Riddley Walker
10-10-2007, 11:33 AM
Think of all the hate there is in Red China,
Think of all the hate in Selma, Alabama.
Is that lyric from "Eve of Destruction" old and outdated enough to be thought quaint? Or old and obscure enough to have been forgotten or be entirely unknown to most people?
What about these lyrics?
I don't feel no ways tired
I come too far from where I started from
Nobody told me that the road would be easy
I don't believe he brought me this far to leave me
That's from an "old Negro spiritual", as it is universally described. It was quoted by Hillary Rodham Clinton in a speech to an African-American congregation in Selma, Alabama last March. But as recently as September nationally syndicated columnists were still citing it as evidence of HRC's insensitivity. Walter E. Williams accused her of mimicking black dialect in a way insulting to her audience. But in fact, she received cheers and applause from that audience who recognized the hymn and knew (and in some cases personally recalled) its importance in the civil rights struggles of the sixties in Selma and in the rest of the South. The great Fannie Lou Hamer sang it every where she went in those days and was instrumental in both the Freedom Summer actions and in challenging the (ready for this?) national Democratic Party over the proper representation of Mississippi's black population at the 1964 convention. That particular event was a sore point between Southern Blacks and the Democrats for a long time. Fannie Lou Hamer riffed on the "tiredness" theme even there when she said of the compromise solution the Democrats offered, that there were only two seats offered her delegation but that all five of them were tired. Her slogan became "sick and tired of being sick and tired".
Now, Clinton's audience knew this. But those eager to make anything she does fit into their thesis that she doesn't relate well to people took this moment of passionate "relatedness" and tried to make it an example of the exact opposite. Williams's column suggested that Clinton's remarks would be the equivalent of using "how!" and "heap big" and "Sky Spirit" with an audience of Native Americans or substituting L's for R's in addressing an Asian audience.
I would be willing to believe that this was ignorance on his part (and on the part of countless commentators, writers, bloggers, and YouTubers [computer potatoes?] who are still bringing up this supposed insult) except for the fact that HRC actually said (and the tapes are there to check) "...let us say with one voice the words of James Cleveland's great freedom hymn 'I don't feel no ways tired...'."
She is also found at fault for lapsing into a Southern drawl at that point. But anyone of her age who lived in the South as long as she did and who was in an interracial marriage like hers* knows that to lapse into the speaking style of a given person or group when in their presence is a cultural way of connecting that is largely second nature and is no way/s insulting. It's what my brother called a "folk voice" when we were growing up in Mississippi and had a set of speech for school, one for home, and a third for our back bay Biloxi relatives. Social grease, not insult.
Think of all the hate there is in... Walter Williams, maybe?
*Bill Clinton, in an essay in "New Yorker", was called America's first black president. The author was, I'm pretty sure, Toni Morrison. The joke, by the way, of using that term to defend HRC's use of the drawl was a joke made by...herself.
Think of all the hate in Selma, Alabama.
Is that lyric from "Eve of Destruction" old and outdated enough to be thought quaint? Or old and obscure enough to have been forgotten or be entirely unknown to most people?
What about these lyrics?
I don't feel no ways tired
I come too far from where I started from
Nobody told me that the road would be easy
I don't believe he brought me this far to leave me
That's from an "old Negro spiritual", as it is universally described. It was quoted by Hillary Rodham Clinton in a speech to an African-American congregation in Selma, Alabama last March. But as recently as September nationally syndicated columnists were still citing it as evidence of HRC's insensitivity. Walter E. Williams accused her of mimicking black dialect in a way insulting to her audience. But in fact, she received cheers and applause from that audience who recognized the hymn and knew (and in some cases personally recalled) its importance in the civil rights struggles of the sixties in Selma and in the rest of the South. The great Fannie Lou Hamer sang it every where she went in those days and was instrumental in both the Freedom Summer actions and in challenging the (ready for this?) national Democratic Party over the proper representation of Mississippi's black population at the 1964 convention. That particular event was a sore point between Southern Blacks and the Democrats for a long time. Fannie Lou Hamer riffed on the "tiredness" theme even there when she said of the compromise solution the Democrats offered, that there were only two seats offered her delegation but that all five of them were tired. Her slogan became "sick and tired of being sick and tired".
Now, Clinton's audience knew this. But those eager to make anything she does fit into their thesis that she doesn't relate well to people took this moment of passionate "relatedness" and tried to make it an example of the exact opposite. Williams's column suggested that Clinton's remarks would be the equivalent of using "how!" and "heap big" and "Sky Spirit" with an audience of Native Americans or substituting L's for R's in addressing an Asian audience.
I would be willing to believe that this was ignorance on his part (and on the part of countless commentators, writers, bloggers, and YouTubers [computer potatoes?] who are still bringing up this supposed insult) except for the fact that HRC actually said (and the tapes are there to check) "...let us say with one voice the words of James Cleveland's great freedom hymn 'I don't feel no ways tired...'."
She is also found at fault for lapsing into a Southern drawl at that point. But anyone of her age who lived in the South as long as she did and who was in an interracial marriage like hers* knows that to lapse into the speaking style of a given person or group when in their presence is a cultural way of connecting that is largely second nature and is no way/s insulting. It's what my brother called a "folk voice" when we were growing up in Mississippi and had a set of speech for school, one for home, and a third for our back bay Biloxi relatives. Social grease, not insult.
Think of all the hate there is in... Walter Williams, maybe?
*Bill Clinton, in an essay in "New Yorker", was called America's first black president. The author was, I'm pretty sure, Toni Morrison. The joke, by the way, of using that term to defend HRC's use of the drawl was a joke made by...herself.