LITR 5731: Seminar in American Minority Literature

Student Research Project , fall 2004

Michael A. Russo

December 5^th, 2004

Axiology of Existence: Oppression and Resistance in Minority Texts

     There is a memorable scene in the popular movie Ghostbusters which parodies the practical accomplishments of university scholars.  Having lost their teaching and research positions at a popular university, three scientists, played by Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, contemplate their future employment.  Aykroyd’s character has this bit of wisdom to offer his friends: “Personally, I like the University. They gave us money and facilities, we didn't have to produce anything. You've never been out of college. You don't know what it's like out there. I've worked in the private sector. They expect results.”

     When talking with other students or even just family or friends, I have found that few seem to take seriously the existence of university classes on minority literature.  There seems to be an overwhelming consensus that minority literature classes exist primarily for “politically correct” reasons, and that these classes are a kind of penance that must be paid by members of the dominant culture in reconciliation for past crimes against ethnic minority groups.  This viewpoint of course comes with a degree of resentment.  The argument that I have heard time and again is that whatever happened to African Americans in the past is, well, in the past, and that the dominant culture of today should not be made to pay for the mistakes of yesterday.  That there might exist a practical and useful purpose for studying minority literature specifically – even for students who are themselves a part of the dominant culture – seldom is considered, in my experience, as a realistic possibility.

     While there are a certainly a number of reasons why one might study the literature of ethnic minorities and the minority voice to which it gives forum, certainly not the least of these reasons is the study of oppression and resistance.  Oppression in its crudest form is a human force that seems to defy all effects of time and history.  It was present in the earliest recordings of human events, and it is present today even as globalization rightly or wrongly presses on with its brand of one-world unity.  It was present in the mighty Roman Empire, and in the ages ruled by the Roman Catholic Church.  Oppression can be found readily in the history of the West, and in that of the East.  There can be fewer academic projects more important than the study of oppression and the means by which the oppressed manage to communicate and push for the reforms that will bring them a more satisfying existence.

     Minority literature provides the intellectually curious with an ideal platform with which to study the forces of oppression and resistance, and the human values which feed and nourish these forces.  Yet it shouldn’t be accepted that this platform is somehow inaccessible to white scholars who are themselves not oppressed by virtue of their race.  White scholars may have the distinct challenge of wholly understanding the factor that race plays in oppression, but oppression and resistance are not exclusive to ethnic minorities.  The atheist voice, for example, knows something of oppression, as do women thinkers, the voices of minority political groups, and members of the gay and lesbian community.  The nature of each group’s experience is no doubt unique, but I have no interest in comparing the intensity of one group’s oppression to the next.  Collectively these groups make up a significant majority in terms of the planet’s overall population, so there can be no other conclusion but the universality of oppression and resistance, and the grand scope in which it impacts the very essence of human existence.

     In the introduction to his book Theorizing Textual Subjects: Agency and Oppression, author Meili Steele argues that the debate over the diversification the literary canon must move beyond the “false opposition” between liberty and virtue.  While agreeing with the liberal camp’s arguments that a relatively static canon results in the suppression of alternative literary voices, Steele also agrees with the conservative camp’s valuing of a shared academic experience.  According to Steele, “It is precisely this need for positive norms that conservatives recognize, even if they come up with inadequate ways to fill it” (Steele 6).  Without these norms, Steele argues, literary critics are so radically empowered that the broad usefulness of their work is called into question.  “The Left will have to give up using only the vocabulary of power to characterize liberal democratic traditions, a vocabulary that justifies the quest for a revolution so radical that it is inconceivable” (Steele 6).

     On the other hand, recognizing the value of critical norms does not mean closing the literary canon to alternative voices.  In fact, Steele hopes to show precisely how value can be measured in the works of minority authors.  Steele’s suggestion is to approach literary criticism of minority texts in a way that examines community values, and the role of these values, in the oppression of a minority voice.

     “It is not surprising that those who do not simply write about oppression but who are forced to live in communities whose ethical substance exiles them are not content only with an ethics/politics of negative liberty and difference. They know that only a rich axiology of existence, and not justice alone, can nourish them.” (Steele 3)

     In the spirit of Steele’s call for an “axiology of existence,” I propose to look at a pair of well-known African American texts in terms of what they might tell us about the nature of oppression and resistance and the effect of these forces on human existence.  The primary focus of this exercise will be Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, a text in which the author seems determined to teach the reader something about the manner in which white slaveholders would oppress their black slaves through a variety of battle-tested tactics.  The examination of Narrative will be backed up with the occasional look at Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon in order to trace how the themes and issues presented in Douglass’s text have manifested themselves in a more contemporary work.  The focus here will clearly be on Narrative, however, and the specific topics of study in this exercise will include the effects of ignorance and education on oppression and resistance, the rise and role of alternative voice due to the inadequacy of the English language, escapism and vice as tools of oppression and resistance, and the duality of hope and the African American dream.

