sharing

[Wilson Gray]

Those are the words as I was taught them in 1950. Having to learn this
song and perform it in public, in costumery and accompanied by a
dance, of which both were based upon Native-American motifs - i.e., as
though the Zulu were a Native-American people - and, hence, had
nothing whatsoever to do with the Zulu or any other sub-Saharan
African people, was an example of one of many such asininities horrors
foisted upon us cullud chirrin by well-meaning but stone-ignunt white
folk, back in the day.

Needless to say, I hate the song.

In those days, the Union of South Africa (U.S.A.) was just another
country and Joseph Marais and Miranda [sic] were a singing duo (man &
wife? brother & sister?) and the U.S.A's primary cultural ambassadors,
starring on a South-African radio program broadcast on some American
network, that, among other things, provided lessons in Afrikaans,
which thereby became first foreign language that I ever tried to
learn, when I was ca. eight years old.

When TV became available, JM&M often appeared on the tube. Though I
can't recall what shows they were on or any other songs that they
sang, I do remember:

A-round the corner
Ooh-ooh!
BE-neath the berry tree
A-long the footpath
BE-hind the bush
Lookin' for Henry Lee!

Why this should be the case, I have *no* idea. By that time, I knew
what the Union of South Africa was, thanks to TIME, LIFE, and the
National Geographic and, IAC, I've never particularly liked the song,
even looking at it simply as a folksong and abstracting away from any
connection that it may or may not have had with a political system.
But, as the Electric Light Orchestra once sang:

I can't get it
Out of my mind
No, I can't get it
Out of my mind
Oh, no, no, no, no, no!

Another oddity: one of the mags published a photo of Miss South Africa
in a bikini. She was, for some unknown reason, on display, as it were,
in a supermarket. Among those in the crowd, near enough to touch her
body, were several male _kaffirs_. This was absolutely astonishing!
Under segregation, not only would no male person whatever, whether of
known, admitted, or claimed black ancestry, absolutely *not* have been
permitted to approach a semi-nude white woman closely enough to touch
her, but also, most likely he wouldn't even have been permitted to be
in the same building or even to look at her! "Reckless eyeballing" was
a lynching offense in the South, in those days. It's strange that this
was no problem for the practitioners of apartheid.

In Boston into 'Eighties, even the most casual glance by a black man
at a white woman would call forth a perfect storm of "What the fuck ah
you lookin' at, neiga?!" and other invective from any
non-academic-class white men who happened noticed it.

Once, I went to some random public gathering whose purpose I've
forgotten with one of my roommates, an American-Jewish M.I.T.
undergrad of Rumanian ancestry and Halle-Berry-ish complexion. The
whites were not fooled for an instant. Cat-calls of "salt-'n'-peppah
team" and worse rang out from all corners, before we could even get
out of the car. I had assumed that a person of ambiguous race in the
company of someone clearly of one race would assumed to be also of
that race. That's the way it works among blacks.

One time, at the bookstore at UC Davis, I cave across a fellow-student
of ivory complexion, blue eyes, European features, and wavy auburn
hair. The percentage of black students at Davis being even lower than
the percentage at Harvard, I assumed, without giving it a second
thought, that he was white. Until he came over to me, shook my hand,
and said, "Hey, bruthuh! Hwuss hap'nin'?" (Anybody who speaks
Ebonically - or in any other form of AmE, for that matter - _in black
voice_ is normally accepted as black, regardless of appearance, by
other black people. The above-mentioned roommate once asked, Wouldn't
it be wicked weird if I could  speak BE and I went to The Berry
(Roxbury, Boston's primary black neighborhood) and commenced to get
down with the colored people? (On the local news, a man had been
interviewed in a man-on-the-street who looked stereotypically white,
but who sounded stereotypically black. It was amazing!) She couldn't
get it when I tried to explain that what makes you black among black
people, beyond mere physical appearance or anything else, is the use
of black voice, whether you're using down-home, country "flat talk" or
standard English. If you use black voice (BTW, thanks to Ron for
introducing me to that felicitous term!), your eyes are brown, and
you're darker than Diahann Carroll, who cares whether your brunette
"good" hair, without extensions, *naturally* falls *straight* to the
middle of your back and your features are Mediterranean? Use black
voice among blacks and, even blond and blue-eyed, you're black.
Period.

Reminds me of a mirror-image line from a movie in which a Jewish guy
is trying to explain to his Gentile associate why the Jews can't keep
taking his Christian ass along as they flee the Nazis (the guy is a
total dork who has no concept of what the situation is whatsoever and
thinks that the Jews have simply become bored with life in Budapest or
some such):

Among goyim, you can be a yid, but, among yidn, you can be no yid.

or words to that effect. It's all that they can do to save their own
asses. They simply aren't able take the weight of someone who really
has no problem beyond the loss - permanent; but, of course, no one
knew that at the time in which the movie is set - of the companionship
of his Jewish buddies.

Or, as an Angeleno more straightforwardly put it to visiting writer
for the Boston Phoenix:

Look, man, I don't have time to fuck with the people that I *already* know!

-Wilson

On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 2:11 PM, Mark Mandel<thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: sharing
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 1:57 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Mark: one hell of an emoticon. Do you use it often?
>>
>
> Nonce; and I wouldn't call it an *emot*icon, either. Stancicon? The Motie
> mediators would have a word for it.
>
>
>> Add spear for "Zulu warrior."
>>
>
> With the lyrics: "Ai kama zimba zimba zayo, Ai kama zimba zimba zi." (From
> Marais and Miranda, by ear.)
>
> m a m
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
-Mark Twain

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