Funny Ignorance

I laughed with Bones and his girl. The description of a minstrel show reminded me of my brother. He likes African American music, their way of talking, their way of dancing and specially their comedians. He listens to Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle and Chris Tucker for hours. The minstrel show has some resemblance because mainly what is funny about them is more their way of talking than what they are actually saying. It also applies to funny Hollywood movies where there is an African American and his accent and vocabulary makes the movie hilarious. While reading Bones In Love by J. Harry Carleton I imagined Chris Rock talking and I laughed. It is a little degrading that Bones is portrayed as a dumb man who makes mistakes talking and pronouncing and lacks knowledge about obvious things to white persons:

“Bones. Yes, dat's de reason she was so fond of me. She was a poickess, too.
Interlocutor. A poetess, you mean.”

While enslaved, they had no education which explains their ignorance which is made fun of, which is mean. Jim suffers from the same privation and his dialogue with Huck Finn resembles Bones’ for that reason and their accent. For example “dat’s” intead of “that’s” or “dey” instead of “they”, “git” intead of “get” among many other modifications of the language. Jim’s facility to believe in fictive beliefs, like the rattlesnake’s bad luck, or chicken’s foretell of the rain or the hairy bodies that will be rich and other beliefs prove his naïve ignorance.
Here is a perfect dialogue between Huck Finn and Jim very similar to the Bones’ minstrel.

“Ef you’s got hairy arms en a hairy breas’, it’s a sign dat you’s a-gwyne to be rich (…)”
“Have you got hairy arms and a hairy breast, Jim?”
“What’s de use to ax dat question? Don’t you see I has?
“Well, are you rich?”
“No, but I ben rich wunst, and gwyne to be rich ag’in. Wunst I had foteen dollars, but I tuck to specalat’n, en got busted out.”
“what did you speculate in, Jim?”
“Well, fust I tackled stock.”
“What kind of stuck?”
“Why, live stock-cattle, you know. I put ten dollars in a cow. But I ain’ gwyne to resk no mo’ money in stock. De cow up ‘n’ died on my han’s.” (pg. 58-59)

And I laughed. I agree with Blackface Minstrelsy article’s author that “it seems to me that in Huck's lines one hears the correct accents of Mr. Interlocutor, and in Jim's replies, the comic inadequacies of Mr. Bones.” Jim’s inadequacies are cute, he is my favorite character :)