The Dozens

Abstract

Repeated misinterpretation has been the fate of the AfroAmerican game generally referred to as the Dozens. The purpose of this paper is to review previous interpretive attempts made of the and to offer an alternative theory based on African folklore. The is an Afro-American contest game in which two contestants, in the presence of a spurring audience of peers, try to best each other in casting aspersions on each other or each other's relatives, particularly the mother. Such aspersions are made up of both nonsexual and remarks, such as joking accusations of incest, promiscuity, and possession of unusual or related organs. Elsewhere, in previous writings on the Dozens, games characterized by references to organs or intercourse have been termed and those not so characterized, cleanhence, the Dozens and the dirty Dozens (Elton, 1950: 231). But in the present discussion, to avoid the annoying intrusion of the Euro-centric puritanical attitude toward matters, which most probably is the basis for referring to one type of the as clean and the other as dirty, the terms sexual and non-sexual will be used to

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