Rebellion.
Resistance.
Remix.
According to the internet, the phrase and habit of saying, ‘Good Morning’ was started with a business owner wanting their workers to come to work and start the day happier than they appeared.
The equivalent of ‘you’d look better if you smiled’. Underneath that for women who hear it from men, read: ‘I’d feel better if you smiled’…because of COURSE they would after years of our oppression.
If you’ve been noticing, lots of black folks have adopted a different way to say that they are starting their day with a positive attitude - and they hope you do too.
GRAND RISING, fellow earthlings.
I overheard a conversation between two white people the other day. They were confused - discussing something they’d heard regarding where the phrase began - they thought that black folks were confused about the two words:
morning
and
mourning
They started on their academic and ethnically forensic take on how since ‘mourning’ is what we do when people die and ‘grand rising’ should be a rebellion to the idea of ‘good morning’ and can’t be. That it’s so grammatically incorrect, it must’ve been uneducated folks that don’t know the main difference between those words are homophonic. They went on and on discussing that folks who created it just wanted to be rebellious and did so not knowing technically how to do so effectively - you know, in proper English with sound grammar in place.
I didn’t chime in right then and there. I let them talk.
The most educated of black people will stand in solidarity with any idea in rebellion to old white rules, aware of how technically incorrect any of our additions to the urban dictionary may be, still, they willingly join in.
It doesn’t matter, the ignoring of homophonic technicalities and grammar rules.
What matters most to all of us is the social rebellion of all things old and white in our construct, some would say for good reason. The resistance to old white rules established long ago for the purposes of social control and shutting out anyone not of the Euro and Anglican ilk…that’s the idea.
Resurrection of a spirit that felt dead for so long is the idea. Rising to the challenges of a new American identity, or at least the attempt at creating one, is the point.
Lots of examples of this exist if you pay attention and we will continue to be dissected against the old English ideal. But the undercurrent of an ‘underground-grammar-railroad’, breaking today’s black America free from the required social code switching to date, helps you hear so much more than just a new positive phrase.
Rise in a grand way, above what the old way intended. My 60+ year old black friends smile unprovoked when they say it to me - and it means so much more than ‘Good Morning’ ever would.
It is their way of saying ‘Hey Tasha, all this and still we rise. They still want us to just fall in line. Don’t. Here’s another day for you to continue where we may not live to finish the work. You have African royalty in you. Fix your crown and block the noise, my dear. Rise.’
I don’t actually know all the ins and outs of where the phrase began and I don’t claim to. I just love what it means to black people. I just feel good saying it back to black folks that say it to me. It’s the best remix of an old staple that I’ve heard in a while.