Revolution Televised.pdf

Reading the Roots of Resistance 9
sions, and wage work, and in many cases they housed an alternative
culture that placed more emphasis on collectivist values, mutuality,
and fellowship. 18
Out of necessity and camaraderie, these spaces became key locations
for African American life. 19 The history and development of
African American humor serve as a sound example of the workings
of these sites.
Slavery set the stage for the form and content of African American
humor. In his book On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying and Signifying,
the Underground Tradition of African-American Humor . . . ,
Mel Watkins examines African American humor from slavery to
the 1990s. Just as the underlying motivations of uplift are concerned
with the way the white world sees the black world, a similar
process works within the context of black humor, according to
Watkins’s observations. He draws upon the ideas of W. E. B. Du
Bois, who suggests that African Americans operate with a
double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self
through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of
a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels
his twoness,—an American, a Negro: two souls, two thoughts, two
unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose
dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. 20
Seen in this context, black humor’s trajectory and significance
can be situated around this duality: one type of humor in the mainstream
public and another, private, humor used within all black
settings. Both were operational in order to maneuver through the
hostile American terrain. A division must be recognized between the
societal view of blacks as inherently humorous and black humor.
African Americans could be seen as humorous once they were
contained within certain roles, ones implicated in childishness and
naïveté. However, an ironic, realistic, sarcastic, and satirical black
humor was reserved for the black community. As Watkins argues,
African Americans . . . assume[d] dual social roles: one for a hostile
white world, the other the natural demeanor they reserved for interactions
among themselves. Humor was a crucial factor in dealing
with a situation. In interactions with whites, it eased tensions that
might otherwise have exploded into violence. . . . In the privacy
of completely black settings, black humor was more acerbic . . .