     To begin, consider that Douglass spends a considerable amount of time stressing the effects of forced ignorance on slaves.  In fact, Douglass presents ignorance as a theme for his readers’ consideration by no later than the second sentence of Narrative:

I have no accurate knowledge of my age, never having seen any authentic record containing it.  By far the larger part of the slaves know as little of their ages as horses know of theirs, and it is the wish of most masters within my knowledge to keep their slaves thus ignorant. (Gates 339)

Douglass points out that it was “not allowed” (Gates 339) for slaves to seek knowledge about their age, and that such knowledge quests were seen as “improper and impertinent” (Gates 339) behavior.  Clearly it is important to Douglass that his readers understand that slaves were ignorant not out of any inherent mental inferiority, as was no doubt argued in Douglass’s time, but rather because it was the specific intention of slaveholders to keep slaves ignorant; the “means of knowing” were “withheld” (Gates 340) from them.  This forced ignorance, an agent of oppression, served to keep slaves productive and reduce the odds of an uprising.  Keeping a slave ignorant of the nature of his predicament also limited escape attempts and helped slaveholders make their case that blacks were biologically inferior to whites; few slaves would be properly skilled with the language of their oppressors to communicate effectively their existence to those whites who might have been capable of pushing for the abolition of slavery. 

     In order for slavery to be abolished, the arguments that slaveholders used to justify their oppression of blacks to the dominant American culture would need to be systematically deconstructed and rendered invalid in the minds of most whites, who as a group were and still are the keepers of political power and reform.  When a white person came into contact with a slave for the first time, the likely ignorant-by-design appearance of that slave could serve as “evidence” to the observer that blacks were indeed mentally inferior to their white counterparts.  And of course this was a supposition that allowed the continuation of the oppression of blacks through slavery and other agencies.  By exposing that black ignorance in America was a product of a plan rather than a mere biological fact of black existence, Douglass worked to resist the oppressive effect that this plan had on himself and other blacks.  To get a sense of the loftiness of this goal, and the enormity of the problem, one needs only to consider the words of Al Campanis, the former General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers professional baseball team.  Campanis lost his job in 1987 when during an interview with NBC’s Ted Koppel he said blacks "may not have some of the necessities to be, let's say, a field manager, or perhaps a general manager."  Nearly 127 years after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, and nearly 147 years after Douglass wrote Narrative, the mindset that Douglass had fought to indict was still on public display in mainstream America.

     In Narrative, Douglass chronicles the awakening of his social consciousness – what author Nada Elia might call “the genuine emancipation that accompanies the reentry into speech” (Elia 4) – a prerequisite to Douglass’s ability to effectively argue against the philosophies set forth by his oppressors.  Douglass has a key moment of epiphany in Baltimore when his mistress is emphatically corrected by her husband after she teaches Douglass the basics of the English alphabet:

To use his own words, further, he said, “If you give a nigger an inch, he will take an ell.  A nigger should know nothing but to obey his master – to do as he is told to do.  Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world.  Now,” said he, “if you teach that nigger (speaking of me) how to read, there would be no keeping him.  It would forever unfit him to be a slave.  He would at once become unmanageable, and of no value to his master.  As to himself, it could do him no good, but a great deal of harm.  It would make him discontented and unhappy.” (Gates 364)

While this passage is further evidence of the slaveholder tactic of forced ignorance, it also serves as a kind of ironic spark which sets in motion events that will inevitably lead to Douglass’s escape from slavery.  While lecturing his wife about the need to keep information away from slaves, the master inadvertently provides Douglass with the exact bit of knowledge that his rebellious spirit needs to awaken his intellectual curiosity.  Douglass says that his master’s speech led to “an entirely new train of thought” and his ultimate understanding that forced ignorance was “the white man’s power to enslave the black man” (Gates 364).  Douglass is eager for his readers to understand the significance of his master’s slip and the role it played in his (Douglass’s) resistance of slavery.  Of course this bit of ironic narrative serves not just as an explanation for how Douglass came to read and write, but also provides Douglass with a device by which he can ridicule and render absurd his oppressor.  The “ignorant” slave gets the better of his “master” precisely because the master underestimates his slave’s intellectual capacity.  By “instructing” his wife, the master unwittingly gives life to the dire warnings of his lesson.

