What up, bro? What's good, brah?
This is the chant of the bro, an equally parodied and celebrated genus of young men. (They've been designated "bros" mostly because, well, they say "bro" a whole lot.)
The usage of "bro" as a term of endearment isn't new, obviously. (As the indispensable Know Your Meme points out in a useful short history, people have been abbreviating "brother" this way for centuries, although its iteration as a synonym for "friend" — or more accurately, "friend-dude" — is much more recent.) Over the past decade or so, though, "bro" has evolved into a shorthand for a specific kind of fratty masculinity. Baseball cap with the frayed brim (possibly backward), sky-blue oxford shirt or sports team shirt, cargo shorts, maybe some mandals or boat shoes. Y'all know who we mean. These cats right here.
The other day, the Code Switch team fell into a winding conversation about bros, as we're wont to do regarding all sorts of seemingly trivial topics.
After a Code Switcher described a person of color as being a bro, some of us wondered whether the description even made sense. Uh, weren't bros fratty white guys? Could dudes of color be bros independently of white bros? Or are they just like That Brown Friend in all those beer commercials — bro-y due to his social proximity to white bros?
Is bro-ness, well, raced? We asked folks to conjure up an image of a typical bro in their mind's eye. What race is that dude in your head? Most people nearby said that guy was probably white.
We tossed the question out to Twitter.
[50+ screenshots of all the responses is available on their site.]
