Can’t Classify This

Written By: Giselle Y.H.

A little boy had read numerous stories in his children's books about different life and death struggles between a Man and a Lion. But no matter how ferociously the lion fought, the Man emerged victoriously every time. Puzzled, the boy asked his father: "Why is it, Daddy, that the Man always beats the Lion, when everybody knows that a lion is the toughest cat in all the jungle?" The father answered, "Son, those stories will always end that way…until lions learn how to write." John Oliver Killen calls this the Black Man’s Burden.

 Let us ask the question: if the lion learned to write, how would his story sound? The lion loses every time, so would his side of the story misrepresent what actually happened, framing the lion (and all lion-kind) as victorious, or would it be honest and humble in defeat? Would it be angry and bitter or humorous, laughing through the loss? The answer: it would be all of that—and more. The lion's tale is the tale told by Black folks, and there is no body of work richer and more informative, exciting and entertaining, tragic and painful, humorous and healing, provocative and unnerving, universal and distinctive.

The themes of these tales are not simply stated, nor easily differentiated by genre or style. They can be an amalgamation of genres and styles, and many are oxymoronic in their combinations. In the etiological tales—those that explain how things came to be as they are— a surface reading might lead one to believe that these stories make fun of the Black man and woman's physical attributes, poverty, and laziness. These stories can be seen as the Black personae operating in an absurd situation created by White values, hypocrisy, and prejudices with introspective and reflective eyes. As Paul Laurence Dunbar so eloquently said, "We wear the mask that grins and lies, it hides our cheeks and shades our eyes." The etiological tales are parodies of myths with Black folk, ostensibly, as the butt of the joke. With proper awareness, however, we see that the real targets of ire are the racist structures America was built on and continues to perpetuate.

The following folktale exemplifies the Black Man’s Burden, told as a joke:

The Mojo

Adapted from Richard M. Dorson’s American Negro Folktales

There were always the times when the white man was ahead of the colored man. In slavery times John had done got to a place where the Marster whipped him all the time. Someone told him, “Get you a mojo, it’ll get you out of that whipping, wont nobody whip you then.”

John went down to the corner of the Boss-man’s farm, where the mojo-man stayed, and asked him what he had. The mojo-man said, “I got a pretty good one and a very good one and a damn good one.” The colored fellow asked him, “What can the pretty good one do?” “I’ll tell you what it can do. It can turn you to a rabbit, and it can turn you to a quail, and after that it can turn you to a snake.” So John said he’d take it.

Next morning John sleeps late. About nine o’clock the white man comes after him, calls him: “John, come on, get up there and get to work. Plow the taters and milk the cow and then you can go back home— it’s Sunday morning.” John says to him, “Get on out from my door, don’t say nothing to me. Ain’t gonna do nothing.” Boss-man says, “Don’t you know who this is? It’s your Boss.” “Yes I know— I’m not working for you any more.” “All right, John, just wait till I go home; I’m coming back and whip you.”

Well, then the white man he falls against the door and broke it open. And John said to his mojo, “Skip-skip-skip-skip.” He turned to a rabbit, and run slap out the door by Old Marster. And he’s a running son of a gun, that rabbit was. Boss-man says to his mojo, “I’ll turn to a greyhound.” You know that greyhound got running so fast his paws were just reaching the grass under the rabbit’s feet.

Then John thinks, “I got to get away from here.” He turns to a quail. And he begins sailing fast through the air— he really thought he was going. But the Boss-man says, “I will turn to a chicken-hawk.” That chicken-hawk sails through the sky like a bullet, and catches right up to that quail.

Then John says, “Well, I’m going to turn to a snake.” He hit the ground and begin to crawl; that old snake was natchally getting on his way. Boss-man says, “I’ll turn to a stick and I’ll beat your ass.”