Fast and Furious

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"You all know how black humor started? It started in slave ships, you know—cat was on his way over here rowin', and dude said, 'What you laughing about?' He said, 'Yesterday, I was a king.' They're havin' a bicentennial—200 years! They're gonna have a bicentennial nigger—they will, they'll have some nigger 200 years old in blackface, with stars and stripes on his forehead. With eyes and lips just all shiny—and he'll have that lovely white-folks expression on his face. But he's happy. He happy 'cause he been here 200 years: 'I'm just so thrilled to be here! Over here in America! I'm so glad you took me all out of Dahomey—I used to could live to be 150, and now I die of high blood pressure by the time I'm 52, hyuk hyuk! And that thrills me to death! I'm just so pleased America's gon' last. They brought me over in a boat—there was 400 of us come over here, yuk yuk yuk, 360 of us died on the way over here, yuk yuk yuk. I LOVED that! That just thrilled me so! I don't know—you white folks are just so good to us! Got over here—another 20 of us died from disease. Ah, but you didn't have no doctors to take care of us—I'm so sorry you didn't. Upset you all some too, didn't it? Then they split us all up, yessiree: took my mama over that way, took my wife that way, took my kids over yonder, yuk yuk yuk. I'm just so happy—I don't know what to do! I don't know what to do if I don't get 200 more years of this! Lord have mercy, yessiree—I don't know where my own mama is now! She up yonder with that big white folks in the sky! Y'all probably done forgot about it . . . ' But I ain't never gonna forget it."