Quote:
Originally Posted by RebelBelle  The rhyming chant is a relic from the civil rights movement. He didn't make it up on the spot or conjure it up just for this benediction. The man was reflecting on his history. I'm sure when he was chanting it back then, it was in future tense. He just repeated it as a memory to reflect on and see how far we have come. Unless we can talk to him and find out what he was thinking, I truly think it's unfair to judge his statements. |
Actually, after a bit of digging, this chant goes much further back in history. It was an intra-racial chant used by early african-americans most likely dating back to the slave days when the slaves were assigned duties based on how dark and light they were... i.e. the darker skinned slaves were given the worst jobs, while the lighter skinned ones got the premium jobs (field slaves vs. house slaves)
Here's a link that gives some of the background of the chant...
Big Bill Broonzy - Biography
Quoted in part...
"Is it possible, we wondered, if at least some of those words were inspired by Big Bill's lyrics for his song Black, Brown and White? Check it out: Black, Brown and White
We got a response from Chris Smith, blues researcher and author of 'Hit The Right Lick' a discography of Big Bill. He wrote:
It was an old rhyme in black oral culture before Bill and others changed the
subject from intra-racial to inter-racial color caste, by editing it. To
quote from a review of mine in Blues & Rhythm:
Big Bill abridges an old rhyme, which John Cowley suggests he may have got
from Zora Neale Hurston via Alan Lomax. In Hurston's Story In Harlem Slang
(American Mercury, July 1942), one pimp says to another: Man, I don't
deal in no coal. Know what I tell 'em? If they's white, they's right! If
they's yellow, they's mellow! If they's brown, they can stick around. But if
they come black, they better git way back! (Im indebted to Konrad
Nowakowski for this reference.)
Personally, I suspect that the first line originally started 'If they's
bright...' (light-skinned black) rather than 'white.' In other words, it
originally expressed internalized racism, as Brenda Dixon Gottschild notes
in Dancing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in
the Swing Eraš (New York, Palgrave, 2000; p. 135):
Internalized racism ensures that the values encapsulated in this vernacular
rhyme serve as an insidious, self-fulfilling prophecy:"
It's amazing to me what you can find on the internet now days...
