On "sauntering" blacks

[Wilson Gray]

ed. I may *be* an unconscious "African-American saunterer." How does
one recognize it.Is there a definition in Wikipedia or an example on
YouTube that I might read or look at that will school me as to what
"African-American sauntering" is, from The White Man's point of view.
I try to avoid the stereotypical, in the presence of The White Man, at
least, lest I disgrace the race. Give a brother a break, "why don't
you?" to borrow The White Man's form of tag-questioning.

It's very strange that I've managed to walk for nearly three-quarters
of a century, yet have no clue that what I may be doing is the
"African-American shuffle, so that, all of this time, The White Man
has been snickering behind my back thinking, Will you look at that?
Will The Nigger ever learn to walk naturally, as We White Men do,
instead performing the "African-American saunter"? Indeed, I had no
idea that "sauntering" was wrong, except when The White Man does it,
or that there was a manner of "sauntering" in any way stereotypical of
The Colored. I'll give you "shuffling." A long day in the fields or in
the steel mills probably would erase the spring from one's step. But
trying to make some random form of walking that The White Man defines
as "sauntering" specific in any sense to blacks whatsoever is either a
failure to grasp the meaning of the word, "racism," or a purposeful
assignment of yet another form of *racial* wrongness to The Other in
an act of conscious     "racism."

Well, maybe I should see what the definitions of "sauntering" and
*racism" provide by the OED. It is, after all, compiled by The White
Man for The White Man to suit The White Man's taste. There may be
something in those definitions which is simply beyond the grasp of a
mind corrupted by African genes. As South Parks's Jimmy says, "Do you
know this? Have you heard this one?" There's atheory currently
proposed that would relieve Euuropeans of the full weight of the
Out-of-Africa theory.

Needless to say, this wouldn't be the first that a similar move has
tried. Dekkids ago, Carlton Coon of Harvard proposed to account for
The White Man's superiority by means of a theory of differential
evolution; the Nordic variety of European Caucasoid was the first true
_sapiens_ to evolve from The Missing Link. The Negroids were the last.
Hence, The White Man has merely been the beneficiary of an
evolutionary head start over the other so-called "peoples" of the
earth. Given enough time, We may be able to raise Them to Our level.
Of course,

Youneverknow.

As it happens, this theory didn't get enough traction to take off,
even though it was everywhere. I read about it in TIME.

As chance would have it, a close, personal friend once dated a
daughter of Prof. Coon. According to him, the Coons are still stunned
and hurt that CC's theory did not become the standard, given that it
supplies a scientific explanation for the fact that some people are
naturally superion to others where it counts: mind over muscle.

But, needless to say, you people do but jest, WRT this
"African-American saunter" thing, of course. Who could possibly take
such an asinine concept seriously? After all, Ron doesn't take it
seriously and it's long been known that, though Ron may laugh and
joke, he *does* not play. That is to say, it's not his habit to
concern himself with triviality.

-Wilson

On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 12:55 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: On "sauntering" blacks
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The whites sauntered too in the 18th century:  In Hawthorne's "My
> Kinsman, Major Molineux", Robin sees that "travelled youths,
> imitators of the European fine gentlemen of the period, trod jauntily
> along, half-dancing to the fashionable tunes which they
> hummed."   (MKMM is set in two conflated periods, the 1730s and the 1760s.)
>
> The source of African-American sauntering?
>
> Joel
>
> At 5/29/2010 01:08 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>I believe there was brief discussion here a while ago of whether the
>>sauntering walk of some 20th century African-Americans has a
>>precedent.  See Gary B. Nash's _Forging Freedom: The Formation of
>>Philadelphia's Black Community, 1720--1840_ (1988), p. 219:  In
>>contrasting the respectable, white-emulating upper class with the
>>"mass of black city dwellers", he writes: "Some of them spoke in a
>>southern dialect, drank and gambled, dressed flamboyantly, sometimes
>>ran afoul of the law, and affected a body language---the sauntering
>>gait, unrestrained singing and laughing, and exuberant dancing---that
>>set them apart from 'respectable' black society."
>>
>>Nash does not give a specific date for this description, but context
>>puts it between 1790 and 1830.  And lest one ascribe this
>>characterization to a white, 20th century intellectual,
>>African-Americans of the period wrote similarly about lower-class
>>blacks.  (See writers of the "elevation" movement.)
>>
>>Joel
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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