LIT 344 / COMEDY & SATIRE NOTES

MY PART IN A MINSTREL SHOW

    I guess I should be ashamed of this, and I am, somewhat, but when I was six years old my father was in charge of a funding raising event for the local chapter of the Knights of Columbs (a Catholic fraternal organization; they probably wrote the DaVinci Code). Being born and raised in Kentucky, he drew on his childhood memories and came up with the idea of doing a Minstrel Show. I mean, the real thing...men in blackface telling racist jokes and innocent kids like me performing in skits and Catholic high school girls trying to sing like the Andrews Sisters. (One of the awful jokes I remember was this:

      INTERLOCUTOR: Say, Mister Bones, you seem like a mighty strong fellow. How did you get such fine, large muscles?

      MISTER BONES: Well, Mister Interlok-a-toor, that's cuz evra day ah eats mah Wheaties.

      INTERLOCUTOR: You don't say. Well, tell me then, how come you have such fine square shoulders.

      MISTER BONES: Why sho' nuff, suh...that's cuz ah eats the boxes too.

    But the thing I remember personally was a bit at the opening of the second act where a rope was laid out across the stage and one of the End Men walked over to the end of it and picked it up, whereupon the rest of the rope (which disappeared off the other side of the stage), became taut and the man, who now was trying to pull in whatever was on the other end, was having difculty, so another of the End Men got up and grabbed the rope too. But that proved to be too difficult. So one by one the remaining End Men got up and grabbed the rope and finally they were able to pull it toward them and slowly they reeled it in to reveal little six year old me, in my little cowboy outfit, holding on to the other end.

    Fast forward to the 1980's. I'm now a father and my daughter is African-American. How's that for irony? And she finds the letters her mother and I wrote to each other while we were in college and in one of the letters I refer to another student who is African-American this way: "I say Jay yesterday; you remember him; he's the colored guy from Brooklyn."

    My daughter freaked and I explained to her that in 1963, when the letter was written, 'colored' was an acceptable way to reference an African-American. 'Black' was an insult akin to using the 'N' word.

    And I tell you all of this by way of historical reference. No one thought that Minstrel Show was offensive. (Of course, there were no African-Americans in our church) and language is a fleeting thing. It changes with time. The words that are funny now could very likely be rude tomorrow.