“Claudia is reading NeNe like hooked on phonics.” Real Housewives of Atlanta star, Kandi Burruss said in her confessional on the season 7 episode called “Puerto Read-co!". The world watched as Real Housewives of Atlanta stars Nene Leakes and Claudia Jordan faced off in Puerto Rico in a war of words. As the scene played out, the two stars’ verbal match of insults having to do with age, money, career, and promiscuity instantly became one of the show’s most watched moments. The Real Housewives of Atlanta, is a reality television show that has been on Bravo since 2008, and is going into its 11th season. This show currently is one of the most popular shows on television and amongst the top shows in popularity amongst Black Americans.
As a result of the popularity of shows such as this, Black women have become more visible due to the production of reality shows such as these. Although critics often argue that these shows portray Black women negatively, however, they do provide a window into the lives and experiences of Black women, as well as the larger Black community. Though Nene and Claudia’s blow up on the surface seems like a petty argument, this instance provides insight into a larger phenomenon in the Black community.
Since Africans were brought to the Americas as slaves, Black Americans have managed to adapt and successfully develop a vibrant culture, separate from the dominant culture, in spite of the intense political, social, racial, exploitation and injustice that surrounds them. Across both urban and rural communities, Black Americans have maintained this culture, predominantly through oral tradition. One tradition central to Black American culture, “the dozens” is a verbal tradition that dates back to slavery and according to Spelman College sociologist Harry Lefever, is “exclusive to Black Americans.”
The dozens is a match of the words between two people, these games most often happen between men and must always be performed in front of a rowdy audience who encourage the individuals and heighten the tension. In a typical match, insults are exchanged back and forth between parties, these insults usually center around the opposser’s appearance, social or financial status, intelligence, and especially their mothers. This goes on until one player runs out of material or “loses his cool.” Evidence of dozens matches in Black America can be found in a variety of places, from the work of Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes, to an episode of Nick Cannon's Wild ‘N Out. In the Hartford Courant article published in 1994, “COMMITMENTS : Snapping Back : When playing 'the dozens,' nothing's off limits–not even your mother. All you need is a quick wit, a sharp tongue and a cool head,” Frances Grandy Taylor describes this tradition, she writes;
“It could be in the locker room, the park, the schoolyard, or on the front steps on a summer night. A small group of friends are gathered, and somebody starts it:
‘Your mother is so generous, she would give you the hair off her back.’
‘Yeah? Your mother is so old, she was the waitress at the Last Supper.’
‘Your mother is so fat, she stepped on a dollar and got change.’”
In 1939, Yale psychologist John Dollard set out to study the personality development of Black children in the South, but instead discovered Blacks of all ages and locations engaging in what came to be known as the dozens. Dollard reported, “The Dozens is a pattern of interactive insult which is used among some American Negroes… The jests fly—about infidelity, though each seems a faithful husband—about impotence, though both are apparently adequately married and have children—about homosexual tendencies, although neither exhibits such to public perception.” In that study Dollard also wrote that he was unaware of how the term "Dozens" developed, and believed that the twelve-part rhyme of the game perhaps could be the reason though this was contested. Author John Leland argued that the term stems from the English verb "to dozen," meaning "to stun, stupefy, daze" or "to make insensible, torpid, powerless." However, in African American Oral Traditions in Louisiana, Professor Mona Lisa Saloy argues "The dozens has its origins in the slave trade of New Orleans where deformed slaves—generally slaves punished with dismemberment for disobedience—were grouped in lots of a 'cheap dozen' for sale to slave owners. For a Black to be sold as part of the 'dozens' was the lowest blow possible."
The Dozens served as an outlet for slaves’ to express their frustration on others since it was life-threatening for slaves to act this way towards their masters. Northwestern University professor E. Patrick Johnson, says in the New York Times article, The Underground Art of the Insult, “The threat of being beaten or mutilated was always there if you were to look at a slave master directly in his eye, or if you were to sass, so African-Americans developed these covert ways of communication, which, over time, have morphed into the traditional ways that they interact with one another.” Women engage in this tradition as well. Though the Dozens are typically played by males, reality shows like The Real Housewives of Atlanta demonstrate the women can hold their own as well.
NeNe: I’m a puppet master on these jobs.
Claudia: What jobs? The ones that got canceled?
NeNe: The checks didn’t get canceled though. You wish you had what I have in the bank, darling.
Claudia: I pay my own bills. I don’t have to get on the pole.
NeNe: I did that in my twenties. I’m in my forties.
Claudia: We look twenty years apart. When you were my age you had edges.
Black women have engaged in exchanges like these long before any cameras were around to capture it. As Black women saw their husbands and sons become victims of brutality, this type of verbal prowess became a useful tool for Black women to defend their households. Black Women featured on these types of Reality shows like The Real Housewives of Atlanta employ these skills like second nature and commonly call it “throwing shade” or “reading.”
The term "throwing shade" originally derives from Gay Black and Latino communities. The term was first introduced to the mainstream in Jennie Livingston’s documentary Paris is Burning in 1990 that documented the underground world of parties and drag balls through the eyes of young, Black, and Latino drag queens in New York City. Drag queen Dorian Corey explains what "shade" is. She says,
"Shade is, I don't have to tell you you're ugly, because you know you're ugly… When someone insults you directly, that's called a ‘read.’ For example, if I were to tell you that your glasses are ugly. Point blank. That's a read. Reads can be long or short. ‘Shade’ comes from reading, If I were to say in a terribly condescending voice, "Oh honey, I'm so glad you saved up to buy those glasses," that's blatant shade. I didn't insult the glasses, or you, directly. It's implied by my voice and the context of what I said. You know they're ugly. Sometimes people don't get that they're being ‘shaded’ — this is always sad. To ‘throw shade’ simply means you've said something shady to someone…”
This term began to become more popularized on the VH1 show, RuPaul’s Drag Race in the late 2000s, and spread to Black shows like The Real Housewives of Atlanta and Love and Hip Hop, to name a few. Because of the influence of the African-American slang and language in both popular culture and the web, today the term “throwing shade” has become second nature, with the help of the internet and media, so much so, that the term “Shade” was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in February 2017. Like the dozens, it is also humorous, and a way for both communities to cope with the struggle of living lives as outsiders in American society.
The dozens and throwing shade are subversive. These are the practices that took place on the back of school buses, in barber shops, hair salons, and churches as socially acceptable ways to communicate humor and aggression. Bambi Haggins describes this idea in her book, Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America, she says;
Black comedy is tied inextricably to the African American condition….The function of humor and the therapeutic value of the accompanying laughter, inside safe, communal black spaces….As Langston Hughes notes in the autobiographical prose of The Big Sea, the laughter was, more often than not the weapon used to fight the pain.