Does this mean I’m the only person to use a monkey mask in bed other than to protect my wallet?
No, but you’re the only one who wears it when you’re alone.
That has to be a joke.
Even if its a racist joke, surely it is a joke. I refuse to believe that even the most ignorant person from 1968 would have thought that black people really would mistake a person wearing a mask shaped like a monkey for “one of their own.” No way. No one is that stupid.
-FrL-
Frylock
As I said, I saw this guy on television in the early 1970’s and he is a flake. Among his other “survival” recommendations:
•If you are going to be hit by a car, jump up. In that way, the car will knock you over the hood and the roof, etc and you’ll be okay. Really? Wouldn’t it be better to try and just get out of the way?
• If you are in a falling elevator the key to survival is - jump up. (Are you detecting a recurring theme here?) Anyway, I know this has been debated before on the SDMB and for a rather slowly-moving elevator (one in which you can jump faster than the elevator is falling) this has some merit. However this guy insists that the main point is to be in the air when it hits. Yeah that’s brilliant. Imagine being in a falling elevator in the Empire State Building and let’s suppose it’s speed when crashing is 120 mph. Do you think “being in the air” will save your life? And it’s not just a matter (to him) of your upward velocity making the difference. He said to try grabbing onto something on the ceiling so you’ll be away from that lethal floor when the elevator hits bottom. And what will happen to your arms and shoulder sockets? :eek:
So, his monkey mask suggestion seems just as screwy to me.
Thanks for demonstrating exactly what I was talking about in post 71. The same year this book came out, Martin Luther King was murdered demanding civil rights. You really think nobody at the same time was dumb enough to say or believe black people look like monkeys? Come on.
I was alive and well in 1968, and fighting the good fight for civil rights, or so I told myself. I was in high school, so marching in demonstrations and arguing with stupid idiots was about all I could do. Perhaps no one was stupid enough to beleive that blacks would mistake a monkey mask for a “brother,” but plenty of folks were stupid enough to write such shit and hope it had some effect.
My parents once told me to “turn down that nigger music.” It was Joe Cocker.
I realize that “or so I told myself” might indicate that I believe that fight was not the good fight. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I meant was that my idea of “fighting” was rather inconsequential.
I said no one would be stupid enough to really think that black people could mistake a monkey for another black person.
On this basis, I said I’m sure that the material quoted is intended by a racist as a joke, rather than being intended by a racist as a serious statement of fact.
You, however, claim I said that no one would ever say black people look like monkeys. I said nothing of the kind. You also claim that I am trying to show the material quoted is not racist. This is directly contradictory to what I said in my post, so I’m really at a loss as to how to respond.
-FrL-
Oops, I misidentified post number 71. Much of my post in response to you is still on target though, just not the part where I claimed you were claiming that I was claiming the material found in the book is not racist.
-FrL-
I do not disagree with this, and I have not written anything in this thread that would tend to disagree with this.
Do you think otherwise? Why?
-FrL-
…I was thinking, wow, wouldn’t that be too hot to let you sleep?
Like some other posters, I can think of ways a monkey mask might work.
“Wow, one of us!”
The giant ape hand doesn’t break your window, and decides to go after the hot blonde in the room above you.
Your wallet is safe.
I’m gonna get me a mask and fool all the negroes I see,
I’m gonna get me a mask and fool all the negroes I see.
When I fool all the negroes I see, then negroes he won’t steal from me,
And no longer will I awaken to the NAACP.
Damn if Greenbank isn’t a piece of work. As there’s a holocaust museum, maybe there should be one for racism too, with The Book Of Survival displayed prominently. What a stunning commentary.
That was great! Do they make a Garrett Morris mask?
Sorry to drag this back up, but FYI, I was just at Wikipedia trying to find the origin of the word balaclava, and noted, “In the Indian subcontinent, balaclavas are commonly referred to as monkey caps.” Perhaps the guy half knew ‘monkey cap’ and ‘ski mask’ and reversed them (‘ski cap’?)?
Just another datum.
Maybe he was thinking your place would be burglarized by Freaks.
I think EE means the kinda moment even the best intentioned white liberal can have, when a slight WTF crosses the mind when seeing a black person in a better car than they have, or when they realize how they’re a little extra nervous because a large black man is behind them in line at the ATM. They can’t help these thoughts (cognitive habit) and the reasons behind them are culturally ingrained, and racist. (Black people tend to be poor, and have been known to commit crime.)
It was just a mask?!
I am contractually obligated to post in this thread due to my username