Respecting elders: Angelou clip sparks courtesy debate

Associated Press

NEW YORK -- Put a handle on it.

If you don't know what that means, you might not call elders by "Mr.," "Miss" or "Mrs.," insist that your children do the same or demand it for yourself. If you've heard the term, you're likely familiar with the history of the politics of respectability and what that means to some African Americans, pro and con.

Are you from the North or the South? A small town or big city native? From a religious, school or immigrant community that uses elder honorifics? Perhaps you're Professor, Doctor or Judge.

All of the above were widely debated on social media last week, focused on an old talk-show clip of the late Maya Angelou sharply chiding a teen girl for addressing her as Maya rather than Miss Angelou before asking the poet and memoirist for her views on interracial marriage.

Poet Maya Angelou smiles as she greets guests at a 2010 garden party at her home in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. How we address our elders and why set off a social media debate recently after a Los Angeles scriptwriter tweeted an old TV clip of Angelou rebuking a young woman for calling her by her first name.Nell Redmond ~ Associated Press

"I'm not 'Maya.' I'm 62 years old. I have lived so long and tried so hard that a young woman like you, or any other, you have no license to come up to me and call me by my first name. That's first," she said to claps from the audience. "Also, because at the same time, I am your mother, I am your auntie, I'm your teacher, I'm your professor. You see?"

Angelou, who was black, apologized later in the show to the girl, Kim, also black.

Pierre Phipps, who tweeted the snippet dating to around 1990, has heard from all sides since then, and said opinions were varied and plentiful.

The 29-year-old Phipps, whose Twitter handle is @PrinceCharmingP, can't remember where he found the vintage exchange when he tweeted it out March 14 with: "I can't wait to turn 30 so I can read one of yall for calling me by my first name like this:"

He told The Associated Press by phone Monday that he was surprised at the attention the tweet has received, especially among young people who disagreed with Angelou. She died in 2014 at age 86, and also favored the title Dr. in light of her numerous honorary doctorates.

"They think Miss Angelou's response was very elitist. They were really, really pissed about it," said Phipps, who lives in Los Angeles and writes for television. "We're living in progressive times and a lot of people said once they turn 18, they feel like they have an even platform no matter how old you are. History is no longer playing a part in how we go about our everyday lives. History is becoming history."

Phipps grew up in Chicago, but he has plenty of older female relatives from the South, including Mississippi and Alabama.

"It's an unwritten rule on respect for elders in which a lot of us were born and raised to 'put a handle on it,"' he said. "Me personally, coming from a strong black Southern family, I didn't see anything wrong with her response. Everyone is raised differently."

Carrie Salow is a 55-year-old mother of two girls in Phoenix, where she moved from Grand Rapids, Michigan, when she was 15.

"I absolutely expect my teen daughters to call their friends' parents Mr. and Mrs., and I expect the same," said Salow, who is white. "The kids who live across the street from us are now young adults, in and out of college. They still call me Mrs. Salow and I feel it is appropriate."

Valencia Bey, 49, was born and raised in Chicago and now lives in nearby Oak Park, Illinois. She spent most of her summers in Shelby, Mississippi, with her maternal grandparents and extended family.

"You just did NOT call elders by their first name," said Bey, who is black. "I was taught by folks who felt the way Ms. Angelou did. Addressing someone as Mr. or Miss was a sign of respect, especially those who came from the Jim Crow South, where calling a grown black person by their first name was a sign of disrespect. White people would purposely not call them Mr. or Mrs. or Miss to reinforce that they were considered inferior."

Against the backdrop of African American history, such honorifics are heavy indeed.

"Like Angelou, our elders have lived lives some of us can only imagine, especially if they grew up in a society that was founded on white supremacy," wrote Britni Danielle, in a piece about the tweet at Essence online.

"Often times, they weren't given the respect they were due by the outside world, which regularly sought to humiliate and dehumanize them at every turn. Those who did dare speak up and demand their propers did so knowing the price could be steep," she wrote.

The 55-year-old Lucy O'Donnell, with a nearly 18-year-old daughter and a 21-year-old son in Los Angeles, was raised in Arlington, Virginia.

"Two of my daughter's friends initially addressed me as Mrs., and I have to say I hadn't even given it a thought until then. I told them that they were welcome to call me by my first name but that if it was important in their households to address adults more formally that was fine, too," said O'Donnell, who is white. "Both switched to Lucy pretty quickly. The only tradition I can't abide is Mrs. and a husband's first and last name."

Danielle acknowledged young blacks responding to Phipps' tweet who thought Angelou was out of line, writing:

"We live in a time where some people don't really value the things and people who came before them. That's how we get shirts declaring, 'I'm not my ancestors,' or people looking to cancel dead Black writers like Angelou because they do not like an answer they'd given decades ago without understanding the context of the times."