What is a Dap Greeting?
A dap greeting is a formal series of gestures exchanged between two individuals. Although a dap greeting can be exchanged upon meeting someone, it can also be used to indicate agreement, celebration, or fellowship at any time. The dap greeting originated in the black community, and has since spread to other racial groups, with many subcultures and groups of friends evolving their own very specific dap greetings.
At its most basic, a dap greeting is simply a ritualized handshake, but it usually includes a series of gestures, with the gestures being performed in a specific and choreographed order. Many people learn dap greetings very young, by watching and interacting with other people in their communities, and often such greetings are exchanged almost reflexively, much like businessmen shake hands when meeting each other. A dap greeting can include snapping, wiggling fingers, slapping hands, and other forms of contact, and it can last anywhere from a few seconds to 20 minutes.
This greeting is typically non-verbal, and it is exchanged as a gesture of affection and solidarity. Dap greetings probably originated in Africa, where people from different tribes might exchange such greetings upon meeting each other to indicate peaceful and friendly intentions, and they were brought over on slave ships. The African-American community in the United States in turn developed its own dap greetings, which were used extensively by black servicemembers, especially in Vietnam, before being carried over to the present day.
Some people believe that “dap” stands for “dignity and pride,” reflecting the adoption of the dap greeting by the black power movement, while others suggest that “dignity and pride” is probably a backronym, thought up after the fact. It may also be a shortening of another word, or an imitative sound reflecting a noise produced by a dap greeting; some dap greetings include a snapping sound which sounds much like “dap,” produced by pulling the slightly cupped hands of the participants against each other.
Among groups of friends or people in the same community, it is common for a distinctive dap greeting to evolve, and for such greetings to be exchanged on a regular basis. From the point of view of sociologists and anthropologists, the use of such greetings is very intriguing, as it can indicate solidarity, membership in a specific group, and social status, among other things.
Written by S.E. Smith
