Except for the beast fables, which are anciently derived from the world's multi-racial heritage, American Negro humor is rooted in... social oppression. And--again excepting the animal fables--it differs from classical Western and white American humor in another respect. It is totally devoid of those myth-making and myth-transmuting elements and symbols that appeal so deeply to the American mind in the works of the tall-tale tellers such as Davy Crockett, Seba Smith, Mike Fink, and Mark Twain. There are no Rip Van Winkles, Johnny Appleseeds, Paul Bunyans, or Calamity Janes--and none bearing the faintest resemblance to them--in Negro American humor. The myth-making figures in the literature of black Americans are the blues-haunted characters. They are Stagolee, John Henry, and Big Boy; they are Mary Lou, Frankie, and Sister Caroline. And they are not funny, least of all to the nameless hundreds of folk-Negroes who created them and the still-living thousands who love them and perpetuate them in song and story.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Only the white, tremendous foam of the street has any importance, The new white flowers that are beginning to shoot up about ...now.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Other men wear white suits in summer and it doesn't seem to bother them. But my white suit seems to be a little whiter than theirs.... I think also that it may have something written on the back of it, although I can't find it when I take the suit off.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am so tired of taking to others translating my life for the deaf, the blind,... the "I really want to know what your life is like without giving up any of my privileges to live it" white women the "I want to live my white life with Third World women's style and keep my skin class privileges" dykesLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... two great areas of deafness existed in the South: White Southerners had no ears to hear that which threatened their Dream. And... colored Southerners had none to hear that which could reduce their anger.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... as a result of generations of betrayal, it's nearly impossible for Southern Negroes to trust a Southern white. No matter what ...he does or what he suffers, a white liberal is never established beyond suspicion in the hearts of the minority.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Jefferson Smith: If you thought as much as being honest as you do of being smart ... Diz: Honest? Why, we're the only ones wh...o can afford to be honest in what we tell the voters. We don't have to be re-elected like politicians.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Jefferson Smith: I hate to stand here and try your patience like this, but either I'm dead right or I'm crazy. Senator MacPhe...rson: You wouldn't care to put that to a vote, would you, Senator?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »