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The Development of African American Culture

Characteristics of Negro Expression by Zora Neale Hurston is a commentary on African American culture in which Hurston speaks with authority. She discusses the various ways in which African American culture differs from “white” culture in America and the reasons behind this. I particularly find interesting her discussion of the African American vernacular. It’s evident that America’s culture as a whole is an assortment of different cultures from throughout history since so many different groups of people emigrated or were brought against their will to America. Just as America’s current culture has so many different influences, African American culture seemed to be made up of many different cultures itself. An example of this is from the African American practice of Hoodoo, which Hurston studied in New Orleans. It’s a mix of Christianity and traditional African religions, combining together to form something entirely new. Another example of this is the rise of Jazz music in America, which originated in African American communities and was a blend of many different musical styles. What is interesting though is how African American culture developed in contrast to other ethnic groups in America. Africans were brought to America against their will and remained enslaved for centuries, so they could not pass as much of their culture on to future generations as other cultures could. This did not keep African Americans from developing their own culture though, as Huston points out. Many English words were modified over time to create an African American vernacular that is still used by African Americans today. What was able to be passed on though were stories, particularly folk tales. Hurston’s Mules and Men is a collection of these stories, and it’s interesting to see the common elements throughout. For one, there seems to be a recurring device where a weaker character overcomes a more powerful character using their wits. I wonder if this plot element has to do with the enslaved state of African Americans at the time, with the dominating white class being the seemingly unbeatable antagonist like in the stories.

The character of the “vagabond” or the “traveler” is not one unfamiliar to the works popularized in the Transatlantic period. As seen through characters like Gulliver from “Gulliver’s Travels” and Zora from “Mules and Men,” these characters who make the effort to leave the comfort of their previous environments for the sake of learning more about the world and cultures other than their own show the importance of learning through diverse experiences.

In the Introduction to “Mules and Men,” author Zora Neale Hurston discusses the story of her data and folklore collection of many different black cultures in the deep South during the 1930s. When discussing how she went about collecting this variety of folklore, Hurston stated that ” [t]he best source is where there are the least outside influences and these people, being usually under-privileged, are the shyest,” (Hurston, 2) meaning that the best people to collect this kind of information from were those who were the most uninfluenced by mainstream American culture. 

Many times in this class, we have discussed how significantly ideas surrounding race and racial identity dominated mainstream American culture and how based on that, certain people would or would not be able to participate in certain aspects of this culture. Additionally, this emphasis on ideas of race and racial identity also manifested in the cultivation of very harmful generalization and stereotypes of different races, specifically for black people. 

The only way in which people began to realize how subjective and complicated the black identity could be was through the writings of authors like Hurston who traveled in order to collect diverse data. By traveling through the South and collecting the folklore of these black communities who were not so much dominated by the racial stereotypes of mainstream American culture, Hurston was able to begin expanding and adding dimension to the black identity as well as break down the generalizations and the stereotypes that dominated mainstream American culture.

One part about the Banjo passage that interested me was how Banjo talked about how promising Europe is supposed to be, but has let him down because he is a Black man. Banjo came to Europe so he can form a band, and he also came for opportunities that he cannot get in America. I find it ironic that he thinks the “Old World” is his “New World” when he initially arrives. The narrator comments that Marseilles’s port is “marvelous, dangerous, attractive, big” (McKay 12), a place that seems like it is full of opportunities for Banjo. However, it is hard for Banjo to get a job because he is Black. The narrator comments “A Negro in Europe could not pick up casual work as he could in America” (65) which brings Banjo’s once optimistic attitude back down to reality. This statement affirmed some of my preconceived notions that I had before reading Banjo. I have never heard about African-Americans traveling outside the country in 1929, and I feel like there’s a reason for that. Although the State Department’s Passport History page does not mention racial discrimination in obtaining passports, I still believe there were other barriers (such as cost) that hindered Black people from getting passports. To see Banjo travel abroad taught me about Black Americans’ abilities to travel during this time, yet his inability to find work while in Europe affirms the reasons why most of them may have been hesitant to travel.

