> > Violent Words in African-American Culture: Boyce Watkins and Michael Eric Dyson Discuss Hip-Hop at Brown University

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“Now Lonnie, you listen to me,” the cross-eyed woman screamed from the stairs.  “You stop referring to our people as ‘Boots,’ you hear me?  Don’t do it!  Don’t be giving that white man the immoral satisfaction of hearing you talking so common!  Can’t you see that that’s his only reason for letting you run your big mouth?  He’s the kind who likes to twist and turn everything a colored person says and does wrong-side out!  And if you’d stop running your mouth long enough you’d see it!  He’s just taking in everything you say so he and his friends can laugh about it!  He’s the kind that has so little respect for folks like us that if he sees us ladies being escorted a few times by different gentlemen he’ll be calling us prostitutes!  You know that!  And that’s because as far as our people go, he has a low-rating kind of mind…”