Barshop 1

Noah Alexander Barshop

ENGW 2325
Metaphor Criticism
20 November 2014
A Metaphor Criticism of Omali Yeshitelas Revolutionary
Discourse in The Wolves and The Double-Edged Blade
Introduction
In the aftermath of the crack epidemic of the early
90s , black communities across America struggled with
the high rates of incarceration, crime, and gang violence
that spiked when the rock hit the streets. This great
disarray invited many different interpretations of the
events, and many attributed the violence and crime of the
crack wave to the black community, both from within and
without the community.
Years later, on May 31st, 1998, at a Philadelphia
conference on Black Power, the Chairman of the African
Peoples Socialist Party (APSP)2 Omali Yeshitela delivered
a speech on various issues within the black community.
Though Yeshitelas speech was over an hour and a half
long, covering a variety of topics from minority
incarceration to the origins of slavery and imperialism,
the most famous excerpt has been published independent
from the rest of the speechs content within the 2005
book Omali Yeshitela Speaks. Entitled The Wolves and the
Double-Edged Blade, this speech is laden with metaphors
intentionally employed by the rhetor to invite the
audience to reexamine the crack epidemic and the
greater black communitys role within it.
In this essay I will present Yeshitelas speech,
explain the methodology of metaphor criticism and the
role of a critic, then analyze the artifact as a metaphor
critic. Overall, my aim is to illuminate how revolutionary
speakers can reduce complex socioeconomic and political
issues to simplified metaphors so as to invite members of
the audience to see the world through the lens of their
1

1 When the advent and mass proliferation of the drug across

the United States drastically affected many minority

communities.
2 A revolutionary-oriented pan-African Internationalist Socialist
Movement dedicated to unifying black communities and
striving for a black socialist democracy in Africa.

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metaphor and act accordingly to what the lens suggestsin this case, revolutionarily.
Presentation of Artifact
Affront a large banner displaying a black fist and the
words Black Power, Yeshitela delivered The Wolves and
the Double-Edged Blade to the black community and its
various religious and political leaders. Yeshitela began the
Wolves portion of the speech by addressing what he
called the so-called negro leaders, accusing them of
perpetuating a detrimental idea within the community:
that the communitys problems come solely from the
choices of black individuals, choices for which they must
atone. Yeshitela characterizes the actions of these
leaders as attacking the community by perpetuating
this harmful view, that It wasnt that the government
was the problem, it was the people who were the
problem. He then described how some people who were
out their pushing crack cocaine often thought it was their
idea that they were doing it. Against the view that its
the community and the dealers who are to blame, he
posited that it is the imperialists, the capitalists white
power who had take[n] away all the other options
[saying,] if you want to live, this is what you can do to
live, and they put crack cocaine there.
Next, Omali Yeshitela - with the fiery intensity seen
from the likes of Malcolm X and Reverend King - vividly
detailed an arctic hunting technique that uses a special
trap to deceive wolves into killing themselves. With anger
in his voice, he described how these hunters take a
double edged blade, and theyll put blood on the blade,
and theyll melt the ice and stick the handle in the ice, so
that only the blade is protruding.
After describing how the hunters craft this
deathtrap, he introduces the character of the wolf: The
wolf will smell the blood and want to eat, and it will lick
the blade trying to eat [and] of course, he cuts his
tongue. He went on to reveal the cruelest, most
nefarious element of the trap, describing how the wolf
thinking hes really having a good thing, getting
nourishment from this blade, is really drinking his own
blood and kills himself. He concluded the metaphor by
introducing the last character, the cruel hunter;
immediately after detailing the death of the wolf, he

