I wrote last week about my Early American Literature class. This week, I’d like to mix it up and write about my other class: Advanced Studies in 20th/21st Century American Lit. The title is worthless because it basically means that so long as the majority of the literature covered comes from America during those eras, anything is fair game. The specific topic is at the professor’s discretion.
My professor this semester has decided to focus the course by asking a guiding question:
Is there a particular type of character that pervades African American Literature?
This character, he postulates, is the “smooth operator”: the archetypal smooth operator is one who “outfoxes the fox,” one who finds a creative solution around a confrontation rather than facing it with brute force.
To answer this question, we have read everything from Critical Race Theorist to slave narratives to folk tales. We even watched a Richard Pryor movie. All the time keep our eyes out for this sly, clever, or ingenious character.
One place the professor draws for this archetype is Richard Wright’s “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow.” in the penultimate paragraph, Wright writes:
There were many times when I had to exercise a great deal of ingenuity to keep out of trouble. It is a southern custom that all men must take off their hats when they enter an elevator. And especially did this apply to us blacks with rigid force. One day I stepped into an elevator with my arms full of packages. I was forced to ride with my hat on. Two white men stared at me coldly. Then one of them very kindly lifted my hat and placed it upon my armful of packages. Now the most accepted response for a Negro to make under such circumstances is to look at the white man out of the corner of his eye and grin. To have said: “Thank you!” would have made the white man think that you thought you were receiving from him a personal service. For such an act I have seen Negroes take a blow in the mouth. Finding the first alternative distasteful, and the second dangerous, I hit upon an acceptable course of action which fell safely between these two poles. I immediately-no sooner than my hat was lifted-pretended that my packages were about to spill, and appeared deeply distressed with keeping them in my arms. In this fashion I evaded having to acknowledge his service, and, in spite of adverse circumstances, salvaged a slender shred of personal pride.
Wright, Richard. “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow.” 1937.
It is this kind of ingenuity that we are looking for in black characters throughout literature. Finding the “acceptable course of action” that falls “between these two poles” of aggression and debasement.
Our inquiry brought us to The Tales of Uncle Remus, specifically the stories of Brer (brother) Rabbit.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Uncle Remus Tales, they are folk tales collected by Joel Chandler Harris. He claims that he learned these tales from older slaves when he was a young boy. In his introduction, Harris asserts that he researched the old and new world heavily and wishes “to preserve the legends themselves in their original simplicity” and to save them from their “intolerable misrepresentations of the minstrel stage” (Harris 3). Whether or not Harris’s claims are genuine or not, his stories do express a level of authenticity in their representation of African American folklore.
However, his representation of Uncle Remus (“Uncle” being a phrase used to refer to a middle-aged slave who has earned a modicum of status) is a bit problematic. According to Harris’s description, Uncle Remus is
“an old negro who appears to have lived during the period which he describes – who has nothing but pleasant memories of the discipline of slavery – and who has all the prejudices of caste and pride of family that were the natural results of the system”
Harris, Joel Chandler. “The Tales of Uncle Remus.” 1881. Page 11.
Let me highlight a phrase there “nothing but pleasant memories of the discipline of slavery” I think you’re pulling somebody’s leg, Mr Harris.
Too often people refer to Harris’s dialect as the reason that these stories are “racist.” But even early paragons of African American lit like Paul Laurence Dunbar and Charles Chesnutt wrote in dialect for a time. It is a product of a bygone era. But what is more problematic is the concessions Harris made for his audience. Which is a South still licking its post-slavery wounds trying to reinvent the slave-structure with sharecropping and the precursors to Jim Crow laws. For them, Harris’s free negro who is still loyal to his owners even after his freedom with fond memories of the oppressive system is just what the confederate doctor ordered.
According to my professor, one component of the “smooth operator” archetype is an acknowledgement of the performance that most interpersonal engagements are composed. When you meet someone new, you perform a bit. You, most often, are not trying to reveal all of your personality at once. You are feeling out how much of your true self you can be with this new acquaintance. This is magnified in the interactions in which race comes into play. Especially during this post-slavery era South.
