Fred Cassidy

Fri Nov 3 08:26:17 UTC 2006

Wilson,

When a friend of mine and I were doing fieldwork in Trinidad many years ago
my friend who was classified as Black in the US had an interesting
experience. He has very light skin and was in a bar one day and accused of
being a dirty Portugee bastard.

That night he wrote his mother a letter in which he said essentially, "Mom,
you will not know what happened to me today. I was discriminated against
because I was White."

I have seen a reference to Johnny Otis which said that "he went Black"
which, of course implies the fact that Black and White are social
categories.

His most famous song is

Willy And The Hand Jive

 I know a cat named Way-Out Willie
Had a cool little chick named Rockin' Billie
Made a heart of stone Susie-Q, doin' that crazy hand jive too
Papa said "You will ruin my house.
You and that hand jive have got to go''
Willie said "Papa, don't you put me down,
Been doin' that hand jive all over town.''
Hand jive, hand jive, hand jive, doin' that crazy hand jive

I don't want you to get on the floor
Gettin' low, getting down with sister go
Come on, get baby, little sister'll die
Said doin' that hand jive one more time
Hand jive, hand jive, hand jive, doin' that crazy hand jive

Doctor getting low and he getting check
Now they're all digging that crazy beat
Way-Out Willie gave 'em all a treat
Been doin' that hand jive with his feet
Hand jive, hand jive, hand jive, doin' that crazy hand jive

Willie and Billie got married last fall
Had to live with his sisters and that ain't all
Daddy got famous it's plain to see
Been doin' that hand jive on his knees
Hand jive, hand jive, hand jive, doin' that crazy hand jive.

I didn't know until many years after I first heard this song in the 1950s
that Johnny was White and not Black.

A friend of mine who is a White Canadian recorded that song some years ago
and added one verse among others which he wrote which goes as I recall,
"Way down yonder in Baton Rouge. Got no sleds, ain't got no luge."

Does that make it a White song or is it still Black in spite of the fact
neither author was Black.

Johnny's son Shuggie is considered to be Black although he has as much
claim to being Greek as Black which brings up the problem of Tiger Woods
who is nothing if not of mixed parentage and in turn what about any
children Tiger might have with his wife who is a blonde Swede as I recall.

As a person who has very light skin cancer prone skin I am classified as
being White but who knows if I don't have a "taint of the tar brush" in my
past which in cultural terms in the US would classify me as Black because
you have to remember that no matter how many White ancestors you have if
you have only one Black ancestor this makes you Black and since my
ancestors probably raped many women I would be amazed if I didn't have a
Black ancestor if only on the ground of probability.

This in turn brings up another aspect of this problem:

Neandertals, Modern Humans Interbred, Bone Study Suggests
Ancient bones from a cave in Romania add fuel to the theory that modern
humans
absorbed Neandertals through interbreeding instead of out-competing them to
...
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/10/061030-neanderthals.html

A friend of mine who is a physical anthropologist once said on TV that he
knows what happened to the Neandertals because every time he looks in the
mirror he sees one of their descendents and believe me when I tell you that
if you ever saw him he knows of what he speaks, and we used to kid him
about being the only physical anthropologist who knew first hand what
Neandertals looked like.

One taint of the tarbrush in the US and you are considered to be Black but
one taint of the pink and you are considered to be Black.

In other words these are social categories in the US, and you can't win for
losing.

After all isn't a Jew always a Jew if they have jewish ancestors no matter
whether they believe in the existence of Yahweh or not unless they "try to
pass"?

Was Karl Marx a Jew?

Of course not. He was an atheist but that does not stop people from calling
him a Jew as if it was a racial category rooted in some imaginary
culturally defined reality.

Enough said.

Page Stephens

> [Original Message]
> From: Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Date: 11/3/2006 12:16:16 AM
> Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Fred Cassidy
>
> Thank you for your reply, Joan. I should have made clear that I have
> seen pictures of Professor Cassidy and my impression has always been
> that he was a white man. But, of course, looks mean nothing, once a
> person is born with a sufficiecy of European features. Otherwise, I
> wouldn't have been motivated to question M. If he'd been a black man
> of such stature, I would have expected to see him featured in an
> article in _Ebony_, as Johnny Otis, Jennifer Beals, Mariah Carey,
> Tiger Woods, Paula Abdul, Johnny Mathis, etc. have been.
>
> That's an interesting question, Larry. The answer turned out to be
> [+Jewish], in the case of that guy, Allen, whose father used to coach
> the L.A. Rams, you may recall.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 11/2/06, Joan H. Hall <jdhall at wisc.edu> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
-----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       "Joan H. Hall" <jdhall at WISC.EDU>
> > Subject:      Fred Cassidy
> >
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
---
> >
> > If you'd like to see a photo of Fred Cassidy, go to the DARE web page
> > (http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/dare.html) and click on "Tribute to
> > FGC" on the left.
> > The following is from my obituary for Fred in the 2001 volume of
> > /Dictionaries/:
> >
> > "On his mother's side, Fred descended from the Gomes-Casseres family in
> > Kingston, a branch of the Portuguese Gomes family that had taken refuge
> > from the Inquisition by dispersing to France, Holland, and, in the 17th
> > century, to the New World. The marriage of Manuel Gomes and Isabel de
> > Caceres yielded nine children, one of whom settled in Curacao. He in
> > turn had ten sons who became widely known as 'the ten Gomes Casseres
> > brothers,' whose business enterprises spread throughout the West Indies.
> > One of those brothers, Fred's grandfather, settled in Jamaica."
> >
> > Fred moved from Jamaica to Akron, Ohio, when he was eleven, but he spent
> > many months in Jamaica later when he was working on the /Jamaica Talk/
> > (1961) and the /Dictionary of Jamaican English/ (1967, with Robert
> > LePage). When he was in his eighties he took his son and family to
> > Jamaica for a visit; while looking around in a fairly deserted cemetery,
> > he was accosted by a young Black man who tried to rob him. Fred's
> > facility with the Creole had never left him, and he chewed the fellow
> > out, saying his mother would be ashamed of him. The man fled.
> >
> > Joan Hall
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
> --
> Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
> complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
> Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
> a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
> race. He brought death into the world.
>
> --Sam Clemens
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org