Sure. Black American people are culturally a creative, quick, witty people with an incredible eye and ear for forming original and intuitive tacts (or names) for a meaningful or indicative set of frequently occurring behaviors or image.

It is common in...[next tweet]
#THREAD https://twitter.com/MinerveC/status/1247324196084027392

...It is common in African American Vernacular English to take a proper name & generalize its usage from being an individual tact to being a general tact, a name unique to some significant marker of the ppl that do the behaviors that the generalized form of the name will describe

And not only that -and this is where the cultural creativity and wit and impeccable ear comes in - the names selected will often be so perfect at conjuring the associated mental image that it not only FEELS perfect but it's humorous in how perfectly the name conjures the image.

And sometimes the name selected is drawn from something.

So, in the Baby Got Back music video, the snot-nosed jealous culturally ignorant White valley girl is talking to a girl named "Becky".

I've got a Black cousin named Becky, but Becky is still more commonly used in White culture. Very distinctly used in White culture.

(White people bristle at this very benign truth bc that would mean they aren't just individuals but a group of people with shared group behavior...

...which is a feature of humans that White culture historically uses to dehumanize and per usual is just one of countless examples that demonstrate that Black people know White culture better than White people bc of generations of not being able to survive if we ignore it.)

But I digress, back to Becky.
So Black folks took the use of Becky from that iconic Black music moment- the Sir Mix A Lot video from a simpler time in history before White women adopted the cultural practice of appropriating our Black butts and just mocked us for them in disgust.

Black folks took that hilarious Black music moment that showed White girls behaving negatively toward Black folks in a common White way AND COMBINED IT with that uniquely White culturally common name and BOOM - "Becky" becomes an efficient way to describe an image and behavior.

But there are more.
'Cause Black folks can do this for days.

Cletus - when comically referencing an extremely old fiesty Black man, usually a mental image of one with a body kind of bent whose threatening to fight. lol

I've heard previous generations use "Ms. Anne" - think the movie "The Help" type of White woman or mistress during slavery

And do I know Black Annes? Yep. But I also understand when it's a term.

SOCIAL MEDIA causes Black American INTRAcultural nuances to be heard/seen publicly.

African American Vernacular English is EFFICIENT (humorous to us and creative) if it's nothing else.

The generalized usage of these names is a type of benign BETWEEN-BLACKAMERICAN-FOLKS short hand for specific sets of behavior + significant physical/cultural markers/images.

"Ms. Daisy" definitely got generalized within Black American culture from the film, Driving Ms. Daisy.

Sometimes the cultural names used by Black folks are idiosyncratic and random in the moment, i.e., not universal but still understood. It's truly just a linguistic behavior. A Black person might randomly use a common Hispanic or Asian name to refer to a Hispanic or Asian person.

"Lorena was throwing down in the kitchen!!!"

"Alright, Jesus! Wit his fine self!"


Sometimes we will just throw out any name. Lol
Not racist. The names are distinctly or strongly associated w Hispanic culture and the person being referred to is Hispanic. Dassit.

So if I heard a Black prsn say something like that, use a name in that form, it SOLEY means that the person that's being referred to is Hispanic/Latinx. Nothing more.

It's merely a way of giving the listener a significant detail in the story, compressing it into a singular word.

See, Black American people are not afraid of culture and cultural differences in the way White folks are. And it is not a Black American cultural feature to exact violence on other racial/cultural designations. So this Black American linguistic practice is not born of power.

Though the generalized usage of a name, the transformation of a name from a name to a term, is often used by Black Americans to DESCRIBE or allude to racial power dynamics.

The Black American linguistic practice of using a specific cultural name in a generalized form is not only not racist, but not exclusively used for White people. It's also DESCRIPTIVE, not derogatory.

Again African American Vernacular English is EFFICIENT.

And on point.

Hence, #Karen.