opinion

Opinion: Who Dey has a troubling history

Jason Haap is a lifelong educator, and he lives in Mt. Airy with his wife and two sons.

Who Dey! As recently pointed out by an Enquirer feature (“Who Dey?” Dec. 6), the phrase is an adjective, a noun, a pronoun, a verb, an adverb, and even a beer! What a lot of people don’t like to discuss, however, is that the phrase might also be just a little bit racist – a detail made even more burdensome given the context of our current culture wars (where even attempting to have such a conversation can lead to ideologically loaded accusations of “political correctness” gone awry).

To really get at the origins of Who Dey, one needs to think of the whole Who Dey chant, paying close attention to the other words: “Who dey think gonna beat dem Bengals?” Do you see what words I’m talking about? Maybe this becomes more obvious when we consider the nearly identical chant from the New Orleans Saints: “Who dat say dey gonna beat dem Saints?”

Look for the d-words: “dey,” “dat,” “dem.” What are they doing in there? The words should actually be “they,” “that,” and “them” (though, admittedly, “Who They” doesn’t quite have the same appeal). Though I studied linguistics and African American literature in college, I’m pretty sure most of us need no background in either of those things to see the relationship here: dey, dat, and dem are versions of they, that, and them typically found in Black English, or Gullah, or Creole English, or Ebonics, or any number of English dialects tracing their roots back to African language. Our beloved chant imitates Black English.

The history is easier to trace in New Orleans, where the phrase “Who Dat” was a mainstay of minstrel shows since at least 1898. In fact, when the Saints won the Super Bowl in 2010, the New Yorker ran an article entitled “The Strange Case of Who Dat,” addressing the issue head-on, acknowledging the phrase’s history in minstrel shows while also concluding it’s not racist to say at football games. I’ll leave those kinds of conclusions for the reader to decide.

Even the Enquirer’s story seems subconsciously to dance around the edge of this issue - once again as demonstrated through interesting word choice – even if we (as collective Cincinnatians) are not ready to address the topic straight away. In her feature, reporter Carol Motsinger wrote that the phrase “would fit right into the pews of a church. It’s call-and-response.”

“Call-and-response,” for those who remember their history (especially their music history), comes from African culture and was brought to the New World during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. “Who Dey” does invoke a sense of call-and-response, and that’s because it is a phrase that approximates Black English, likely tracing it’s roots back to New Orleans and minstrel shows at the turn of the 20th century.

That minstrel shows were an embodiment of racism is obvious to everyone these days. But is it appropriate for a stadium filled with mostly white people (some of whom consume lots of alcohol and paint their bodies black and orange) to chant “Who Dey”? I’ll leave that for readers to consider. Whatever your conclusions, history is history, and we should remember it when we can – which is what disappoints me the most in The Enquirer’s recent feature on this piece of potentially troublesome Bengals trivia.