150 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the Presentthemselves on those folk characters, blacks deepened their
sense of expectation that they might eventually surmount
their social marginalization.
Historically, white scholars acknowledged the Brit-
ish and Anglo-American infl uences on African American
culture and yet ignored the enduring power of African and
Caribbean culture on African Americans. In 1941, scholar
Melville J. Herskovits asserted that this oversight (which he
termed “the myth of the Negro past”) was a major factor in
the continuation of racial prejudice. To counter that per-
spective, Herskovits identifi ed a signifi cant number of Af-
ricanisms (African cultural survivals) in African American
culture. Subsequent scholarly studies advanced general un-
derstanding of the considerable extent to which black folk
culture has infl uenced mainstream American culture.
African American culture can be divided into three
main categories: oral (verbal) folklore, customary (behav-
ioral) folklore, and material (physical) folklore. Th e most
renowned aspect of black folk culture is the African Ameri-
can oral tradition, particularly folk tales and songs. Blacks
have told sacred and supernatural tales (creation legends,
ghost stories, folk sermons, testimonials, and preacher
tales) and secular tales (morality tales, trickster tales, and
jokes). Rural as well as urban blacks have favored two types
of tales: trickster tales and jokes.
Th e trickster fi gure long held a crucial if ambivalent
role in African American oral tradition. Borrowing from
the trickster traditions of Africa (where tricksters took on
human, divine, or animal form), blacks especially valued
tales involving animal trickster fi gures. Th e ultimate goal of
the trickster was to subvert the corrupt and divisive moral
conventions and the established order that originally en-
forced those morals. Fearing reprisal if they freely conveyed
their grievances, slaves told tales that employed animal
characters in substitution for human characters. Trickster
animals, such as Brer Rabbit, symbolizing blacks, ultimately
prevailed in interactions with more powerful animal char-
acters (which, of course, represented whites). A cycle of re-
lated non-animal trickster tales, told in the years aft er the
Civil War, concerned the ambivalent relationship between a
fi ctional slave named John and his master. In these stories,
John struggles to overcome his subservient position in rac-
ist plantation society by covertly subverting the stereotypes
thrust on him by his white master.
African American jokes oft en took the form of com-
petitive verbal games, which tested an individual’s verbalmobility (close proximity to other varieties), increases the
ability and likelihood of code-switching. Code-switching
may also be a choice where speakers decide whether to
switch based on personal choices of inclusion or exclusion
(from the majority).
Black English is socially stigmatized. Individuals,
whether consciously or not, elevate the language of the
perceived dominant group simply because it is dominant.
Given that Black English is the language of a historically,
socially subordinated group in the United States, it is oft en
negatively viewed. Negative judgments about intelligence,
personal character, and status are oft en inaccurately made
about speakers of Black English. Th ese negative percep-
tions about speakers of Black English are frequently used
punitively in educational and professional settings, with
speakers of Black English receiving negative consequence
for using the dialect.
See also: Africanisms; Gullah; Turner, Lorenzo Dow
Shurita Th omas-TateBibliography
American Speech-Language Hearing Association (ASHA). Posi-
tion Statement: Social Dialects. Rockford, MD: ASHA, 1983.
Green, Lisa. African American English: A Linguistic Introduction.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Labov, William. Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black
English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1972.
Mufwene, S. S., Rickford, J. R., Bailey, G., and Baugh, J. African
American English: Structure, History and Use. New York:
Routledge, 1998.
Rickford, John. African American Vernacular English: Features,
Evolution, Educational Implications. Oxford, England: Black-
well Publishing, 1999.
Black Folk Culture
While blacks in America long struggled against white so-
ciety’s eff orts to keep them powerless, black folk culture—
from the days of slavery through the Jim Crow and Civil
Rights eras—off ered blacks a vehicle by which to confront
the white power structure. For instance, African American
ballads and tales portrayed human heroes (such as John
Henry or Shine) who challenged or resisted—and antihe-
roes (such as the slave John in the “John and the Master”
story cycle) who outsmarted—white authority. Modeling