     Douglass spends a lot of time documenting the “various stratagems” (Gates 366) that he used to “convert” white boys into “teachers” of English.  Of learning to read, Douglass says that the skill “enabled me to utter my thoughts, and to meet the arguments brought forward to sustain slavery” (Gates 369).  Yet this alone would not be enough.  Although reading made Douglass intolerably aware of his condition, it did not provide him with a “ladder upon which to get out” (Gates 370).  English in the hands of a black slave often proved an inadequate means of communication, partly because it was not properly taught to slaves, but partly because slaves were not provided with a forum or opportunity to make use of it for their own advantages.  Moreover, slaves were taught specifically that their words were useless in their own defense:

I have often been awakened at the dawn of day by the most heart-rending shrieks of an own aunt of mine, whom he used to tie up to a joist, and whip upon her naked back until she was literally covered with blood.  No words, no tears, no prayers from this gory victim, seemed to move his iron heart from its bloody purpose. (Gates 343)

This passage illustrates amongst other things the inadequacy of words for the black slave.  That “no words” could be spoken by Douglass’s aunt to quell the violence against her if proof that the mind of the slaveholder was clearly closed to arguments against his intended behavior.  This inadequacy or failure of words to provide relief from oppression is a recurring theme in Narrative.  Of the slaves put in charge of one master’s horse, Douglass remarks that “no excuse could shield them” (Gates 351) if the master suspected that the animal had not been properly looked after.  In fact, to limit their master’s random displeasure, the horse keepers learned to “answer never a word” (Gates 351) in their own defense no matter the charge.  To speak, then, was to invite further hardship.  Douglass further presents the philosophy of the oppressed in the slave saying that argues “a still tongue makes a wise head” (Gates 353); this he illustrates in the story of a young slave who answers “the simple truth, in answer to a series of plain questions” (Gates 353) and is punished through being sold away from his family and friends. 

     Douglass’s words would eventually find their potency through the forum of the North where white minds were more open to hear the arguments against slavery, but in the oppressive environment of the southern plantation, blacks were forced to learn alternative modes of communication in order to find relief from the punishments that would accompany any personal expressions that displeased the white slaveholders.  The solution was to express oneself in a manner that would be indecipherable to the oppressors.

     A feminist writer who often focuses on the impact of French colonialism, Nada Elia examines oppression and resistance in her novel Trances, Dances, and Vociferations : Agency and Resistance in Africana Women's Narratives.  Her novel points to the need of minority voices to find alternative methods of communication:

“All four writers I study emphasize their alienation from the dominant discourse they were trained to speak, their choice of an alternative mode of expression, and their conscious articulation, in a feminine tongue, of the experiences of other women and men who have in the past been silenced for lack of a space where their utterances could resonate.” (Elia 5)

Douglass is acutely aware of the issue of alternative voices, which he illustrates nicely in a passage that discusses the songs sung by slaves and the meaning that lies beneath the words, found in the pitch and timbre of the music.

“I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness.  It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake.” (Gates 349-350)

What Douglass attempts to expose is a fundamental difference in the way the dominant culture and the oppressed slaves view the nature of music.  Douglass knows that his average white reader would believe signing to be something that is done in times of happiness or worship.  These individuals then – without information to the contrary – would be open to slaveholders who argue to the contentment of their slaves by evidence of their songs.  Explaining the use of song as a relief from oppression is tricky and requires a certain degree of intellectual openness from the audience of the explanation.  Knowing this, Douglass begins by expressing his understanding that the concept might at first appear to be without merit to those who have not experienced firsthand the singing of the slaves:

“I did not, when a slave, understand the deep meaning of those rude and apparently incoherent songs.  I was myself within the circle; so that I neither saw nor heard as those without might see and hear.” (Gates 349)

By anticipating and identifying with his audience’s potential reluctance to accept his conclusion about these songs, should such reluctance in fact exist, Douglass is cleverly reducing resistance to the concepts that he hopes will take root in the minds of his audience.  He is attempting to take readers outside of their own protected circles so that they will be receptive to the music of the slaves as an alternative form of communication.  Using terms like “rude” and “apparently incoherent” is a calculated move that leverages the words of the opposition against any rebuttals they might make to Douglass’s assertions.  It also supplements his points discussed earlier that slaves are far more capable than their outward appearances might suggest.

