the phrase comes from a famous poem written by langston hughes in the 1950’s:
Necessity
Work?
I don’t have to work.
I don’t have to do nothing
but eat, drink, stay black, and die.
This little old furnished room’s
so small I can’t whip a cat
without getting fur in my mouth
and my landlady’s so old
her features is all run together
and God knows she sure can overcharge—
Which is why I reckon I does
have to work after all.
that meme has become so rooted in american culture that its origins aren’t generally known. just an old black folk saying, the polar opposite of “free, white, and over 21” — one expecting, if not the worst, at least not much; the other expecting pretty much everything, and on a silver platter while you’re at it. there are no equivalencies to these phrases, for it’s gonna be all good if you’re black or it’s all gonna be bad if you’re white. (none that i know of, anyway — please chime in if you’ve got any.) (well there’s this one from the jews, who understand better than any other people the humorization of gloom & doom: “If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.”) stay black & die, these days, is most often shortened to stay black, and rings in the halls of ivy league schools as easily (if not as frequently) as it does in the welfare office.
yesterday in the health-food store, a conversation about obama’s berlin speech started up while we waited to pay for our soy milk (most of us, i’m pleased to note, having brought our own re-usable bags). all the chatterers were black except for me, a gorgeous young scandinavian woman, and carlos, the puerto rican proprietor of the store. we’d all voted for obama in the primaries and were pleased with the results of his european tour. the young woman was especially earnest about her feelings for the campaign (i might even use the term “worked up”) and, at the back of the line, like unruly schoolchildren, me and a big aretha franklin-looking mama were giving each other the wink and the nod, half enjoying and half infuriated by the extremes of this girl’s apparently untested idealism.
but it was carlos who nailed it, with a brand-new two-word meme, as she gathered her purchases and headed out of the store. “take care,” he told her, “stay blonde.”
we managed not to laugh until the door swung shut behind her.
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
LOL!
Jews also say, “It could always be worse”. When I was a kid, this was a rough equivalent.
We are united by taxes, as in the phrase, “Nothing is certain except death and taxes.”
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