African American Rhetoric(s): Interdisciplinary Perspectives

11. We Is Who We Was: The African/American Rhetoric of Amistad

204 Kermit E. Campbell 204 11 We Is Who We Was: The African/ American Rhetoric of Amistad Kermit E. Campbell Dry your tears, Africa! Your children come back to you their hands full of playthings and their hearts full of love. They return to clothe you in their dreams and their hopes. —Bernard Dadié, “Dry Your Tears, Afrika!” Since the beginning of the nation, white Americans have suffered from a deep inner uncertainty as to who they really are. One of the ways that has been used to simplify the answer has been to seize upon the presence of black Americans and use them as a marker, a symbol of limits, a metaphor for the “outsider.” Many whites could look at the social position of blacks and feel that color formed an easy and reliable gauge for determining to what extent one was or was not American. Perhaps that is why one of the first epithets that many European immigrants learned when they got off the boat was the term “nigger”—it made them feel instantly American. But this is tricky magic. Despite his racial difference and social status, something indisputably American about Negroes not only raised doubts about the white man’s value system but aroused the troubling suspicion that whatever else the true American is, he is also somehow black. —Ralph Ellison, “What America Would Be Like Without Blacks” IN SPITE OF ALL THE HYPE, OR MOST LIKELY BECAUSE OF IT, I HAD resolved that I wouldn’t see it. Oh, I didn’t doubt that it was just as everyone (including my wife) had described it: monumentally tragic, romantic, historic. Yes, it was all of these, I discovered many months later We Is Who We Was 205 when I finally gave in and saw it at home on video. Indeed, it was deeply tragic, and yet, I soon realized, its tragedy bore little relation to me. It was intensely romantic, but its romance moved me only superficially. And, yes, it was historic, yet its fatal history somehow seemed to negate or overshadow my own. But then one rather uneventful day while writing at my computer I happened to remember an intimate connection: Shine. “Oh yeah,” I loudly pronounced to myself, “my man Shine.” He took part in that historic-tragic-romantic event that everybody’s so stirred up about, didn’t he? In fact, wasn’t he the real hero? Let’s see, how does the story go? Ah yes, . . . The eighth of May was a hell of a day. I don’t know, but that’s what my folks say. The news reached the little seaport town That the old Titanic was finally goin’ down. There was a fella on board they called Shine, Was so black he changed the world’s mind. Now Shine was downstairs eating his peas—his black-eyed peas— When the water come up to his knees. Shine said, “Captain, Captain, I was downstairs eating my peas When the water come up to my knees.” Captain said, “Shine, Shine set your black ass down I got ninety-nine pumps to pump the water down.” Shine went back downstairs looking through space. That’s when the water came up to his waist. Shine said, “Captain, Captain, I was downstairs looking through space When the water came up to my waist.” Captain said, “Shine, Shine set your black ass down, I got ninety-nine pumps to pump the water down.” Shine went downstairs, and he ate a piece of bread. That’s when the water came above his head. Shine said, “Captain, Captain, I was downstairs eatin’ my bread And that damn water came above my head.” Captain said, “Shine, Shine set your black ass down, I got ninety-nine pumps to pump the water down.” Shine say, “Look here, Captain I’m a scared man. 206 Kermit E. Campbell I’d rather be out there on that iceberg goin’ around and ’round Than to be on this big mother—— when it’s goin’ down.” So Shine hit the water and he begin to swim, With ninety-nine millionaires lookin’ at him. Big man from Wall Street came on the second deck. In his hand he held a book a checks. He said, “Shine, Shine save poor me, I’ll make you as rich as any black man can be.” Shine said, “You don’t like my color and you down...