Recovering from ‘yo mama is so stupid’: (en)gendering a critical paradigm on Black feminist theory and pedagogy

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of the dozens using Black feminist theory. The dozens are a ritualized verbal game of insults that historically have used sexual offenses against Black women as the vehicle for insults. Rather than simply viewing the dozens as a cultural phenomenon, the article draws a connection between its occurrence in West Africa, the West Indies, slave communities, and post enslavement and attempts to understand the various changes and the connection of the dozens to Black female devaluation. Through dialog with Oshun, the author deconstructs the historical and cultural significance of the dozens, placing it in a constructed conversation methodology. Importantly, the article shows how deconstruction of the dozens can be used as a pedagogical tool leading students to a deeper and more thorough understanding of a taken‐for‐granted cultural phenomenon.

Keywords:

• Black feminist theory
• the dozens
• Black women
• pedagogy

Notes

1. The most common names I found in my research that are also the most fitting, are the dozens and mother rhyming (Foster 1986). For purposes of distinction, mother‐rhyming will be used when referring to the ‘game’ in West Africa and the West Indies. The term ‘dozens’ will be used when referring to the game in the African American community.

2. One theory on the genesis of the name states that the term ‘dozens’ originated in slavery where after the middle passage, scurvy ravaged many of the slaves and the 12 most ‘damaged’ Africans were sold at a bargain rate – the dirty dozen. Supposedly, the only thing more degrading than slavery was to be part of the dirty dozen and degrading a person’s mother was to make them ‘feel as low as one of the dirty dozen’ (Perclay, Monteria, and Dweck 1994, 8).

3. In answering this question I ask my students to utilize Bartlett’s (1928) constructed imagination since short of a time machine and without specific primary source research we must instead each use the information at hand and then ‘wonder’.