Revolution Televised.pdf

10 Reading the Roots of Resistance
surreptitiousness and trickery were the principal defenses against
repression, and humor played a key role in this deviousness. 21
The two sides of black humor were rarely combined during slavery
and Jim Crow because of the obvious possibility of violence.
During slavery, African storytelling, involving animal and trickster
tales and folk humor, though often misinterpreted by the white
mainstream culture, actually held the seeds of African American
humor. 22 These forms of oral culture often related the incongruities
of American society. “[M]any of these animal tales depict the triumph
of physical weakness, hypocrisy, mischievousness, trickery,
and cunning over brute strength and guilelessness.” 23 Less covert
tales were those of the trickster, who, although not always idealized,
was often regarded as a hero who outwitted his master and
was able to gain rewards or freedom. Signifying and satire were
present in African American society, but they were publicly veiled.
White people were not privy to the criticism of mainstream society
often expressed in these forms.
The public image of African Americans as inherently happy,
frequently singing and dancing, was often created from a mode of
interaction necessary to literally survive adversity in pre–Civil War
America. Often African Americans performed dances such as the
cakewalk for the white plantation owners. White owners were
so pleased with the entertainment, they failed to realize that the
mode of dress and exaggerated displays of airs and graces were a
critique of white society. As a slave maxim notes, “Got one mind
for white folks to see, ’Nother for what I know is me.” 24 There is
much evidence that songs and dances were methods of protest and
often used as signals for escape and insurrection. 25 White America
embraced this image—the slave as naive, simple, and essentially
happy, which allowed in part for the enduring justification of slavery.
African Americans saw themselves ridiculed and distorted in
mainstream popular culture through forms of minstrelsy and blackface.
Minstrelsy was known for the mimicry of black dialect and
the stereotypical physical characteristics—huge eyes, wide mouth,
painted lips—the essential lack of intelligence of the characters, and
the notion that they were happy with plantation life.
African Americans participated in this form of entertainment
when they rose in popularity as blackface minstrels at the end of
the nineteenth century. Ironically, African Americans also became