Mark Harris

Hussein the Tragic Mulatto: In the tradition of Maroon Zikr, Following up on Brer Rabbit and Coyote were Going There, We Be Goin’ There with Hussein the Tragic Mulatto, an American Morality Play. The Tragic Mulatto motif, similar to the film world’s Magic Negro motif, is articulated from out of the Souls of White Folk, at least those who are Indigenously Challenged. Mulatto is the slaver term for a first generation “black” white mix, the imagined mixture of the civilized white man, imposed by rape on the body of the black enslaved woman. Therefore in their imaginations the tragedy was that the superior intellect of the European was trapped in the draft animal of the African. In our morality play, Hussein is an American with a vision, who has answers for the problems of a nation and the world. But similar to Cassandra before him, he is not believed to be truly American, because he is Black. Mark Harris is an American maroon griot mugician, college instructor in Counseling and Ethnic Studies and award winning journalist.