Fried chicken will make you sterile; the FBI killed Martin Luther
King, Jr.; the "powers that be" facilitated the crack epidemic, the
AIDS epidemic, and the murders of black children in Atlanta: Here,
folklore scholar Turner (African-American and African Studies/UC
Davis) offers an illuminating examination of why rumors like these
persist in the African-American community. Turner explores why
these rumors, and not others, took root in black culture across the
US; how they got started; and what they represent to even
well-educated, well-informed African-Americans. Like ancient myths
warning about the powers of nature, she says, rumors that the Ku
Klux Klan owns a popular fried-chicken chain and has inserted an
ingredient that will sterilize black men remind African-Americans
that they live in a white society still hostile to blacks. The
author traces the idea that whites are bent on physically
destroying blacks back to Africa and the slave trade, during which
many Africans believed they were being transported across the ocean
in order to be eaten. The brutality of slave life, then of white
supremacist oppression, and, today, of incidents like the Rodney
King beating stir those early fears, handed down in family stories
and fanned by rumor. Why domestic fried chicken and not some vague
international conspiracy? Because, says Turner, an individual can
take action against danger by boycotting a fried-chicken chain, but
a nebulous conspiracy is beyond personal control. The author tracks
down and dismisses many rumors dealing with corporations - the KKK
does not appear to own fried-chicken chains, fruit-drink
manufacturers, or sneaker companies - but she finds CIA and FBI
intrigues more difficult to refute. An epilogue introduces the most
recent rumors in the black community, including that the
contraceptive Norplant is being used as a tool of genocide. Highly
repetitious in detail and argument - but, still, an intriguing and
thorough analysis. (Kirkus Reviews)
This book divides into two basic parts. In Chapters 1 and 2 I
discuss historical examples of "rumor" discourse and suggest whey
many blacks have--for good reason--channeled beliefs about race
relations into familiar formulae, ones developed as early as the
time of the first contact between sub-Saharan Africans and European
white. Then in Chapters 3-7 it explores the continuation of these
issues in late-twentieth-century African-American rumors and
contemporary legends, using examples collected in the field.
Because Turner was able to monitor these contemporary legends as
they unfolded and played themselves out, rigorous analysis was
possible. What follows, then, is an examination of the themes
common to these contemporary items and related historical ones, and
an explanation for their persistence. Concerns about conspiracy,
contamination, cannibalism, and castration--perceived threats to
individual black bodies, which are then translated into animosity
toward the race as a whole--run through nearly four hundred years
of black contemporary legend material and prove remarkable
tenacious.
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