Enough art and uplift

And enough half-baked ideas about Orientalism. Let’s talk about something that matters: Ebonics in the workplace.

I work in an office. I wear a suit most days, though occasionally I can pull off a skort or a jaunty Peruvian pancho because I’m “the creative.” I get away with quite a lot because of this. I can, for instance, show up late to meetings and beatbox with impunity.

In addition to other scintillating duties, my job involves sending countless polite email messages to people, nagging them until they do my bidding. As you can imagine, this can be quite tedious. Last week, for example, I had to write the following message:

Dear Bobby, I have not yet received a bill for the services you rendered in April. I am worried that you will not get paid in good time. Please send me the number of hours you worked for us and I will send you the money we owe you immediately. Many thanks, P.

Snoozefest, I know. I tried spicing things up a bit by using the handy Ebonics Translator, which Ebonifies my own boring, honky-ass emails. This, combined with a free graffiti font called "street soul" on dafont.com (which I read about on How about orange), created an extra special customized message. This has resulted in hours of fun-filled cultural insensitivity that will most likely get me fired.



Warning: I can't vouch for the linguistic accuracy of the Ebonics Translator - you might want to run it by a genuine black person first.