Anybody who’s gotten hooked on J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series has likely rolled their eyes at some of the dialogue that emerges from the Brothers’s mouths:
“You feel me, true?”
“My boy’s got a major glow-on and I’m loving it.”
“So you know I like totally wanted to have sex with you, right?”
“Surprise, surprise cocksucker. Got me some fancy lead.”
“Right now you’re throwing off an aura like your ass is plugged into the wall. So I strongly encourage you to drop the I-am-an-island bullshit and get your sorry excuse for a personality into Rehv’s office before we have a situation. Dig?”
Yes, the Brothers (and the characters in the Fallen Angels series) speak in a language that is their own, but that doesn’t mean, as many interwebbed folks have said, that “The dialogue in this books [sic] felt more like a bad rap movie made in a fantasy ghetto land.” Or that the Brothers are “lily-white guys here playing at being thugs and acting all ghetto.”
To my mind, this is a racist assumption that should be more of a classist or socioeconomic assumption. Although of course racism continues to exist, when we say someone is “ghetto” what we really mean low class—not necessarily defined by race. But most people just make the racial, and not the class jump. While ’ghettos’ exist for people of any color, it is assumed that ghettos are inhabited by black people—and that the BDB is using black slang.
In emailing about this with another BDB fan, I wrote, “our country is not divided by race in terms of social structure (this is aside from the prejudice issue, which of course exists), but in terms of class—lower-class people, regardless of ethnicity, share certain vernacular traits. So the white guy whose pants are low-slung who’s saying the n-word has far less in common with me than you and I do, and we are of different races.”
My friend replied, “And, as an added note, no ’BROTHER’ would say shitkicker. So, apparently, they are half ghetto, half cowboy.”
Yes, the Brothers wear ’shitkickers’; drive Escalades; listen to Ludacris, Eminem, and Jay-Z; drink a specific type of liquor; smoke hand-rolleds; and beat the crap out of their enemies, all while speaking in certain shorthand to each other. That just makes them a brotherhood, small b, and not a Brother-Hood.
What do you think?
Megan Frampton is the Community Manager, Romance, for the HeroesandHeartbreakers site. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband and son, and wishes she could talk like a BDBrother without sounding like an idiot.