     Douglass’s argument that music can serve as an agency for human communication is echoed by Elia, who points to the “musicality” of voice, which defies conventional restrictions on speech:

“While most feminist scholarship realizes the importance of finding one’s voice, little has been written about the musicality of that voice. Yet I am convinced that music is truly an empowering, liberating medium for women, as it was for all enslaved Blacks in the New World; for music is not, cannot be, subject to the laws of Symbolic discourse that regulate our speech.” (Elia 7)

This focus on “musicality” can be seen in Narrative when Douglass argues that sounds – tone, pitch and timbre – carry the true message of the singing slave:

“The thought that came up, came out – if not in the word, in the sound; -- and as frequently in the one as in the other.  They would sometimes sing the most pathetic sentiment in the most rapturous tone, and the most rapturous sentiment in the most pathetic tone.” (Gates 348)

The oppressed slaves learn quickly that to speak directly risks punishment.  Yet there exists a very human need to communicate – if not directly, then indirectly.  The songs of the slaves were, as Elia put it, “a form of verbal play that allows for the articulation of anger and aggression in harmless, socially acceptable forms” (Elia 8).  In addition to the opportunity to communicate without fear of reprisal, Douglass argues that these songs, through their expression of grief, would relieve some of the singer’s burdens, “as an aching heart is relieved by its tears” (Gates 350).

     Elia also talks about the presence of songs, as mediums for communication, in Morrison’s Song of Solomon:

“Collapsing boundaries between mother and daughter, life and death, sex, gender, and sexuality, Pilate and Connie are moonshiners who sing as they brew potent mixes, some aphrodisiac and others abortive, and whose physical and spiritual eccentricities mesmerize men and jealously protect women and female space. Pilate’s teachings and example bring the alienated Milkman back to his spiritual roots. The song Milkman offers Pilate as she is dying after finally burying her father’s bones, is a song Pilate had sung herself. As Milkman’s singing denies the finality of death, it also teaches him what it means to be able to fly, freeing him from the burden of an oppressive past.” (Elia 5)

The song that Milkman learns to sing, and which is consistently present throughout Morrison’s text, is of course a perfect example of the alternative voice made possible and even immortal through the act of singing.  When we are first exposed to this song in the opening pages of the text we are in the dark about its meaning, yet it nonetheless does not fail to communicate information to its audience.  Like “the defining piano music in a silent movie” (Morrison 6) it sets the tone for those who listen, but as readers we cannot hear its musicality any better than those who merely “sniggered” as it was sung.  The meaning of the song is revealed to us only near the end of the text, at the same moment it is revealed to Milkman.  It is the ghostly message of Milkman’s great grandmother, a surviving testament to the sorrow that results when one is abandoned by family and left mercilessly alone to fight for survival against forces that seem determined to “choke” and “yoke.”  It is a warning against the sometimes overwhelming desire to resort to escapism as a reaction to the persistent trials of everyday life.

     Milkman, of course, knows something about escapism.  His quest for understanding is complicated by a tendency towards emotional and intellectual escape, especially through the common vices of drugs and alcohol.  Insofar as these vices provide temporary relief and therefore continued tolerance of an oppressive existence, they can be argued as an agent of oppression, a means by which any motivation one might have to seek out a better existence at any cost is numbed and ultimately turned impotent.

     Douglass argues that the slaveholder leverages alcohol in connection with holidays as a means for keeping slaves from rebellion.  “I believe them to be among the most effective means in the hands of a slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection” (Gates 396).  The holidays then serve as a goal for slaves while they work – the promise of a temporary relief from hard labor, and a taste of the freedom that they crave.  Alcohol then, according to Douglass, is a kind of security measure to ensure the slave doesn’t grow too fond of his temporary liberty.  Douglass offers an effective example of how this might work:

“For instance, a slave loves molasses; he steals some.  His master, in many cases, goes off to town, and buys a large quantity; he returns, takes the whip, and commands the slave to eat molasses, until the poor fellow is made sick at the very mention of it.” (Gates 397)

The slave who has a love for freedom, then, is made to equate freedom with holidays and drinking.  When the slave drinks too much during the holidays and grows sick, he develops a kind of biological aversion to the brand of freedom offered by the holidays.  “Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation” (Gates 397).  This argument however is at best only partially accurate.  Alcohol abuse is well established as a means for people in abusive or oppressive environments to escape temporarily from the pain of their existence.  Insofar as resistance can be defined as “a process in which the ego opposes the conscious recall of anxiety-producing experiences,” alcohol abuse is a kind of resistance to oppression.  Yet it also is a tool for oppression in that it allows an oppressive existence to continue unchallenged.

