1) Before hip-hop: the dap that became the bump

Long before sports broadcasters and campaign photographers turned it into a visual cliché, the fist bump lived inside a larger family of greetings known as the dap—a ritualized language of touch born among Black GIs in the late 1960s. In racially tense barracks and war zones, the dap encoded solidarity, mutual protection, dignity and pride, and sometimes substituted for the Black Power salute the military discouraged. (Smithsonian Folklife Center, National Museum of African American History)

Cultural historians and museums have documented how this repertoire of clasped hands, knuckle touches, chest slaps and “pounds” migrated home with veterans, becoming everyday Black vernacular—and a visual shorthand for unity. (AAIHS)

2) Hip-hop makes it visible—and “cool”

By the 1980s and 1990s, the dap and its simpler offshoot, the fist bump, were everywhere in hip-hop’s ecosystem: block parties, videos, backstage corridors, album shoots. Mass-market music TV helped turn that insider code into a widely legible gesture; a style writer tracing the “bro hug/bump” points to early rap videos and MTV’s amplification as key pathways from Black vernacular to mainstream cool. (British GQ)

Smithsonian curators, in their hip-hop collections and programming, likewise treat these greetings as part of the culture’s visual language—gestures that traveled with the music’s broader influence. (Google Arts & Culture)

3) June 2008: When a campaign fist bump met a cable-news panic

On June 3, 2008, Barack and Michelle Obama exchanged a quick bump on stage in St. Paul after he clinched the Democratic nomination. Within days, Fox News anchor E.D. Hill teased a segment by asking whether it was “a fist bump? a pound? a terrorist fist jab?” She apologized on air the next day; her show was soon canceled, and the phrase became a case study in racialized fearmongering and media illiteracy. (TIME, Los Angeles Times, Adweek, The Guardian)

The freak-out was culturally revealing. While museums and historians were busy archiving the dap/bump’s Black provenance, a mainstream outlet momentarily cast a routine, youth-coded greeting as alien—and menacing—when embodied by a Black candidate and his wife. Even The New Yorker’s July 2008 satirical cover leaned into the panic by cartooning the Obamas mid-bump amid a stew of right-wing smears, reinforcing how charged that little knuckle-tap had become. (The Guardian)

4) Normalization: hygiene studies, pandemics—and inevitability

The momentum toward normalization didn’t stop. In 2014, peer-reviewed research found the fist bump dramatically reduces bacteria transfer compared to a handshake; mainstream health outlets amplified the finding. During COVID-19, it graduated from “youthful” to prudent—AP even dubbed 2020 the year the fist bump went mainstream. (APIC, Los Angeles Times, Harvard Health, AP News)

5) After Obama: the right fist-bumps back

By the mid-to-late 2010s and into the 2020s, fist bumps were photo-op common across the political spectrum—including on the right:

• June 13, 2024: Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell shared a fist bump during Trump’s Capitol Hill visit—an image widely reported as a thaw in a frosty relationship. (NBC4 Washington, Axios)
• July 2022: Republican Senators Ted Cruz and Steve Daines fist-bumped on the Senate floor after blocking the PACT Act in a procedural vote—another viral instance of the gesture as conservative political theater. (Newsweek)

None of this means the same actors who maligned the Obamas later embraced the bump; rather, it shows how a gesture with Black and hip-hop roots was first pathologized in Black bodies, then normalized—and leveraged—once it read as broadly “cool,” casual, and telegenic. Even media retrospectives now credit Obama with popularizing the move for mainstream politics, evidence of how quickly the panic flipped to familiarity. (The Guardian)

6) What the trajectory tells us

The fist bump’s path maps a familiar American arc:

• Black innovation → hip-hop visibility → mass adoption (MTV era to pandemic pragmatism). (British GQ, Google Arts & Culture, AP News)
• Racial double standard: the same gesture coded as threatening on Black figures in 2008 now reads as relatable on conservative politicians keen to project informality and connection. (The Guardian, Axios)

In 2025, a fist bump is just a fist bump—until it isn’t. The history behind those knuckles is still there: a language born of danger and solidarity, carried by hip-hop, and—after a detour through cable-news hysteria—claimed by the very political corners that once cast it as suspect.

Sources & further reading (selected)

• Smithsonian Folklife: “Five on the Black Hand Side: Origins and Evolutions of the Dap.” (Origins among Black GIs; meaning of the dap). (Smithsonian Folklife Center)
• National Museum of African American History & Culture: “Giving Dap.” (Vietnam-era roots; gesture vocabulary). (National Museum of African American History)
• GQ (UK): “How the bro handshake-hug came to be.” (Spread into hip-hop and mainstream via music TV). (British GQ)
• TIME: “A Brief History of the Fist Bump.” (2008 campaign context; terminology). (TIME)
• The Guardian (2008): “Fox News anchor taken off air after Obama ‘terrorist fist jab’ gaffe.” (Incident, apology, program consequences). (The Guardian)
• Adweek/TVNewser (2008): “Hill Apologizes for ‘Terrorist’ Tease.” (On-air apology transcript). (Adweek)
• Washington Post (2021): “Believe it or not, Fox News once knew shame.” (Retrospective on the “terrorist fist jab” moment). (The Washington Post)
• The New Yorker (2010): “Cover Story: Approval Bump?” (Boehner/Obama “Bumped” cover—mainstreaming of gesture in political imagery). (The New Yorker)
• American Journal of Infection Control (2014): “The fist bump: a more hygienic alternative to the handshake.” (Peer-reviewed study). (APIC)
• AP News (2020): “A year where the fist bump became mainstream.” (Pandemic normalization). (AP News)
• NBC Washington (2024): “Trump returns to Capitol Hill ... cheers, cake—and a fist bump.” (Trump–McConnell bump). (NBC4 Washington)
• Axios (2024): “Trump, McConnell finally meet again, with a fist bump.” (Another report on the same moment). (Axios)
• Newsweek (2022): “Video Shows Republicans Fist Bumping After Blocking ...” (Cruz/Daines example). (Newsweek)