Do they make Bandaids for Black people? I don’t think so.
I am white, but I have just thought about it the other day, and I have been using bandaids my entire life. I just think its an example of how white people can’t really understand the hardships of black people. I never noticed it before, and I wonder how often black people think of it? The little things like that do matter, I think. I am not saying that Bandaid should make bandaids for Native Americans, and Asian people as well, but its something to ponder I think. Surely most black people just brush it off, but surely at some point they have all noticed it.
I was thinking in the same way today when I saw an Apache helicopter flying overhead. It was the first time I have ever seen one. But then I started thinking about how if I were in Iraq, it would probably scare the shit out of me. We can sit here in our homes and hear news about progress in Iraq, but there is no way for us to understand being in constant fear like that.
Berkele Breathed did a few cartoons about this in Bloom County several years ago. liver Wendell Jones puts on a “flesh-colored” Band-Aid and notices that it stands out against his dark skin. Not his “flesh color” at all.
A few years ago, Crayola changed the name of the “Flesh” color crayon to “Peach” (I believe) because of this sort of thing.
A name change would probably make more sense for band-aid than making special band-aids for every color. Even most white people aren’t quite the color of bandaids after all. When it comes to listing racial injustices, I doubt that most black people would put feeling excluded by “flesh” colored band-aids at the top of the list.
Weird thing is, they look more conspicuous on black folks who are wearing them, at least to me, since everybody does a double take thinking “Gee, that guy has a weird-shaped scar–wait, no, that’s a band-aid! Wow, they make band-aids for dark-skinned people? Wow, never saw that before…” and so on, making the wounded person get a lot more scrutiny than they would with a regular band-aid.
They do make sheer ones now, and the fabric ones are a nice light brown that blend in on everybody except ghosts like me. Yes, I am so white I am paler than your regular band-aid.
I have definitely seen black bandaids. I saw a multi-pack that had an entire spectrum from the standard to black. Whether or not they were Band-Aid ™ or not, I can’t say.
I’ve seen darker “flesh colored” bandaids, too, but they don’t seem real common, even in areas I’ve lived in with a high percentage of darker-skinned people.
Perhaps this is “solved” in another way. To illustrate: one of my co-workers had her grandchildren in the office awhile back and the little darlings expressed surprised at the “flesh colored”* bandaids I had in my desk. Apparently, they had never seen bandaids that didn’t have cartoon characters all over them. They wanted to know why the pictures had fallen off!
Which takes care of the kids, at least.
They don’t match my skin color either, though I’m at the opposite end of the spectrum from the dark skin folks
There seems to be a tendency toward clear plasters now, although I think it might just be because the pink ones look dirty from the moment you put them on.
I guess some folks might have a problem because their bandages don’t match their skin color. (none of them do anyway) But I’ve never heard anyone complain about it. Seems like not much of a bitch in the big scheme of things.
Besides Band-Aid brand bandages have been making clear bandages since 1958. It’s not like people haven’t had a choice. If the stores don’t have them it’s not because they haven’t been available. There have been multicolered bandages since the early 50’s and other brand name bandages offer a wide variety of “flesh” colored bandages as well.
The flesh (tan) colored one’s came several years after they were invented in the 20’s by a man (Earle Dickson) with an accident prone wife. He died in '61 as the ex-VP of Johnson and Johnson and was a board member, Band-aid sold 30 million $$ worth of bandaids that year. He did good.
Another example in line with the OP that isn’t about Band-Aids - my Japanese teacher once happened to mention something in passing about the kindergarteners there with the entrance exams and all, that she didn’t even think was weird - Japanese children color the sun red.
No, really.
I mean, yeah, I know they eat horse and whale and natto, and that seems perfectly normal in another culture. I know they eat fish for breakfast. I know there’s a little elevator girl in the elevator at the department store. I know they buy nipple pinkening cream and minty eyedrops. But the idea that the sun isn’t yellow in the drawings they put on the fridge… man, that weirded me out. It’s the little things that take you unawares, I guess.
When a black woman goes to the beauty salon for a “perm,” she’s getting her hair straightened through a chemical process.
When a white woman goes to the beauty salon for a “perm,” she’s getting her hair curled through a chemical process.
Confused me for decades…
Also, it never occured to me that all (nearly all) Japanese people have straight black hair, and as a result, don’t use hair as a distinguishing characteristic when describing someone. (As in, “the girl with curly red hair from Philosphy class.”) I met a Japanese exchange student in college who was baffled when I described someone like that. It took him a few minutes of staring at my head for it to register that hair could be unique. Weird. (Has this changed with the increased use of hair dyes? Has there been an increase in hair dye in Japan?)
From our outsourciong venture with India, and with Indians visiting us and we them, it is difficult to talk to them because they won’t break eye contact, even after a thought/sentence.
In the U.S. we are casual about convo, look away…up/down/around…and toss out thoughts randomly. But our Indian guests speak deliberately, don’t break eye contact and get much closer.
A number of women took it as an advance (the eye contact part).
It never occurred to me that black people could get a tan or a sunburn until I went to Jamaica with a girlfriend of mine who is black and she got tan lines. I don’t know why that surprised me, but it did. It was quite sexy on her.
A friend of mine is from Belgrade. He says that he finds it very disorienting that the only option he can put down for race is white, because he doesn’t think about himself as white, he thinks of himself as a Serb.
A (different) blonde friend of mine was a foreign exchange student in Japan, and she didn’t think to take hairpins with her. She ended up going out for a very fancy formal dinner in kimono a very fancy hairdo that was done up with black hairpins.