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revealed: and thats what the Imperialists did with us
with Crack Cocaine.
Next, he grounded the story of the hunters, the
wolves, and the double-edged blade in the reality of the
crack epidemic and its effects on the community by
asserting, you have these young brothers out there who
think they are getting something they gonna make a
living with... but theyre really killing themselves just like
the wolf was licking the blade. In the portion I omitted
from that last quote Yeshitela identified the nourishment
sought after by these crack dealers as cars gold a
house. He then posed the question, the white people
have cars, why cant I have a car?, and repeats it,
switching the coveted possession each time from cars,
to gold, to a house.
Lastly, he ended the speech in conviction, claiming
that, you dont blame the victim, you blame the
oppressor, Imperialism, white power is the enemy, and
pointing to what he sees as the origin of all of this racialbased violence: the enemy when it first came to Africa,
and snatched up the first African brothers here against
our will.
Here, Yeshitela criticized the clergy for obscuring
the struggle of the black people against a white system of
mental and physical slavery by saying that it was a
religious/spiritual issue, or a matter of individual choice,
rather than a social/political issue brought about by
supremacist aggressors. And this was just the preface.
Yeshitela went on to introduce a parable, laden with
metaphor, equating the proponents of white power to
Arctic hunters who trick wolves into killing themselves,
and the helpless wolves, who think they are eating but
are actually killing themselves, to the individuals pushing
crack in the black community.
Method of Criticism
Considered a profound influence on the history of
Western thought, Aristotle was one of the first people
recorded in history to discuss metaphor. According to
Sonja Foss, Aristotles definition set the study of
metaphor as decoration. And while creative and
figurative language influenced and affected the world
unnoticed for thousands of years after Aristotles time,
this view of metaphor as ornamentation to language
remained. However, In the mid-20th century, George

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Lakoff and Mark Johnson published their landmark book
Metaphors We Live By, which revolutionized the field of
rhetoric with the theory that metaphors govern our
everyday functioning, down to the most mundane
details, and structure the way we think, what we
experience, and what we do every day. Their
breakthrough pioneered the idea that metaphor is integral
to the symbolic construction of language, and that
language comprises the reality that we experience. Thus,
metaphor was no longer seen as just decoration, mere
description of the world, but as the building blocks of our
experienced reality. From these advances in the
humanities, the body of metaphor criticism began to
develop. Now, its is a thriving field in which metaphor
critics analyze documents, speeches, and other artifacts,
focusing on how metaphors contain implicit assumptions,
points of view, and evaluations, and how speakers use
these to shape the audiences understanding of a
situation.
A metaphor critic isolates a metaphor or a series of
metaphors within an artifact, focusing on what Sonja Foss
refers to as the tenor and the vehicle within the metaphor.
The tenor is the target, or the subject being described.
The vehicle is the lens (associations and implications) you
are invited to see the subject through. For example, in the
sentence That guy is no Bill Nye when it comes to
explaining things, That guy is the tenor (or target of
the metaphor), and Bill Nye is the vehicle (or source of
associations) you are invited to perceive That guy
through. Essentially, metaphor criticism consists of
analyzing the features that are transferred from a
speakers metaphors vehicle to their tenors and
suggesting how the speakers metaphors affect how the
idea will be interpreted and interacted with by the
audience. Then, the critic groups the speakers metaphors
that have similar forms and functions within the artifact,
particularly looking for how these metaphors work both in
the context of the speech, and in their independent daily
use. In the last step, the critic focuses on the micro and
macro scales of the metaphors perception to reveal the
speakers intention for inviting the audience to see X in
terms of Y in a particular context for a particular purpose.
Analysis of Artifact

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In referencing their suggestion that the community
needs to atone, Yeshitelas choice of verb here reveals
that he his referring to the clergy by large with the label
so-called black leaders. Though, it is clear that the act
of attacking the community that he accused the clergy
of could also be the case with any other black leader that
asserts the view that the crack epidemic is solely a matter
of individual choice within the black community. By
grouping all black leaders who attribute the causes and
effects of the crack epidemic to the black community as
so-called black leaders, Yeshitela dually aimed to
reduce their credibility and dispel any viewpoints that are
not his own socioeconomic revolutionary perspective on
the matter. The implication of this view of the clergy as
attacking the community groups them with the
Imperialists in preventing the emancipation of the black
community. This implication, and the other features
attributed to the clergy, provided the audience numerous
reasons to cease both their following of the clergy and
their circulation of the it was the people who were the
problem mentality.
After bringing up the question of agency in
reference to the crack epidemic, Yeshitela claimed that
the imperialists, the capitalists white power created
the crack epidemic and imposed it upon the black
community, then immediately began to introduce his
metaphors. The hunter is representative of the forces of
white supremacy, while the double-edged blade deathtrap
is the crack epidemic created with the intention of
misleading the black community into killing itself. While
the targets of white power and imperialism already have
negative connotations, seeing them through the vehicle
of a hunter that uses ignoble and deceitful techniques to
kill wolves transfers to them additional cruel and
murderous connotations. Here, the speaker used wolves
as a the symbolic stand in for black individuals who sell
crack, characterizing them as hapless, hungry pawns
participating in a death trap that they had no part in
designing. Through this characterization of hunger he
made reference to the poverty and malnourishment that
plagued black communities at the time of the speech.
Additionally this characterization, if accepted by the
audience of course, absolves the black community of
complicity in the epidemic, and pushes blame to the
proponents of white power, which is reflected in the
quote, you dont blame the victim, you blame the

