I had a conversation with my mom about this just last weekend.
They buy some folk art from a lady down here and then sell it up in NorCal where they live.
My mom proudly showed me some painted window shutters she just purchased.
Black mammies on each of them.
“Just some kitchen art.”
“Jesus mom, you know that’s offensive right?”
“What? Noooo. It’s a part of history.”
“These aren’t history if the lady just painted them last week.”
If I recall correctly, Whoopi Goldberg collects this kind of thing.
Nobody uses that imagery anymore, eh? I wonder if they’re being intentionally offensive.
Honestly, I’ve been to a gazillion flea markets, antique shows, and junk shops where these were being sold right alongside Depression glass and Grandma’s silver. I started wondering about them when I was about twelve, but I’d seen them and similar things all my life. They seemed like weirdly stylized black people to me, but they also seemed Country and Old. The Mammy figures in particular I actually really liked: she seemed like the very best possible grandmother to have, one who cooked the best food and told the best stories. I always found the black-boy-and-alligator ones a little creepy, but watermelon and fried chicken are just Southern food. Yeah, yeah, I get that people use it as a racist image, but I’d live on the stuff if I could and my legs glow under black light.
It seems to me that the Mammy figure, at least, is typically an exoticized image of black people rather than a hateful one. The problem is that while it’s not necessarily meant to be outright derogatory, it does carry with it a sort of quiet admission that black people are Other. Not evil, necessarily, or dumb or dangerous or dishonest, but Other. That only makes sense in a white-centric society, because the Other is never you. They’re Other. They might be interesting, pleasant, charming, even intelligent and mysterious as the old stereotype of the “inscrutable Chinese”, but they are also very strictly relegated into the ‘Other’ category. Not “us”, but “they”. It’s a far subtler racism: not hateful, necessarily, but also not equal or inclusive.
And I have seen Nazi memorabilia in shops. Right out in display cases and everything. Typically it’s in German-based antique shops, and it’s almost never out in the front window. It used to bother me until I mentioned it to my mother. She explained, “There are people out there who collect that stuff. They aren’t necessarily or even mostly white supremacists, either. Consider, too, that most of that stuff probably came out of someone’s dad’s or granddad’s box of mementos – specifically, as war trophies.”
Aunt Jemima’s been modernized, she doesn’t wear the kerchief on her head anymore. She’s just some nice black lady that makes pancakes of her own free will.
I feel that way about Uncle Ben, too, Wile E. Maybe at one point they were racist, but they don’t make me uncomfortable today. I don’t know–maybe people do find them offensive because of their origins, but since my first exposure to Aunt Jemima was in the late 80s/early 90s, I just think of her as a woman who happens to make pancakes and happens to be black.
Another question is, if the figurines depicted racism against asians, would anyone even mention it?
I find racism against asians is never given the spotlight like racism against blacks.
I saw some of these figurines for sale in a schlock shop here in Korea. Aside from some GI’s and their families, there are not a lot of Black people in this part of Korea. I can’t imagine who buys these here or why.
As the son of an antique dealer, I’ve seen this stuff alot. One of my mom’s best friends collects pickaninny stuff. Most of the time, there is some reason other than racism. Often, the person just has an unexplainable soft spot for these items- the same way I collect monsters, or my mom collects portrait plates and janus figures.
I currently own, somewhere packed away, a set of Zulu Lulu swizzle sticks. It’s a complete set, with the cardboard display backing and mom got it cheap. She told me to hold on to it as it would only increase in value. Experience has shown that when it comes to antiques and collectibles, mom is never wrong. So I kept it.
I’ve also seen plenty of Nazi artifacts. For a few years, we actually owned a medal commemorating the Sudatenland’s vote to join the Reich. It never sold at shows, so we ended up donating it to a local Holocaust museum. Generally, the Nazi stuff is sold by military dealers who have artifacts from other wars and other countries. Occasionally, you do find a dealer selling only Nazi items and get a little suspicious.
Is it really the same thing, though? Not trying to be an ass, I just want to know. I’m not African American but I am non white and I’m pretty sure if I went into someone’s house and saw a lot of pickaninny stuff and they just said they had a soft spot for it…that I’d feel kind of creeped out/nervous. Not that everyone who owns it is racist. Just that to me it would give me a really weird vibe and I would want to know what about it they found compelling.
:eek: :smack: Oh, dear Og! I had no idea!
I grew up with Noddy in Toyland books. They of course, featured the Golliwogs. I’d forgotten all about it until I looked it up after reading the word “golliwog” in this thread. I honestly never had any idea what the figures were supposed to represent! In the books, the golliwogs were alongside things like gnomes - the elfin kind with pointy red hats that looked like they made Keebler cookies. I never once conceived of the golliwogs being anything other than fictitious creatures, like elves, trolls, and unicorns. I never even thought they were meant to be based on humans! For some reason, I thought they were furry, and they were more like martians, probably due to their resemblance to Marvin the Martian.
Now I feel dirty. Like when I realized Bugs Bunny used to say things like “Get your cotton-pickin’ hands off of me!”
Freudian Slit I agree completely. It took me a long time to be convinced that mom’s friend wasn’t secretly the first Jewish grand dragon of the KKK.
Heh. I think I can see being interested in the attitudes of the past. When I read about the Edwardian age, and the racist, Rule Britannia attitudes, White Man’s Burden type stuff–it’s fascinating. Or when you read a casual racist remark in a Nancy Drew book or otherwise fairly innocuous book, and you realize that people just fundamentally thought differently than we do. I guess the difference is that I don’t think I’d want actual objects reminding me of it. It’s one thing to observe them, for me, but to have them in my home would give me personally an icky feeling.
OMG! I never realized…
Ignorance fought.
FWIW, I personally suspect that the phrase isn’t racist. It’s not that Bugs objects to someone black “putting their hands on him”. The popularity of the phrase resides more, I think, in that it has the same cadence as “mother fucking”, but can be uttered in public safely.
In other words, Bugs isn’t saying “Get your non-caucasian hands off me!” He’s saying a bowdlerized version of “Get your motherfucking hands off me!”
Well, after reading the responses in this thread, I’ve decided not to call. I don’t know what good it would do, really. If they are racists, it won’t change their mind. If they aren’t, I still don’t think they’d change their inventory practices just because of me. As I mentioned earlier, in 2010 America, I wouldn’t want to risk displaying this stuff in my store, lest someone with a camera decides to post a picture of my store on the web for others to laugh at. But, I guess that’s not a concern of theirs.
My partner and I were in a store just outside of Cloudcroft this afternoon. I think it was called Mayhill something… We’d just stopped in to use the bathroom then looked around for something to buy cos we felt obligated. When we got to the counter to pay we saw a stack of extremely racist photocopied pages for sale for $1 each. They said things like “where are the KKK when you need them?” and another was a drawing of a noose hanging from a tree with a caption that read “Obama’s swing set”. I was horrified. I asked the guy working there what they were doing there and he replied, quite proudly, “that’s the owner’s best seller, sold 6000 of those since we started putting them out”. I was so shocked I could hardly speak. All I managed was, “that’s disgusting” and I walked out of the store. My partner questioned the guy further and he just repeated happily that they were a bestseller. We didn’t see any of the dolls that you were talking about in your post but if this is the same store then I think it’s safe to assume that they are incredibly openly racist people…
I’m still so angry about this incident. I wish I had said more. I was so shocked I couldn’t even speak. We are travelling from Australia and while we do have a huge problem with racism there, I have never been confronted with something like this. Is there something I can do beyond going back there and speaking my mind? Judging by the guy we dealt with today, this wouldn’t make any difference at all.
