I recently stumbled across an interesting proverb while perusing Tumblr. Given that Tumblr isn’t the most reputable site, take the advice that follows with a grain of salt. The quote was, “until the lion learns how to write, every story will glorify the hunter.”
Take a second and read that again. Whoa, right?? I think this is a much better way to phrase what my history teacher, Mr. Maus, liked to say in high school: “history is written by the victors.”
In terms of McHenry and Heath’s article, this quote seems to speak to an argument the two suggest, but don’t quite come out and say: that the White population has labeled the Black population of the United States as primarily oral to lessen their social standing, and that our current literary canon (which is often selected by old white guys) emphasizes authors and stories dealing with stereotypical portrayals of African-Americans.
The lion, in this article, would be the African-American populations, their literary societies, and all the writing that accompanied these groups. While they did know how to write, they didn’t have the social power or social standing for their writing to be taken seriously. The hunter (White people) continued to glorify themselves by labeling African-American culture as less than White culture. The metaphors of literacy come back once again; being literate offers much more social graces than being in a predominately oral culture– even if that is a false perception perpetuated by the dominant social group.
With this all in mind, I think it’s important for us to look at modern-day society and question if anything has really changed. Does “White” English still trump those specialized English dialects that African-Americans use? Are the books written by African-Americans that receive acclaim only garnering praise and attention for supporting stereotypes? How has society molded our perceptions of African-American culture so that the lion is ignored in favor of the hunter?
