WASHINGTON, D.C.—The stereotype that black Americans are always loud at movie theaters may actually have an explanation.

Warwick Pugh, Chief Researcher at the Washington Academy for Tracing Colored History (WATCH), recently shared his preliminary findings, which link the uncontrollable urge to shout at movie screens all the way back to the time of slavery.

“You see, when we colored—excuse me—blacks—I mean African-Amer—I mean—I—when we attend the cinema and we see someone in danger, our natural instinct is to warn them. You know, ‘Don’t go in there! Pick up that knife, dumbass!’ See, it’s the same mentality that we had as slaves when we would warn the master of trouble, even if it was against our best interests.”

Pugh did not explain how he could scientifically corroborate his claim that the psychological makeup of today’s black Americans is consistent with that of their antebellum ancestors. But he did invoke the wisdom of Malcolm X to support his hypothesis:

“It’s the same paradigm that Malcolm X explained in the 1965 about the ‘house negro’ mentality of taking on the illness and misfortune of the slave master, ironically using the royal ‘we’ to address these matters. So today, the need to identify with larger-than-life characters on screen elicits those feelings that our descendants often espoused. Therefore, it is apparent that the act is beyond their—our—control.”

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has publicly endorsed this theory, but believes that it shouldn’t justify the effort to curtail such behavior, especially in the company of those who are made uncomfortable by it. A spokesman for the NAACP went on to say that shouting at the screen is on a long list of other funerals planned for the coming year to follow their burial of the N-word in 2007.

Other NAACP funerals planned: du rags outdoors, pants on the ground, sizzurp and the ‘stanky leg’.