We can then read Joel Chandler Harris’s representation of Uncle Remus not as a racist portrait of black people. But as an accurate representation of the performance that many black people at the time were putting on in front of white southerners. White southerners at the time wanted to see black people who confirmed their beliefs that slavery was all that bad. To think or act differently would have been cause for hostility. To circumnavigate that, many black people played along in order to navigate their new environment. (This is all from my lecture notes)
Enter Charles W. Chesnutt. The Conjure Woman is structured similarly to the Uncle Remus Tales. Though, in Harris’s tales, Uncle Remus is conveying the stories to the young son of the white family to whom he is “loyal.” In Chesnutt’s tales, Uncle Julius is telling various folk narratives to a white couple who is looking to buy the land he has been living on. They attempt to purchase the land and make a profitable living from it. His tales are told during various interactions in which he attempts to preserve his way of life. He lives off the land. For instance, the husband and wife wish to cut down a tree to make a kitchen table or counter top, I can’t remember which. This prompts Uncle Julius to tell a story about a love struck couple whose deaths involved the tree. And the scorned woman of the couple haunts the tree they wanted to cut down.
Uncle Julius is obviously motivated by self-preservation to tell tall tales. Whereas, Uncle Remus’s tales are not. Uncle Remus does not directly benefit from his storytelling as Uncle Julius, who ends up getting employed by the family as a grounds keeper, does.
Chesnutt, a half-black man, represents his Uncle character as a type of “smooth operator” who circumnavigates a problematic scenario in which his livelihood is at stake. Harris, a white man, represents his Uncle character as a folksy and quaint novelty.
A metaphor I like to think about in this question of representation is that Harris is like an audience member of a play who is trying to write a novel about what it is like to be an actor. Chesnutt is an actor who decided to write a memoir.
This is not to say that we cannot see smooth operating in the Uncle Remus tales. Quite the contrary. In the sequence of Tar-baby stories, Brer Fox catches Brer Rabbit in a tar trap. While trapped, Rabbit pleads with Fox not to throw him in the brier patch in an act of reverse-psychology.
‘I don’t keer w’at you do wid me, Brer Fox,’ sezee, ‘so you don’t fling me in dat brier-patch. Roas’
me, Brer Fox,’ sezee, ‘but don’t fling me in dat brier-patch,’ sezee.
” ‘Hit’s so much trouble fer ter kindle a fier,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘dat I speck I’ll hatter hang you,’ sezee.
” ‘Hang me des ez high as you please, Brer Fox,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘but do fer de Lord’s sake don’t fling me in dat brier-patch,’ sezee.
” ‘I ain’t got no string,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘en now I speck I’ll hatter drown you,’ sezee.
” ‘Drown me des ez deep ez you please, Brer Fox,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘but do don’t fling me in dat brier-patch,’ sezee.
” ‘Dey ain’t no water nigh,’ sez Brer Fox, sezee, ‘en now I speck I’ll hatter skin you,’ sezee.
” ‘Skin me, Brer Fox,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘snatch out my eyeballs, t’ar out my years by de roots, en cut off my legs,’ sezee, ‘but do please, Brer Fox, don’t fling me in dat brier-patch,’ sezee.”
Harris, Joel Chandler. “The Tales of Uncle Remus.” 1881. Page 30-1.
Ultimately, Fox does throw Rabbit into the brier patch which allows Rabbit to escape his clutches. Rabbit declares as he runs away
Bred en bawn in a brier-patch, Brer Fox – bred en bawn in a brier-patch
Harris, Joel Chandler. “The Tales of Uncle Remus.” 1881. Page 31.
Brer Rabbit, and by surrogacy Uncle Remus, is claiming that there is something about the nature of his upbringing that has made him a trickster, a smooth operator.
We can, and my professor we argue we should, say that the nature of black life is one of performance. Not that others don’t perform, but that people in minority positions (people of color and women), because of the history of events and representation, must be aware of that performance of all time. He reads privilege as not needing to acknowledge the performance of life. That a person of privilege does not need to act in such a way that uses the performance to their advantage because the performance will play out somewhat smoothly regardless of their acting.
I would take the argument a step further and say that those of us that operate without acknowledging the performance contribute to the perseverance of the need to perform. If we all acknowledge the performance more consciously when we act around each other, we can then offer each other grace that the performance structure itself does not allow for.
Handful of Broken 