In 1977, the notable folklorist Alan Dundes published an essay entitled “Who are the Folk” that took inventory of how the term “folk” had emerged and evolved since the late 1770s. Some of the ideas developed in that essay helped re-frame how the word was deployed in studies of culture, including how some BIPOC communities embraced a term that many had previously rejected. Up until the Civil Right struggles, roughly the mid 1960s, “folk” had been primarily a pejorative term that essentially meant “less than” other people or cultural norms (as in a “folk song” versus music for the educated, or “folk speech” as in contrast to “proper English,” or “folk medicine” in opposition to science, and so forth). Dundes’ research clarified that at its point of origin, and for almost one hundred years, “folk” was defined in terms of class status and geography –that is, Europeans elite denominated as “folk” peasants and people living in rural areas and this was largely restricted to European-derived cultures. Through the advocacy of Marxist labor organizers and some, mainly American, anthropologists, the “folk” grew to encompass the urban poor or any group considered “marginalized.” Starting in the 1930s, we can see in the United States the idea of “folk” associated to protests, labor, calls for democratic inclusion, and critiques of elites.

The Civil Rights movement expanded this impetus and by the 1960s we see the rise of, on the one hand, efforts by Black, Puerto Ricans, and Mexican American scholars to record and document “folk traditions” as elements of pride for these communities, and on the other hand, the “folk music” revival (Bod Dylan and such) by college [mainly White] students. Despite the thrust to associate “folk” with social justice movements, none of these historical turns successfully eliminated the colonial traces of this word – as “folk” remained a category mediated by “experts” who prioritized the need to “help those people,” in many instances. But by the 1970s we see a major change.

Scholars like Dundes began to think of “folk” as any group of people who share an expressive ingenuity to affirm a sense of common identity and meaning. A “folk community” can be “as large as a nation or as small as a family,” Dundes wrote. This gave permission to students of folklore to become interested in documenting the “folk” ways of occupational groups (i.e. baseball players, waitresses, hairstylists, coal miners, firefighters, cowboys, teachers, seamstresses, lumberjacks, etc.) and leisure groups (surfers, skateboarders, gamers, etc.). The “expressive” part of being part of a folk group became associated with each group’s own lingo, stories or legends, decorations, rituals, and in-group jokes. It was recognized that people share overlapping identities and can “code-switch” to join in the “folk culture” of the various groups they belong to, thus “folk” no longer was thought to define a monolithic identity for someone. A Native American potter can also be part of the folk culture of women, or bingo players, or bakers. In other words, people are complex and folk-cultures are like passports we use to feel competent in multiple identities and situations.

Insider jokes (about outsiders) is one of the genres of folk-group identities that has gained attention by scholars, mainly because “not getting the joke” is one of the surest signs that one does not belong to the community telling the joke. Among one of the most praised, early studies is Keith Basso’s Portraits of ‘the Whiteman’ -linguistic play and cultural symbols among the Western Apache. Others in a similar vein include Americo Paredes’ Uncle Remus with Chile (on Mexican American humor), and multiple investigations about humor in African American communities. Ultimately, in common American English, we use expressions like “who are my people,” or “my folks” to mark a sense of belonging —which, ironically, reclaims the power of “otherness” that the original discriminatory use of the word intended.