So I was coming down here sharing information with my family and making connections with some young Gullah Geechee people who are doing similar work. And this is before I was like, “I want to go to school for this.” I was just making connections.
“Y'all say this, we say this too.” “Y'all be eating rice. This is what we eat, and we all eat the same food.” “We say the same things.” The environment is the same. I started making those connections.
I was saying “Gullah” before, but then when I said “Geechee,” and they said, “Oh..”
Something clicked.
And they were like, “Yeah, we get you, but a lot of people don't want to be Geechee because that has such a negative thing.”
And I asked my mom, “Why does the word Geechee have such a negative connotation?”
She said, “Nobody wants to be Geechee here. They want to be bougie.”