Barshop 6
oppressor, imperialism, white power. He concluded this
by labeling the white power oppressors as the enemy,
and referencing the beginning of their African slave trade
to remind the black community that white culture has
brought them nothing but suffering, slavery, and pain.
The deathtrap and its cruel mechanism have their
own significance, which may have potentially influenced
the audience towards a more revolutionary view of the
situation. Its clear that the act of the wolf licking the
bloodied blade, cutting its tongue, and being tricked into
thinking that its getting more nourishment is symbolic of
the crack epidemic, yet it is the mechanism that really
speaks to the specifics of how the deathtrap of crack
affects the black community. The more an individual
thinks hes doing well for himself by slanging or using
crack, the more he kills himself and the community.
Subtler than this is the anti-capitalist subtext Yeshitela
weaves into his portrayal of the nourishment these wolves
(crack pushers) are looking for. Rather than the blood and
sustenance a wolf needs to live, pushing crack only yields
Cars gold a house, all of which he characterized as
unnecessary products that seem to be of paramount
importance to black individuals because white people
possess them. The use of this theme of need vs. want put
into perspective the capitalist comforts and amenities
that black individuals were killing their communities and
themselves for. Conceiving of the nourishment like this
could have convinced pushers that their schemes didnt
satisfy any actual need, only the wants. Additionally, this
put into perspective the consumer items that members of
the black community want beyond what they physically
need. Yeshitela referenced these comforts in a
disparaging way because they foster complacency within
capitalist American reality and this stifles revolutionary
thought and action, from his perspective.
Outside of this metaphor, in day-to-day
conversation, wolf just means ferocious beast, hunter
carries a positive, even triumphant connotation3, and his
means of hunting can be praised just as well as his ability
to kill. However, in this context, wolf was used as a
metaphor for hapless black individual, the hunter was
seen as a creature of spite and discriminatory hatred, and
the means of hunting was seen as a cheap, deceitful trick
3 Of course, with the exception of those who see hunting as
inhumane.

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that offers nothing but death to the wolves; all of these
associations, Yeshitela transfers unto the black man, the
crack epidemic, and the white supremacist through the
use of metaphor.
Conclusion
Omali Yeshitelas deeply moving metaphors within
his May 31st, 1998 The Wolves and the Double-Edged
Blade speech possibly shaped the audiences
understanding of both their roles within the crack
epidemic, and the role of the agents that he accused of
causing it, the white oppressors. Additionally, the usage
of these metaphors in Yeshitelas speech brought forth a
call to action. By hearing the speech, the audience was
encouraged to become enraged with both the apparent
and the veiled oppression of white supremacy and
imperialism; to abandon their capitalist comforts to
become black internationalist socialist revolutionaries;
and above all, to see the crack epidemic as something not
fostered within the black community, but something
imposed upon it by the systems of imperialism,
something like a double-edged blade coated in blood,
enticing innocent victims with the impression of
nourishment and growth within the capitalist system,
while concealing a nefarious death trap.
From this speech, we can see how a revolutionaryoriented rhetor can use metaphor to not just describe a
situation, but also to influence how an audience perceives
and thus interacts with a situation. Prior to his speech, the
consensus in the black community was that the causes
for the epidemic were simply a matter of choice amongst
black individuals, or a plague brought about by the
spiritual crisis of sin. After, however, audiences now had
another lens to see the situation through, that, rather
than being independent actors, crack pushers in the
community are pawns in a racially-based scheme created
by white supremacists to kill them and the greater black
community. The ideas uncovered in this essay dont only
speak to this speech however, they also reflect how a
speaker can use metaphor to shape identities, agency,
and causality within a certain narrative or drama in ways
that persuade audiences to adopt certain worldviews and
ideologically motivated courses of action.
From the foundations these conclusions provide, a
rhetoric scholar could further investigate the effects and

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consequences of metaphors used in revolutionary
discourse when audience members take these metaphors
to heart and act upon them.

Works Cited
Yeshitela, Omali. "The Wolves and the Double-edged
Blade." Omali Yeshitela Speaks. St. Petersburg: Burning
Spears Publications, 2005. Print.
For video, visit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HO175CHhoI