Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
Do you know Black people? Do you speak to the Black people who you know? Are you Black? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions then there is a better than 100% chance that you’ve heard the phrase, “Aight, so boom” or its horizontally challenged cousin, “so boom” at the beginning of a story — any story — about anything. There’s something about the DNA of melanated individuals in African America that requires a flair for the dramatic; think of “Aight, so boom” as punctuation at the beginning of a sentence to let you know that the sentence to follow will be colorful.
But how did we get here? Why did Black people start saying “Aight, so boom?” And do we use it for stories that aren’t good? (Doubtful.) In my experience, “Aight, so boom” is a statement that lets me know the story that follows is going to be awesome and worth my time, attention and participation. There are no stories that start with “Aight, so boom” that allow you to listen quietly; the ancestors are going to beckon you to punctuate silences with ad-libs that even Jeezy would appreciate. That’s right.
I asked some Black people I know about their thoughts on how we got to this phrase and no two people had the same answer if they could even offer an answer at all; some of us are way more creative than others. But the more I thought about it, I realized there was a possible origin for the phrase that makes all of the sense:
Black railroad workers blowing up sides of mountains. Aight, so boom … hear me out.
Imagine you’re out there working in the mountains of West Virginia blowing holes into the sides of mountains with dynamite (or whatever was used to blow up things back when railroads were being built and run through mountains). All day long, you heard a loud and tremendous boom all throughout…
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