DogGONE!!

[Doug Harris]

>From today's LA Times, by a female black reporter from
Britain, who spent 14 months in New Orleans post-Katrina.
(Note the 'dog' reference in the second paragraph):

  "Our people be everywhere," Dwayne Holmes, a heavyset African American
16-year-old, said with a grin one day as he and his pals sat on a stoop on a
street in crime-plagued Central City.
  Holmes wanted to know whether black youth in England also called each
other "dog" as a term of endearment.
  For the most part, we have our own lingo, I told him.
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Is this a new usage? Being neither black nor what the quoted reporter refers
to as a New Orleanian, I have no idea if this "term of endearment" is one
that's been in use there a while, or if it's to be found elsewhere, too.
'Any insights, anyone?
(the other) doug

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