     For Milkman, when the going gets tough the quick answer is a strong drink.  After a nasty encounter with his father that led to revelations about his mother’s incestuous tendencies, Milkman looks to alcohol to take the edge off of his troubled spirit.  “Milkman was heading towards Southside.  Maybe he could find Guitar.  A drink with Guitar would be just the thing (Morrison 76).”  Yet Guitar had grown aware of the role that alcohol has played historically in the dominant culture’s oppression and exploitation of blacks.  “He was constantly chafing Milkman about how he lived, and that conversation was just one more example of how he’d changed.  No more could Milkman run up the stairs to his room to drag him off to a party or a bar.  And he didn’t want to talk about girls or getting high (Morrison 106).”

     In her essay "Poor and Black and Apt to Stay That Way": Gambling on a Sure

Thing in Louise Meriwether's Daddy Was a Number Runner, author Janelle Collins looks at the effects of another vice, gambling, on residents of Depression Era Harlem.  In a sense, the misplaced hope offered to the residents of Harlem through gambling can be equated to the temporary relief provided by alcohol; admittedly the two vices do not match up perfectly, but both provide an unproductive means by which an oppressed mind can continue from one day to the next, to the benefit of the oppressors.  They preserve the status quo.

“While playing the numbers seemed to offer Harlemites a chance to win, the reality was that winnings from the numbers games were infrequent, random, and generally insubstantial.  In contract, the organizers reaped huge profits.” (Collins 3)

Collins points to the meager and unattractive choices that were available to the residents of Depression Era Harlem as an explanation for why the hope brought to them by the numbers game was so attractive; yet she also points out that the reality of this form of gambling only increased the economic hardship experienced by blacks.  “Like other aspects of the economy, white men ran the numbers game, profiting from black hopes and black money; the neighborhood number runners ran the risks” (Collins 3).  The point I am driving at here is the duality of hope.  That same hope, the last remaining embers on a path to desperation and hopelessness, the hope which led poor black men and women to gamble away what little money they had at impossible odds, is also the hope which saves the life of Frederick Douglass on a couple of occasions throughout his Narrative.

     While traveling to Baltimore for the first time, Douglass says that he went forward with the “highest hopes for future happiness” (Gates 361).  As the reality of his existence as a slave bore down on him, it was “but for the hope of being free” (Gates 370) that kept Douglass from taking his own life.  Under the rule of Master Thomas, Douglass admits to a “faint hope” that the man’s conversion to religion would have positive results for his slaves.  Yet the biggest test of hope came later when Douglass was made to live with Mr. Covey for the duration of one year:

“My natural elasticity was crushed, my intellect languished, the disposition to read departed, the cheerful spark that lingered about my eye died; the dark night of slavery closed in on me; and behold a man transformed into a brute!” (Gates 387)

In this state, Douglass admits to the occasional “faint beam of hope, that flickered for a moment, and then vanished” (Gates 388) from his mind.  Explaining why he did not kill himself and his oppressor, Douglass credits “a combination of hope and fear” (Gates 388) for diverting this fate.  Yet in a sense, this hope – a very human trait found in the most oppressive of environments – is a quintessential quality to the continuation of slavery.  Imagine the slave without hope and the acts of destructive desperation such a man might be capable of committing; such slaves would be dangerous to the slaveholders and to themselves.  If all or even the majority of human beings were prone to suicide when faced with the prospect of a life of slavery, the institution itself would be rendered useless – something akin to the logic behind the refusal to negotiate with hostage takers, which only works when practiced with unwavering consistency.

     The dialogue on the hopes and dreams of the oppressed can be seen in a number of African American texts, including Morrison’s Song.  Author Elizabeth House argues that there are two kinds of dreams on display in Morrison’s text: “idyllic” dreams and “dreams of competitive acquisition of power or money” (House 1).  While the latter compares more favorably to the concept of the American dream and involves forgetting the past plus voluntarily assimilation with the dominant culture, the former expresses a desire to live in an ideal state of harmony and brotherhood with others, and to connect with the past to rediscover one’s roots and heritage.  House admits that the idyllic dream is less practical than the dream of competitive acquisition, but both kinds of dreams provide some amount of hope for future relief of current hardships.  The idyllic dream, however, is distinctly African American.

