So I’m reading the Home and Garden section of the SF Chronicle this morning, trying to take a little break from the ugliness of the world, and what do I get? Only a front page entirely devoted to issues of race, led off by an article entitled What’s Cute About Racist Kitsch? It’s a great article and, wow, did it ever strike a personal chord.
The author, Wanda J. Ravernell, talks about the sick feeling she got when she was recently confronted with reproduction ethnic memorabilia.
When I flipped to the page in the catalog, I wasn’t sure I was seeing right. It showed exclusive replicas of antique Mammy figures: cookie jars, salt and paper shakers, and tea towels decorated with pictures of pickanniny-like children eating watermelon. I read the copy, waited for my feelings to settle and looked again.
Perhaps I was taking this too personally; perhaps enough time has passed since the Urban League and the NAACP campaigns of the 1950s that made it politically incorrect to market these stereotypical images of the caretaking Mammy and the subservient butler.
No one had ever told me that these images were demeaning. In post-World War II urban areas, in the heyday of the Freedom Marches leading up to the black militant era, I never heard anyone talk about them. But I knew it when I saw it. Viewing the catalog, my stomach pitched and clutched while I tried to get a grip on my reason.
But no rationalization allowed me to deny what I saw and what went whirling through my head.
Well, it’s funny, but I understand her emotions far better than I ever could have, say, a couple weeks ago. Over at that other site, I saw several people post comments in which they compared their feelings to those of African Americans being confronted with watermelon-eating stereotypes. That analogy was pretty roundly dismissed as being over-the-top. But was it?
Ravernell goes on to say:
“Not all of the objects depicting black people from this period were violent or ugly. … For decades after Emancipation, these things enabled their white users to experience the psychological satisfaction of holding blacks in a kind of symbolic slavery. Indeed these gentler images may have been the most damaging of all, for their message was insidious — couched in “harmless” humor that invariably reduced blacks to generalized stereotypes. The black images were intended to amuse, serve and entertain; they were never shown as intelligent, competent, autonomous humans, equal to whites and worthy of respect.” (Bold-face added)
Hmmmm, change a couple of words there, and you have — oh, well. So is this where we’ve found ourselves at the dawn of the new millennium, ethnic minorities and women alike, fighting battles that we thought we had won 40 years ago AND losing ground in them? Damn. I have to say, folks, I am mightily discouraged.
Well… don’t get discouraged 🙂
If you read polls taken on racial climate/issues in this country, most of them indicate that the majority of non-white people say that things have not improved (over whatever period of time) and the majority of white people say they have.
I’m pretty sure that if you did the same poll about women, while there may not be quite as big a divide, more women would say there were still issues, while more men would say not.
It’s all a matter of perception and experience, and for the most part, people are not able to experience someone else’s reality. Then, something like the [insert pastry here] thing comes up and one is more attuned for a time to the sheer feeling of betrayal or minimalization that is faced by some people all the time. Non white people, women, teenagers (I think many of them get a bad rap).
Mind you, the experiences are different… there is not really a comparison for most white women to the experiences of non white people of either gender, but the resulting feelings when you come across something like recent events and words thrown at you are the same. And it’s not the depth of someone else’s feelings that matter of course, but of yours.
What we need to do is capture that feeling… the anger, betrayal and determination … plot a strategy and then move forward again. Past some ground we already thought was covered long ago, but still.
Anyway, I wrote a diary a while back where I talked a bit about my thoughts (scattered tho they sometimes are) on social movements and victories… and my opinion that we should never say we are victorious in anything, because that’s when things slack off and those waiting in the wings come slithering in to start tearing down what we’ve just built as soon as we’ve built it.
Whether it is on racial issues, gender issues, fair taxation, social security, programs for the poor, and so on. We need to just accept that we have to start over and begin building from the ground up, is my opinion.
…and the comments weren’t too shabby, either! 😉
There’s certainly a lot to think about there. I know I fall way short in these areas. In fact, I have to move every 13 years for that very reason. I have always bought houses that were fixer-uppers, fixed them up and lived happily in them until they needed to be re-fixed-up. Ack! Time to sell! I just can’t face doing the same job a second time — it seems so unfair to have to do the same thing over again because it didn’t stay the way it should.
So if I can’t even paint the same room a second time, how on earth do I go back to fighting to be taken seriously as a human being?
And weren’t some of the comments amazing? Lots to think about still.
Well, I think one has to look at it not as going back to fight, or fighting til it’s over, but rather as something that never ends. Just like getting up in the morning every day. You know, brush your teeth, wash your face and fight ignorance and oppression ;).
Or, if it helps, you can imagine it as painting the Wall of China? Now that’s a fixer-upper.
I have always thought that feminists, Ethnic minorities (particularly african americans)and homosexuals were naturals for a coalition. Unfortunately, lately it doesn’t work that way.
Well, it does, in some instances. I think probably mostly in cities and coastal areas, although I can’t know for sure that it doesn’t also in rural areas.
I think to accept, even just a little bit, that it can’t work that way or won’t is to give in a bit too easily (on this matter).
It may take a little time, but I think the most important thing is to ensure people that you’ll stand up for them, and support them. Some groups are probably more naturally wary than others, but what everyone needs to know – not just from other “special interests”, but from the Democratic party itself is… that they won’t be abandoned in favor of the new interests.
To me it’s all very simple… I think I’ll make it my motto, lol.
You stand up for me. I stand up for you. We all stand up for one another… we win. (Unless I’m missing an element, which is entirely possible).
And I always thought the Democratic Party WAS that coalition — but I guess the political does trump the ideal. So sad.
babaloo, thanks for this diary and for making the connection between what you read and what we experienced. I really appreciate this sensitive diary.
Kansas, thank you. It was really quite an experience to read the article this morning because I know that before all this, I would have appreciated what the writer was saying on an intellectual level, but there never would have been a gut reaction of “Oh, yeah, I know exactly what she feels like.”
I heard that Oprah has a collection of this kind of black memorabilia. She said that she would rather buy it for the right reasons than let some one else buy it for the wrong reasons.
The article actually mentions Oprah, as well as Bill Cosby and Whoopi Goldberg as being collectors of these items. I personally see a difference between the old pieces, which arguably represent an era in history (and, I hope, a throwback of sorts) versus reproductions, which represent… well, THAT’S the problem.