Review, Mel Watkins, On the Real Side: Laughing, Lying and Signifying--The Underground Tradition of African-American Humor That Transformed American Culture From Slavery to Richard Pryor (Simon and Schuster, 1994)

Columbia Missourian, July 31, 1994

 “Wouldn’t it be a hell of a joke,” the black comic Dick Gregory used to tease his white audiences, “if all this was burnt cork and you people were being tolerant for nothing?”

This line brings to the surface much of the underlying irony and complexity of African-American humor, not only in its gentle mocking of whites, but in hinting that much black comedy remains hidden behind masks. As Mel Watkins argues in this brilliant study of black humor from slavery through the modern period, the subordinate social status of African Americans has forced them to create a style of humor relying on subversion, allegory and indirection in the face of white dominance. At the same time, an underground comic tradition developed that adopted a more aggressive stance toward whites.

A brief summary cannot do justice to the scope and subtlety of Watkins’ survey. Much of the discussion of African-American history has focused on the extent to which blacks have resisted or accommodated themselves to white hegemony. But, as Watkins understands, the issue is much more complicated than this simple formulation, as the traditions of resistance and accommodation have historically coexisted and intermingled, not only in the black community as a whole, but often within individuals. Similarly, humor that signals a nuanced character-study in an all-black setting might become a one-dimensional stereotype in an interracial context.

The issue is further complicated by the different readings whites and blacks might give the same joke. For whites, this story of a slave and his master would serve as an example of black ignorance, while for blacks it would demonstrate the indirection and satire developed during slavery.

      “Pompey, how do I look?” the master asked . . .

      “Why, suh, you looks just like a lion.”

      “Why, Pompey, where have you ever seen a lion?”

      “I saw one down in yonder field the other day, massa.”

      “Pompey, you foolish fellow, that was a jackass.”

      “Was it massa? Well, suh, you looks just like him.”

As Watkins says, “The distinctive character of authentic African-American humor—sometimes ironic, evasive, and oblique, sometimes playful and purely entertaining, and sometimes aggressively militant—was well-established by the early nineteenth century.” But this brand of humor was not allowed into the larger cultural arena in unadulterated form. Minstrel shows, for instance, borrowed extensively in both form and content from black humor, but in the process created a one-dimensional caricature of blacks (portrayed by whites in blackface) as ignorant buffoons, which became the dominant cultural image. From then on, black entertainers who wished to enter the mainstream were forced to conform to this image.

In a series of fascinating character portraits, Watkins describes the ways in which a variety of artists, such as vaudeville performer Bert Williams and film star Stepin Fetchit, worked variations on this stereotype. At the same time, the underground tradition of black humor continued and often entered into the dominant culture in ironic ways. When the Amos ‘n’ Andy Show switched from radio to television, for instance, and the characters were played by black rather than white actors, it presented, Watkins says, “the most eccentric, vivid and authentic example of African-American humor that had ever been brought before an integrated audience.” Especially in Tim Moore’s portrayal of Kingfish—with his malapropisms (“Put your John Hamhock on dere”), constant scheming and hatred of manual labor—did the show tap a deep root in black folk tradition. “Moore’s Kingfish,” Watkins writes, “was not simply the trifling, scheming parasite that he is often made out to be; for many African-Americans, he mirrored an iconoclastic impulse that had lingered since slavery. In many ways he personified the irreverent trickster who refused to be contained or thwarted by a society that merely tolerated his existence.”

But not all black audiences celebrated the authentic folk humor of Amos ‘n’ Andy. Especially among the black middle class there has historically been a concerted effort to regulate the image of the black community that is conveyed to whites. For this reason, civil rights organizations brought pressure on CBS and eventually forced the show’s cancellation.

In the 1960s, the underground tradition of black humor began to emerge more fully into the mainstream. The popularity of Gregory’s cerebral satire, Bill Cosby’s infectious story-telling and Flip Wilson’s recognizable folk types signaled the variety and complexity of black humor. But not until the success of Richard Pryor in the 1970s did authentic black humor appear in the broader culture with a full and appropriate obscenity. Pryor, Watkins says, “was the first African-American stand-up comedian to speak candidly and successfully to integrated audiences the way black people joked among themselves when most critical of America.”

“Multiculturalism,” the historian David Roediger has written, “is not a fad hatched by plotting academics, but a profound reality in America’s past and present.” As Watkins shows, black humor has affected American culture deeply as a whole, though whites only gradually and reluctantly have come to recognize this influence. As Gregory once said, the “little things I knew as a Negro couldn’t be used until the public discovered them. They know about most of them now.”