     Representing the “competitive acquisition” dream is Macon Dead, whose sober advice to his son Milkman is to “own things” (Morrison 55).  House sums up Macon’s dream for financial security:

Dispossessed of the Georgia farm and its peaches, Macon grows up determined to beat the white men at their power game, to achieve the sweet American dream of being rich and powerful.  This feat he accomplishes by crafty buying of property.  He becomes a landlord for much of the black community, a trusted customer of white bankers, and the husband of Ruth Foster, daughter of the town’s most eminent black doctor.” (House 14)

Yet Macon’s dream is an individualistic kind of dream that alienates him from his family and positions him in the traditionally white role of community oppressor.  Macon’s financial success has in many ways, but not all ways, freed him from the common burdens of white oppression; but Macon has not eliminated this oppression – he has merely transferred it to others.  By contrast, Pilate’s values rest in family bonds and emotional fulfillment – not material wealth.  Her existence is a rejection of the American dream in favor of a new kind of living that is content with the fulfillment of basic physical needs.  Where Macon’s dream is more concerned about the security of tomorrow at the expense of the past and the present, Pilate’s idyllic dream considers past, present and future.  The hope expressed by Douglass in Narrative, which I have previously argued is a kind of double-edged sword, shows its two possible paths in the dreams of Macon and Pilate.  One product of hope is the continuation of oppression, even if the oppressed becomes the oppressor, and the other product of hope is an existence of resistance and defiance.

     The combustible and unpredictable power of the dream narrative is communicated through Langston Hughes’s memorable poem, Harlem (A Dream Deferred).  The poem raises the issue of unfulfilled dreams and serves as a further example of the duality of hope.  Asking “what happens to a dream deferred,” Hughes then proceeds to offer a number of possibilities – mostly negative, but varying in intensity from it simply drying up to exploding.  That unfulfilled hopes could result in a kind of explosion is a powerful thought; one wonders what the eventual effect would have been on Douglass had his dream of freedom been perpetually denied.

     The stated goal of this exercise in literary criticism was to examine the nature of oppression and resistance as presented through works by African American writers Frederick Douglass and Toni Morrison, while keeping in mind Steele’s call for an “axiology of existence.”  As a quick summary, the exercise resulted in a look at the roles of ignorance and education – specifically literacy – in a culture of oppression.  We looked at examples of forced ignorance, its effects on liberty, and the role of literacy in awakening the social consciousness of the oppressed mind.  We examined the inadequacy and failures of the English language specifically when used by oppressed peoples without a receptive forum, and the subsequent development and role of alternative modes of communication, including music.  We examined the dual role of alcohol and gambling as both an agent of oppression and resistance, and extended that logic into the role of hope.  We examined hope for its potential to oppress and liberate, then confirmed its existence in African American literature beyond Douglass’s Narrative in Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Hughes’s Harlem (A Dream Deferred).  This exercise could be extended to a number of additional and related areas of study, including a look at the role of religion as both a justification of oppression and a means for reinstating the moral conscience of the dominant culture. 

     The result of this exercise, I believe, is a deeper understanding of oppression and resistance facilitated through the analysis of minority texts.  Yet the subject is one of enormous scope, and we have merely scratched the surface.  While perhaps not the “results” that Dan Aykroyd’s character found expected of him in the “private sector,” the usefulness of this knowledge should be clearly seen to stretch beyond the realm of “politically correct” penance; it provides a better understanding of the power structures at play in the raw reality of human existence.

Works Cited

Gates, Henry Louis, ed. The Classic Slave Narratives.  New York: Signet, 2002.

            Morrison, Toni. Song of Solomon. New York: Penguin, 1977.

            Steele, Meili. Theorizing Textual Subjects: Agency and Oppression. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

            Elia, Nada. Trances, Dances and Vociferations: Agency and Resistance in Africana Women’s Narratives.  New York: Garland, 2001.

            House, Elizabeth B. “The Sweet Life in Toni Morrison’s Fiction.” American Literature Vol. 56 Issue 2 (1984): 181-203.

            Collins, Janelle.  “Poor and Black and Apt to Stay That Way: Gambling on a Sure Thing in Meriwerther’s Daddy Was A Numbers Runner.” Midwest Quarterly: A Journal of Contemporary Thought Vol. 45 Issue 1 (2003): 49-58.