I also find the “Old World vs. New World” concept interesting. Banjo leaves the New World because he believes it’s not new enough: it lacked diversity and opportunity for Black people. However, the narrator comments that the “overworked Old World lacked a background that young rough America offered to a romantic black youth to indulge his froward instincts” (65), demonstrating that the Old World is called old for a reason. It’s ironic that most of the Old World abolished slavery before the US, yet was still lagging in social aspects like these. One of my main takeaways from this section of Banjo is that Black Americans were still met with discrimination across the Atlantic. This was not just an “Americas thing”, but a reminder that such discrimination was transatlantic as well.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s Characteristics of Negro Expression, I found the discussion of originality and imitation to be quite interesting in the context of the larger Transatlantic identity. The semester thus far we have struggled to define what Blackness is. I believe this is because there is not only one way to be Black. Blackness is an amalgamation of different experiences, cultures, circumstances, etc. that cannot be easily captured in a tangible way. In the case of early African-Americans, they were forced to shed practically all remnants of the cultures they came from, which led them to develop a new culture from their surroundings, which is all they had to go off of. They did not copy, but instead drew inspiration from the people and new cultures they were around. Hurston captures this phenomenon eloquently when she states, “While he lives and moves in the midst of a white civilization, everything that he touches is re-interpreted for his own use”(28). When we look at the grand scheme of things, we can see that everything is borrowed in some way from an earlier source, no matter how big or small. In that sense, we can think of everything as being both original and unoriginal at the same time. Culture is fluid, so the best thing we can really do is appreciate everyone’s innovations. To say that the Negro is “lacking in originality”(28) is another ignorant and hypocritical White supremacist tactic used to devalue and dehumanize Black people who managed to not only survive but thrive in the midst of their treacherous circumstances.
In a related fashion, I also really liked how Hurston reclaimed the term mimicry as a positive. It is not something done mindlessly but takes effort and intelligence. It also reminds me of the History, Memory, and Performance reading and the ideas of surrogation, displaced transmission, and the ephemeral nature of performance. Every time something is performed it is new; no two performances are exactly the same. With this in mind, I can ascertain that all mimicry has a form of originality.

Men at the mill making comments about Tookie Allen’s tight dress was very intriguing to me (91). Although they implied that she is inappropriate for wearing it, their comments also illustrate the infatuation with a Black woman’s body. This is reflective of a larger theme of objectification of Black women, wherein they are seen as objects of sexual pleasure or adornment rather than as individuals. For centuries, Black women were deemed as exotic and exoticized, which often led to the dehumanization of the Black female body. It also highlights the hypocrisy that Black people encountered in the past; although Black people were regularly degraded and considered ugly creatures, the same men at the mill were making comments about her curves with admiration. Additionally, Cliff Ulmer stating, “If you can’t show me nothin’ better than data, don’t bring de mess up,” insinuates that he has looked at so many beautiful Black women that he is not impressed at this point. This quote highlights the idea that many Black women have been objectified to the point that they are no longer seen as individuals, but rather as objects to be admired. Relating back to my last point, Black women were clearly hypersexualized although they were treated as less than human. This raised an interesting question: Did White men not realize the hypocrisy in their treatment of Black people? Black people were sought after, whether it be because they found Black women’s physical appearance or Black men’s physical capabilities. Overall, both quotes demonstrate the objectification of Black women, with the first highlighting the infatuation with a Black woman’s body. This emphasizes the dehumanization that Black women have been subjected to. They were often looked at as objects to be admired and objectified, exposing the hypocrisy that Black people dealt with in American society at that time.

