The second phrase of this version of “eeny meeny” ends with what sounds like a nod to popular TV personality Liberace, an extravagant white, gay virtuoso classical pianist, but it actually masks a 1970s Black power chant. Even in children’s games, as an interview with the Harvard Law professor Randall Kennedy expressed, “it would do more harm than good to turn away from its history and its destructiveness.” Let us not be naïve and make ourselves invulnerable to the perils of the past. The song continued: “If he hollers let him go. “Eeny meeny miney moe” used to be followed by a line about catching a Black person “by its toe,” only a racial slur was used. ” This game-song signals, and simultaneously subverts, the racist history of the chant. Take this popular hand-clapping chant:Įe-ny mee-ny pepsa -deeny oo-cha- cam- ba-lini At-chi cat-chi li-ber-atchi I- love - you, tu-tu, sham-pooĮmbedded in the first phrase “eeny meeny pepsadeeny “ is a remnant of the nursery rhyme “eeny meeny miney moe. But their play has deep cultural meaning.
While we bend our ears toward boys who bust a rhyme, we tend to dismiss what girls say as nonsense. There’s no airplay broadcasting stereotypes about teenage parenting or fears of getting pushed out of school by a system that tends to criminalize their cries for help. Girls’ musical play ignores the antipathy toward Black lives that were typically represented in the media in the ’70s (and beyond).