Book Review of Keith H.

Basso's Portraits of The Whiteman (1979)

Keith H. Basso's work, Portraits of The Whiteman (1979) provides its readers with an
ethnographic account of a practice that involves what he describes as one of the most complex and
powerful symbols in Western Apache culture (62). The topic at hand is a specific strain of Apache
humor in which the speaker, or joker, assumes the persona of an Anglo-American and puts on a
performance with what he, and hopefully his audience, understands as Whiteman speech. While these
actions are inherently essentialistic, Basso hopes this text will serve to provide evidence of their
inventive and interpretive components (80) and reveal the dynamic nature of the practice.
Basso organizes the book into five distinct chapters. The first more or less serves as a primer
for what is to come, establishing the topic he intends to focus on and explaining its significance, and
introducing the concept and implications of code-switching in this context. The second provides some
historical context to the community his ethnography targets, the Cibecue. Chapter three provides
theoretical models of how jokes are constructed and interpreted and also gives examples of the
particular cultural features of Anglo-Americans that may be targeted by Apache jokers. Chapter four
identifies the actual function of these types of jokes to the Apache. The final chapter is brief and serves
to differentiate the subject of his research from gross enactments of prefigured ethnic stereotypes
(80) and show that this data can be useful in understanding both Western Apache culture and our own.
Basso's first point is to establish that 'the Whiteman' is a cultural construction one that varies
by region and by community. In his words 'the Whiteman' is a social category and a cultural symbol.
It is a multipurpose instrument for rendering Whitemen meaningful (4). By that, he means that the
concept of 'the Whiteman' serves as a model that brings intelligibility to what is otherwise an enigma to
the Apache, the actual Whitemen.
He then moves on to describe code-switching and how it pertains to Whiteman jokes,
highlighting what is known as functional differentiation. This term describes how members of speech
communities do not alternate randomly between distinct linguistic codes but choose systematically

among them and put them to specialized uses (8). While it may seem obvious to some, this simply
dispels the notion that jokers who perform Whiteman jokes are simply choosing the voice they
employ at random rather, it is a product of that person's experience with Whitemen and his or her
assigning of meaning to these experiences. The example of code-switching Basso provides us with,
one that I found particularly compelling, is that of a young Apache girl scolding her puppy while
imitating the voice of a white schoolteacher. Here, Basso points out, the girl and the puppy are
engaged in an imaginary world of play (11) where the girl's interpretation of the real relationships
between white schoolteachers and Apache students are manifested.
In the next section, Basso gives us a detailed picture of the community he worked with when
conducting research for this book. He describes Cibecue as a particularly conservative linguistic
community where everyone continues to learn Western Apache (27). At the same time, AngloAmericans shave made systematic attempts to eliminate the native language (27), but to no avail.
Basso observes that the Apache are actively resisting these forces of change as children sent to public
schools are told by their parents not to behave like Whitemen (28). Adults made it a point to only
use English when speaking to non-Indians.
Basso begins the third chapter establishing that joking is indeed an act of play. However, these
acts of play are modeled after acts that are not play and possess a metalinguistic element that conveys
messages that are not present when performed unjokingly (37). The slices of unjoking activitty that
(the joker) employs in the capacity of a model are what Bosso call the primary text often the
literal sense of the performance (41). The secondary text would be the joker's actual performance
which is intended to be understood as a facsimile or transcripted copy of the primary text (41).
Secondary texts scan be misinterpreted as primary ones, leading to the butt of the joke taking great
offense; and for this reason, jokes are often considered dangerous, or benagodzig, by the Apache (37).

The category of joke that Whiteman jokes fall under is called banagozd by the Western Apache
and possesses a single defining attribute: the person at whom the joke is directed is depicted as
something he or she is not (38). Whiteman jokes will usually place the butt in a subordinated position,
an action, if interpreted as the primary text, bystanders would otherwise regard as a deliberate attempt
at public humiliation (42).
In the later part of the chapter, Basso begins to analyze a transcribed interaction between two
friends and a wife. Here, we find what Basso suggests is the motivation for these performances. In
Basso's words, the cultural or textual meanings of these performances... are intimately bound up with
significant differences that Apaches perceive between their own practices for accomplishing social
interaction and practices employed by Anglo-Americans (56). In other words, there exists, from the
perspective of the Western Apache, a great amount of cultural dissonance between Apache and AngloAmericans, particularly in how they behave when interacting with other individuals.
The phrases he identified included some of the most common ones used in day-to-day
interactions in the West. Hello, my friend! How you doing? Come right in! (50-52) these were a few
of the mentioned utterances. To the Apache, as Basso describes it, all these phrases reflect the
overbearing, invasive nature of Anglo-American individuals. The rapid-fire questions are often
taken as a type of verbal strong-arming aimed at extracting information by creating an atmosphere of
emergency and makes the speaker seem agitated and impatient (53). These actions, to the Apache, are
not dissimilar to the prying queries of young children and the unrestrained babblings of old people
afflicted with senility (49).
This chapter turned out to be the most enjoyable to read. In a sort of pop-Antrho sense, it was
probably the most informative in that it explains some differences between mainstream Western
culture and that of the Western Apache and identifies these differences as the ultimate source of this
category of joking performance. The section also possessed a good balance between Basso's narrative
voice and that of his interviewees which worked to bring life to it. In the concluding parts of the