This week we read two parts from the book Gulliver’s Travels: A Voyage to Lilliput and A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms. Both of these parts have to do with the main character Gulliver coming into contact with different, strange cultures and civilizations. In a Voyage to Lilliput, Gulliver comes into contact with a civilization of humans who are tiny and in A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms he discovers a race of intelligent horses who look down upon a deformed humanoid race that also lives there. Pinning down the exact themes of these parts was somewhat difficult. At the time, the European mode of thought was that Europe and Europeans were superior to the rest of the world and this theory were often used to justify racism and slavery. Ironically, Gulliver comes to hate humanity after coming into contact with the Houyhnhnms, believing them to have a perfect society. He sees more of himself and humanity as a whole in the Yahoos, the deformed humanoid creatures. In contrast to this, Gulliver is critical of the Lilliputians and their obsessions with politicking and trivial matters. Whether or not this was intended by Swift, it seems to shed light on the stupidity of racial superiority by commenting on it with humor and absurdism. Another interesting point that is connected to the other reading for the week, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass is the idea of innate evil vs corruptibility. While Gulliver Would not be considered evil, he goes from cheerful and optimistic in the beginning of the book to hating humanity and being a cynic toward the end. This would suggest that negative traits like these are Learned rather than innate. In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Douglass explains how when he was sold to a new master, his new mistress became Sophia Auld. He explains how she started off as kind but slowly turns cruel the longer he was her slave. This point sheds light on the corrupting nature of slavery And how racism isn’t innate but rather hatred and prejudice that is learned. Another interesting point which I think is related to African American culture today is how Douglass explains at the beginning of the book how he, and all the slaves he met, did now know their birthdays. Along with this fact, slaves were often separated from their families, particularly their mothers, at a young age. This shows how slaveholders essentially erased any sense of identity that slaves could have, since family heritage and their previous African culture could not be passed down when families were separated. I believe this was one of the causes of the developing of African American vernacular and African American culture as a distinct culture from that of Africa. 

At the beginning of the semester, we discussed the concept of the Irish “becoming white” in America. The concept is that Irish people were able to reap the benefits of white Americans by assimilating to American culture. This was made possible by their white skin and ability to blend in, something that African Americans couldn’t do. After reading “Black Irish, Irish Whiteness, and Atlantic State Formation” by David Lloyd, I understood other factors that influence this phenomenon. In the 19th century, Irish people faced discrimination from the British Empire. This had a lot to do with the industrial revolution and the emerging capitalist system in the British Empire. Most of the Irish population at the time were subsistence farmers, which contrasted with the growing urban, industrial system the British Empire needed to grow their empire and economy. Because of this, the Irish were viewed as “peasantry” and were said to have “wildness”, akin to savagery. Irish immigrants in England were said to be “infecting” the working class and were unfit for urban. With Irish immigrants in America, it was a story than in England. The growing industrial economy in America needed people who had no desire to expand westward and would work cheap and relatively low-skill jobs. The Irish fit this bill, which is one of the reasons they were more accepted into society: they supported the capitalist system at the time. In the reading, The Performative Commons and the Aesthetic Atlantic by Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Dillon also comments on how capitalism shaped many of the relationships and attitudes towards ethnic groups at the time and how the transatlantic system was built on colonization and capitalism. She notes that your identity in the transatlantic system was often decided by how you fit into the capitalist-colonial system. An example of this is that the Irish were viewed as lesser by the British since they did not support the growing industrial system of the time. Another interesting point is the similarities in how the Irish and African Americans were viewed by their respective oppressors. They were both seen as “unfit” to entire the emerging industrial society as free workers. They were both viewed as a “savage” race of people who would be dangerous if they fully entered society. Thomas Carlyle, a Scottish philosopher, comments that if black people in the Caribbean were set free, it would become a “Black Ireland”.

In my viewing of The Playboy of the Western World, I found myself shocked at how prevalent the idea of a “hero” was in the play. This is first seen in Christy’s introduction to the villagers of Mayo, when they view him as a hero as he describes his killing his father;they admire his physical superiority and view him as noble. Despite the fact that he did not truly possess all of the admirable characteristics the group projected onto him, he accepted this persona, and even romantically talks to Pegeen despite the fact that she is only truly interested in his hero-like persona. Despite his best efforts to mask his true identity, Christy cannot hide his lies forever—the fact that his father is still alive poses a major problem, but more than that is the fundamental impossibility to hide who one truly is. The play ends in the death of Christy’s heroic sham and all of the villagers turning against him.

