is what it is.
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I thought about that couple while listening to Rep. David Trone, D-Md., during a meeting with President Joe Biden’s Office of Budget and Management (OMB) director Shalanda Young. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out how the word “jigaboo” came up while talking about profit and loss (P&L) and tax rates. That makes as much sense to me as calling black people “colored” or Cardi B. claiming she “went to them chitlin circuit.”
Yet, here we are with people acting like Google isn’t free of charge for a black history lesson. Entirely too many people have the option to self-correct and are still using words all wrong — or as intended.
While Trone later tried to defend himself and say he meant to use the term “bugaboo,” I’m having a hard time believing that one too. Who uses the term “bugaboo” in an average day in 2024? I’m a longtime “Destiny’s Child” fan, and I don’t think I’ve even used that word since 1999.