[78-L] Stephen Foster

[fnarf at comcast.net]

"Gwine" instantly identifies the speaker as African-American. As for demeaning, the song clearly portrays blacks as childlike, fun-loving but unsophisticated, and so on. This is clearly demeaning, and plays into common perceptions of black intellect. Darkies love to bet on horses all day, isn't that cute?

--
Steve.

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: lizmcl at midcoast.com
> > Chris Zwarg:
> >
> >> First of all, there is NOT ONE WORD in the whole lyrics that says
> >> anything about
> >> the ethnicity of either the singer nor the ladies, nor about the moral
> >> or mental
> >> qualities of either
> >
> > You know, you completely blow your credibility when you suggest that these
> > lyrics are not specifically black, and specifically demeaning. They are.
> > No one who heard them then was in any doubt. "Gwine" is all you need to
> > see.
> >
> While "gwine" is certainly a specifically-black reference, whether it was
> intended or understood as demeaning is quite another matter -- it was, in
> fact, a part of the actual dialect spoken by many African-Americans of the
> time, and in fact, it survives today in the speech of the Gullah speakers
> of the Sea Islands off South Carolina and northern Georgia. Note the
> examples in the American Bible Society's Gullah translation:
> http://juniperwebsolutions.com/gullah/bible.html
> 
> There's a common perception today that much of minstrel-era dialect was
> simply made up by comedians and songwriters, but the more research that's
> done by sociolinguists the less likely this seems. The works of J. L.
> Dillard, William Labov, and Walter Brasch contain much worth reading on
> this point.
> 
> Elizabeth
> 
> 
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