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The dozens is an African American oral tradition in which two acquaintances go head to head in a contest of often good-natured, ribald "trash-talk". They take turns insulting; "burning", "cracking", "heating", "ranking", "sparking", "janking", "snapping", "checking", or "riding" — on one another, their adversary's mother, or other family member until one of them has no comeback. Similar traditions exist in other western cultures.

In the United States, this practice is called playing the dozens, doin' the dozens, running the dozens, or sometimes dirty dozens. The dozens is a contest of personal power—of wit, verbal ability, and mental agility, but especially of mental toughness and self-control. If one lashes out in anger, that person automatically loses the contest. Each putdown, or snap, ups the ante. Defeat can be humiliating, but a skilled contender, winner or loser, may gain respect. The dozens is one of the contributing elements in the development of hip hop, especially the practice of freestyle battling. The opponent is often considered being served.

History and practice

The dozens can be a harmless game of casual, good-natured jibes, an exchange of malicious insults, taunts or, if tempers flare, a prelude to physical violence. While the competition on its face is usually light-hearted, smiles sometimes mask real tensions. In its purest form, the dozens is part of a custom of verbal sparring, of "woofin'" and "signifyin'" ostensibly intended to defuse conflict nonviolently, descended from oral traditions of indigenous West African cultures. The contest is generally judged informally by any onlookers or bystanders who may be watching. The dozens is a battle for the respect of onlookers and is rarely seen without spectators. The onlookers express approval or disapproval with laughter, jeers, or slang filled catcalls such as, "Ohhhh! Burn!".

The term the dozens is believed to refer to the devaluing on the auction block of slaves who were past their prime, deformed, aged, or no longer capable of hard labor after years of back-breaking toil. These slaves often were sold by the dozen. In "Still Laughing to Keep from Crying: Black Humor", African American author and professor Mona Lisa Saloy writes:

The dozens has its origins in the slave trade of New Orleans where deformed slaves—generally slaves punished with dismemberment for disobedience—were grouped in lots of a 'cheap dozen' for sale to slave owners. For a Black to be sold as part of the 'dozens' was the lowest blow possible.^[1]

"Yo' momma" is a common, widely recognized retort in slang. It is a cryptic and sometimes comical allusion to the dozens.

Children have been known to express contempt or defiance by reciting a short poem that refers to the dozens, but in which the insults are mostly implied:

Yo' momma, yo' daddy, Yo' bald-headed granny

Yo' momma, Yo' daddy, Yo' sista, too. Go tell them bitches to go back to the zoo.

Yo' momma, Yo' daddy, Yo' bald-headed granny,

She ninety-nine. She thinks she fine. She had a date with Frankenstein

The dozens in literature and the performing arts

Kokomo Arnold, one of the most popular American blues musicians of the 1930s, released a song Twelves (Dirty Dozens) that includes lyrics such as:

I like yo' momma - sister, too

I did like your poppa - but your poppa wouldn't do

I met your poppa on the corner the other day

I soon found out he was funny that way.

In Zora Neale Hurston's, Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), there is reference to "playin' de dozens" in front of Joe's store.

Comedian George Carlin talks about playing the dozens on his Grammy-winning 1972 album Class Clown.

"You wanna know the dozens, well the dozens is a game, but the way I fucked your mother, is a goddamn shame"

Alternative hip hop group The Pharcyde released a song on their debut album Bizarre Ride II: The Pharcyde entitled "Ya' Mama", the lyrics of which consist entirely of snaps. A remix of this song is used as the theme of MTV's trash-talk show Yo Momma (see below for more information about the show.) In addition, the Australian hip-hop group Butterfingers have a song called "Yo Momma" that includes the chorus "Yo Momma's on the top of my things-to-do list."

The book Snaps (1994), written by James Percelay, is a compendium of over 450 jokes. Its popularity gave rise to sequels Double Snaps (1995), Triple Snaps (1996), and Snaps 4 (1998). The books use the epithet "your mother", as opposed to the more common "yo' momma". The book series spawned a television series titled Snaps which ran briefly on HBO. The movies White Men Can't Jump, Remember the Titans, 8 Mile, and House Party include exchanges of snaps.