Christy’s identity scheme featured in The Playboy of the Western World reminded me of in-class discussions of the Americanization of the Irish identity. As Prof. Mouton-Kinyon explained in class, some people adopt an Irish heritage without truly knowing any of its history due to a desire to be part of the group that is seen as “the underdogs” that can tell a triumphant story of all they overcame. In other words, these people long to be “a hero” just as Christy did. It is interesting to consider the ways in which we as a society enable this falsification of identity just as the villagers of Mayo enabled Christy from his first line of the script in the play. The play and conversations in class cause me to ponder how we can make space to acknowledge privilege and true identity in conversations about personhood, and even simpler than that, how we draw the line between who we are and who we want to be when describing ourselves. 

Playboy of the Western World shows the appreciation for challenging authority, and how that differs across the Atlantic. Christy Mahon stated that he killed his father as soon as he walked into Pegeen’s shebheen. I honestly thought that she was going to be scared and kick him out of her shebheen, but she let him stay. She wanted to hear his story and felt sympathetic towards him. No one else offered to turn him in at the beginning because they admired his father’s murder, who is an authoritative figure to Christy. Pegeen was not concerned with being arrested for harboring a fugitive, which shows she prioritizes challenging authority than following the law. Playboy of the Western World was written while Ireland was still under British rule. I believe that this play is a testament to how Irish people felt about authority at the time: that they were being wrongfully governed by a far away government. Throughout this play, they talk about the police as if they are distant figures and are not worried about them coming to the shebheen anytime soon. The citizens take matters into their own hands once they find out Christy did not kill his father, furthering that they do not need authority to execute justice. I believe that this reflects how many Irish people felt that they could govern themselves without British rule, which would culminate to their victory in the Anglo-Irish war years later.

However, such challenges to authority did not have the same outcomes in the US. When George confesses his love to Zoe in The Octoroon, he says that they would have to run away to be together because challenging authority here would have more drastic consequences. Zoe could have been killed for marrying the man that she loved, but Pegeen would not have been killed for that. The US government was not distant while the British government was in Ireland. These two plays show that challenging authority means different things in different countries. One could be praised for murder and get away with it in Ireland, while another could not marry the woman they loved if they were a different race without fearing being killed. Overall, I think Playboy of the Western World shows how people expressed their political values and how that is different from similar causes in the US.

The protagonist of John Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, Christy Mahon, is transformed into a local hero among Mayo for murdering his father. Whilst Christy does not personally view himself as a heroic figure as Christy is preoccupied with legal anxieties, Christy quickly understands that the story positions Christy as a legend. For the villagers, heroism is defined as an act of defiance against an authoritative figure, viewing the death of Christy’s father as heroic as opposed to murder. The villagers believe that Christy saved himself from a monotonous and tedious existence, which the villagers are unable to alleviate themselves from. The loy is employed as a symbol of Christy’s heroic elevation as the long spade, used traditionally for farming, represents Christy’s rural farming life, implying Christy’s ability to transform a tool of his toil into a tool of power and rebellion. Synge presents a close-knit community longing for a saviour figure, symbolised by Pegeen as a figure keen to accept and praise Christy.

However, Christy is juxtaposed with Shawn, who refuses to play the role of Pegeen’s protector. Pegeen casts away from Shawn once learning of Christy’s story, revealing Pegeen’s visceral desire for a heroic figure. However, once Synge reveals that Christy’s father is not dead, Pegeen and the villagers turn on Christy. The Playboy of the Western World explores the easiness of considering a story fantastical as opposed to real, highlighted by the mythical pedestal that Christy is placed upon. After Christy leaves Mayo, Pegeen is presented as distressed, illustrating Pegeen’s unwaning longing for a protective and heroic figure. Linked to the exploration of heroism, Synge presents the villagers’ attitudes towards authority. Christy is celebrated for killing Old Mahon, whom Christy describes as tyrannical and the villagers seem unconcerned about the legal repercussions of harbouring a fugitive. Whilst Christy is originally viewed as a worldly and authoritative figure, the villagers turn on Christy and Christy is saved by Old Mahon. Despite Christy trying to kill Old Mahon twice, Old Mahon is presented as Christy’s authority figure and Old Mahon’s saving of Christy presents authority as simultaneously oppressive and protective. The villagers conclusively remain ambiguous towards authority as whilst they are tempted by the prospect of defying authority, they concurrently desire the security that authority provides, fearing the potential consequences of authority figures turning against the village.