The Obamas dapping each other up became the topic of much conversation, as people tried to figure out what it meant (including this Baltimore Sun story that happens to include PostBourgie’s first shout-out — no promo).
At first Ia little surprised at all the attention people paid to it. As Ta-Nehisi said, it’s one of those things that a lot of us do countless times during the day.
That said, the very fact that in all the instances where whites have claimed giving dap is common involve athletics is telling. Black folks give each other dap in all sorts of instances–not just competition. I may give my man a “fist-bump” (arrrgggghh!!! it burns!!!) because my fingers are greasy, because I’ve got something in my hand, or just because I feel like it. In fact, one of the more awkward moments in black life occurs when two brothers greet each other and one isn’t sure whether to use the open hand or the closed fist. You can end up with some pretty awkward exchanges–like shaking a dude’s fist. Anyway, the place where “dap” is most likely to be transmitted to other ethnicities is in athletic competition. So the mere fact that many of the cats who are questioning its origins are citing their encounters with dap in competition kind of makes me think I’m right.
When I got my first job around white folks, in the mid-90s, I had to stop myself from shaking my co-worker’s hands every time I saw him, as was normal among the brothers. This has changed over the years, I think, with black culture going mainstream. So when I was working at TIME, for instance, I had some white friends who I shook hands with every time I saw them, because they were acculturated. Others I didn’t because they weren’t. But I shook hands with every brother I saw, whenever I saw him for the first time during the day. And then maybe again during the course of conversation. And then maybe again when I left. It just depended.
In high school, I had separate pounds for the cats I went to school with and the cats I worked with at Chick-Fil-A* after school.
But consider how much scrutiny given to the Clintons when they’re on the stage, with onlookers trying to divine all kinds of subtext from the couple’s body language. Is she mad at him? Is he disinterested? Early on in the campaign, there were entire nightly news segments on how he was positioned in relation to her. Was his chair on the stage lower than hers? Whose stump speech was longer? Was it clear that it was her campaign and not his? (Part of this was just trying to keep the Big Dog reigned in as he has been known to steal her shine and relegate her to hype-woman status; he turned out to be a problem this time for reasons that had nothing to do with any of that.)
The Obamas, of course, come to the national stage with a different backstory than the Clintons. But the Clinton psychodrama had loomed large over everyone who has followed them on the road to the White House. Remember Al Gore tonguing down Tipper at the Democratic National Convention in 2000? Was that not a see-i-love-my-wife-unlike-my-predecessor moment? It seemed forced and phony. ** George W. Bush and Laura Bush are equally formal with each other, though i could sorta see the Frat Boy-in-Chief giving her a chest bump.
Michelle Obama herself has said she bridles at a lot of the strictures she has to operate within in the role of The Candidate’s Wife. I’m inclined to think the dap was just a reflection of her normal behavior — she initiated it, after all — and the kind of private exchange that they always have that happened to play out in an historical moment. That doesn’t mean they’re more ‘real’ than those other couples. It only means that they’re still relative political novices and haven’t yet had all their human edges worn smooth by their notoriety. I doubt we’ll be seeing too many more pounds in the future from them.
*I’m a vegetarian now. Make of that what you will.
**But maybe they’re just stiff like that.
