![]() ![]() ![]() The action of the Galton whistle is based on the excitation of vibrations in a hollow cylinder, or resonator, by a stream of air flowing from a ring-shaped slot and impinging upon the sharp edge of the cylinder. Wait, that’s too offensive? Too explosive? Too dangerous to say in public? Whatever. Galton Whistle an acoustic radiator of the jet type in the frequency range from 2-3 to 40-50 kilohertz. I’m usually not a fan of franchise reboots, but maybe we should go back to the source material, where racists don’t have to twist themselves into bigoted little knots. It could be something as innocuous as “grits,” or something as arbitrarily specific as MUMFAs (Monmouth University MFAs). In 1876 an English scientist named Francis Galton introduced a whistle for testing the upper limits of audible sound in different persons. It emits a sound in the ultrasonic range, which most people do not perceive, but animals do. Anti-Blackness is limitless, so the pool of candidates to indicate the presence of Black people is bottomless. The silent dog whistle, or Galton’s whistle, was invented by Sir Francis Galton in 1876. Words are retired - when was the last time you heard “ghetto”? - to make room for others. A dog whistle is a political term about statements that appear innocent to the general public but they actually use subtle, coded language to communicate a. The dog whistle glossary updates every five years or so. (“Be careful when you go there.” “Why?” “That neighborhood gets a little, um, woke after dark.”) But now I’m mostly interested in what’s next. It would be fun if “woke” continued to shift and became a synonym for sketchy. WITHIN the last few days I have had the opportunity of making observations with Galtons whistle upon a large number of people and upon some cats. Fantasy franchise spin-offs “House of Dragon” and “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” are now “woke,” because apparently elves, hobbits and fire-breathing dragons are more believable than Black people in Middle-earth. A Black Little Mermaid? They took all the water out of the sea and replaced it with liquid, um, woke-ter. An NFL team hires a Black coach? Wokeness gone wild. It’s a bumbling linguistic jitterbug, where a historically Black place like Harlem wouldn’t be considered woke, but a politician from Harlem automatically would be. To them, the world is one big birthday cake, with a surprise crouched inside of it, ready to burst, and they’re expecting Kenny Chesney but they get Pusha T. Today, “woke” is mostly used by the right to signify the presence of Black people (or women) where they didn’t expect them to be. I’ve lost count of how many different euphemisms I’ve read and heard to describe, well, me.
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