In a recurring Saturday Night Live sketch from the 1990s entitled "I'm Chillin'", which was presented as an inner-city public-access talk show, the host (played by then-castmember Chris Rock) would regularly present a segment entitled "Mother Joke of the Day". Rock's character would present a "mother joke" submitted by a fictitious viewer, after which Don Pardo would describe a fictitious prize to be awarded to the viewer in question.

The Keenan Ivory Wayans TV show In Living Color regularly featured a game show segment titled The Dirty Dozens and parodies of popular game shows, such as Wheel of Dozens and Family Dozens. Their brothers, Shawn and Marlon have also been involved in these, so much so that in 2004, they released a mobile phone game based on The Dozens.

The book A Portrait of Yo Mama As a Young Man (2005), written by Andrew Barlow and Kent Roberts, is a postmodern take on the dozens which redefines the form through the use of reflexivity, absurdism, and anti-humor. In addition to jokes, the book contains charts, poetry, a résumé, and various other short humor pieces. The title is derived from James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

The title of the Mexican film Y tu mamá también (literally, "And your mother, too") is taken from a scene in the movie wherein the two young male protagonists do their equivalent of the dozens.

In 2006, MTV premiered a game show titled Yo Momma executive produced and hosted by Wilmer Valderrama. Contestants face off in playing the dozens. The person judged to be the funniest wins a cash prize. The four winners from that week then face off in a final round, where the weekly winner gets another cash prize and additional prizes as well.

Fictional artist MC Hawking (a gangsta rapping parody of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking) has a song called "The Dozens" on his CD A Brief History of Rhyme: MC Hawking's Greatest Hits, where he raps "yo momma" jokes like "Yo momma's such a slut, the other night I had to park my dick on her ass and wait an hour to get in."

Award-winning author and UCLA professor Mike Rose refers to "running the dozens" in his oft-anthologized essay, "I Just Wanna Be Average." ("Tyrrell was the coolest kid I knew. He ran the dozens like a metric halfback...")

Related practices outside the African American community

There are phenomena similar to the dozens outside the African American community. In Britain, for instance, the analogous usage is "your mum" or "your mam" or "yer maw". Derogatory barbs focus almost exclusively on impugning the moral integrity of the target's mother with regard to her sexual behavior.

Historically, similar verbal competitions were practiced in other cultures. Ancient Germanic cultures, including the Norse and Anglo-Saxons, practiced a ritual exchange of insults known as flyting, which is similar in function to the dozens. In sixteenth-century Scotland, the term flyting was used to describe an exchange of abusive poems by poets. Arab poets exchanged creative insults in naqa'id, a practice continued in the zajal verbal jousting of present-day Lebanon. American cowboys in the late nineteenth century participated in cussing contests, the winners of which were sometimes rewarded with new saddles.

Some use your mom jokes as a riposte and often a counter-riposte to any insulting statement made. A counter- counter riposte of 'your nan' can also be made.

In recent years, your mom jokes have also become used for statements that have no hostile or pejorative intent: "I love to eat ice cream." "Your mom loves to eat ice cream!" The phrase can also be used to skew another person's words: "Ramen noodles are cheap and easy." "Your mom is cheap and easy!"; "Primates occupy an interesting ecological niche." "I pri-mated with your mom's ecological niche!" Often this practice is simplified to the point where an entire response to a statement is "Yo mama."

Quips like "That's what your mom said (last night)" or "That's what ''she'' said" (wherein "she" does not necessarily refer to somebody's mother, but instead an unnamed, hypothetical woman) are also sometimes used to reply humorously to anything vaguely suggestive.

It is also a Large part of Australian Male culture to Insult one's mates, sometimes to what seems to outsiders to be particularly savage, but is (for the most part) taken lightly and without offence, often with the target of the insults laughing as much as the one giving them out.

Examples of snaps

What follows are a few sanitized, less colorful examples of snaps in the dozens.

"Yo' Momma's so fat..."

"...she doesn't take pictures, she takes posters."
"...yo pop bought the grand canyon as a burial plot."
"...she uses a lawnmower to shave her legs."
"...God created her and on the 7th day he rested."
"...She fell down, broke her leg, and gravy came out."
"...She's got more Chins than a Chinese phone book."

' For further examples, please see the External links section.