Black Talk

[Tracey]

When Blacks came into contact with Whites  
they often found it useful to maintain a "low profile."  
Metaphor provides a convenient cover when they wished to do so - talking in riddles, as it were. For example when metaphors are used by Whites to promote negative values about Blacks, Blacks turn the metaphors back on the users by assigning them the same negative values. At the same time they assign to themselves the positive values in the metaphor; thus, metaphor serves well the functions of deliberate ambiguity for Blacks.  

In other ways, Black creativity in speech comes as a consequence of oppression. The use of indirection, obliquity, inference, and illusion is related to the need to be calculating and conscious in social exposure.  

-Asa Hilliard lll