chapter, what seems to be Basso's main thesis why it is important to look at jokes and speech play and
what he hopes the reader will have taken from his work becomes salient:
As portraits of 'the Whiteman' come alive, so do formulations of one of the most complex
and powerful symbols in Western Apache culture. And if an outsider would understand a
portion of what this symbol stands for and represents, then he or she, however skeptical,
would be well advised to attend carefully to the doings of jokers. For it is a striking feature
of Western Apache life that serious things are always getting said in what appear to be
unserious ways, and Apache jokers... have developed this practice into something of an
art... as acted document that give audible voice and visible substance to Apache
conceptions of Anglo-Americans and the problems they face when they engage AngloAmericans in social interaction. (63)

It should be noted that while Basso makes the relationships of power between Whitemen and
the Apache readily salient in earlier parts of the book, he is clearly focusing more closely on these
clashing aspects of culture more extensively when analyzing the jokes. I would imagine this is an
attempt to show that these cultural disparities are more so responsible for these actions than, say,
feelings of oppression and resentment towards their oppressors. While we are most like looking at a
combination of both these notions, the former highlights the performance as a sort of social
commentary on mannerisms the Apache find ludicrous while the latter could signify a certain amount
of hostility expressed through the jokes, potentially marking them as simple racist and essentialistic
parodies.
The following chapter aims to highlight the social significance of these types of performances.
In it, we learn, through the use of an extended metaphor depicting relationships between individuals as
deerhides, that joking is one means for 'stretching' social relationships, a playful device for testing
and affirming solidarity by ostensibly denying it (69). In this way, joking can also serve as an indirect
method of boasting about the strength of your relationship in public showing how far you can
stretch the relationship without it breaking (74). Basso's final point is that these performances serve
to affirm what is right and proper by dramatizing... conceptions of what is wrong and

inappropriate (76).
This last point, along with the plethora of examples Basso provides in Chapter 3, also suggest
that these jokes could serve another function: identity building. By demarcating the boundaries
between the Whiteman and the Apache, the jokers are practicing a sort of exclusionary boundarywork (Lacy 2007) that can prove useful in understanding processes of social organization within the
Apache. I feel it would have been interesting if Basso expanded on this point and included methods of
marking in-group status; even if it were so simple as just speaking Western Apache. Of course, the
usefulness of this towards Basso's narrative would be dependent on the amount of data he might have
had to fill it out.
The concluding chapter is mainly intended to counter the notion that Apache jokers are simply
acting out a set of prefigured ethnic stereotypes and suggest their practices actually possess a
number of inventive and interpretive components the make for a dynamically shifting art form.
Basso claims that Western Apache jokers are not preoccupied with stolen land, violated treaties, and
(the) numerous other fronts... (of) a brutal lack of awareness and concern by Whitemen, they simply
are making sense of how Anglo-Americans conduct themselves in the presence of Indian people (82).
This last sentiment may have better served in the introductory chapter as to dispel any possible
tensions (like the one I mentioned in my analysis of Chapter 3). With such an evocative title such as
Portraits of The Whiteman, it seems Basso might have suspected such controversies to arise and
emphasized earlier that, in the lax and spontaneous contexts these events often occur, the jokers are not
concerning themselves with the historical atrocities of the Whitemen, simply their quirky and profound
mannerisms. If the reader wishes to look beyond this, seeing how these conceivably defiant acts fit
within the context of the unique relationships of power between the United States and the various
Indigenous communities, this is not the text for you.

Bibliography
Basso, Keith H. 1979. Portraits of The Whiteman:Linguistic play and cultural symbols among the
Western Apache. Camhridge University Press.
Lacy, Karyn R. 2007. Blue-Chip Black: Race, Class, and Status in the New Black Middle Class.
University of California Press.