Valentine’s Day has always been a cheesy, awful little holiday. I remember the ‘parties’ in grade school — the ones where you were expected to give a cheap paper card to everyone, which made expressions of affection totally meaningless, and the way just neglecting to give one to the unpopular kids in class was a way to do a major snub. I learned all about the true meaning of passive aggressive on 14 February in second grade.
And sometimes, they were freakin’ racist. I remember the generic Native American caricatures in that linked post; I was swapping those cards in the 1960s, so I probably wouldn’t have seen anything wrong with portraying Native Americans as hatchet-wielding, pidgin-speaking, buckskin-wearing Caucasians, and the only thing that spares me from direct personal guilt is that I don’t think I would have bought valentines that didn’t have comic book superheroes on them (which was also kind of racist, too: they were all white, except for the one guy, who was emerald green.)
But this…this transcends awful. There was someone who once upon a time thought this was cute, and gave it to children.
Because lynching is adorable.
Holy christ, but the United States is a screwed-up country with an ugly history.
Well, ain’t that just precious! And it’s got real string on it, too!
Worse, there’s a whole party of bugfuck crazy GOPers who want to relive their misperceptions of that ugly history.
…What, are pre-pubertary children expected to participate in Valentine’s Day?
Very, very few children fall in love.
Yes, they are. The Walmarts have tons of kiddie valentines, and in the elementary schools, you will hand them out.
And then, after the party, the little shits will count how many they got, and the ones with lots will crow about it, and the ones who didn’t get as many, or got less elaborate ones, will be made to feel worthless. And if you failed to give the popular kid a valentine, you will get the stink-eye for the rest of the year, and not be invited to the best birthday parties.
These aren’t cards about love. They are markers of social status.
Well, actually we have re-interpreted Valentine’s day to be a day for friends. My husband and I ignore it, but I make sure to have a little something for my close friends and they do so, too.
And that card: fucking shit.
Compared to what? Ancient Egypt? Medieval Europe? The Soviet Union?
Is the problem America or “original sin”?
Then there are the Warner Bros. and other cartoons made before the Civil Rights era. I’m not talking about “Coal Black and De Sebben Dwarves,” which anyone who wants to watch can go look up for themselves.(*) I’m talking about random caricatures of people of color that regularly popped up in Saturday morning cartoons.
The filter here at work blocks YouTube, and I’m not sure I want to go looking for such items anyway, but IIRC, “What’s Opera, Doc?” had a few brief but nasty caricatures of Chinese and Pacific Islander people in it.
(*) I saw that one in the mid-’90s, before I got online. I had a blind date with an affluent, privileged older white guy who owned a small movie theatre, and he arranged a private screening of that one for us. I figured he was showing it to me as a historical curiosity, so while the cartoon itself made my jaw drop, it didn’t especially bother me that he’d shown it to me… until we were walking out of the theatre and he said, “I think people who get offended over things like that are shallow and stupid.” Record scratch moment.
Sadly enough, in our school district, the focus is not on eliminating the Valentine’s Day cards, but the tiny candy that is sometimes attached to them. Because a child getting a piece of candy with about 20 calories once a year is the major cause of obesity… o.O
Oh, but they do. And they crush hard. If you want to carefully define “love”, then they don’t have developed enough brains to do it the way adults do, but man, do they have crushes, and they like to play boyfriend/girlfriend.
I got to the part where I scrolled down to the picture, and my brain just shut down. Would not cope with the fact that I live in a world where this valentine actually happened. :(
I’m just a few years older than PZ and went through the same era of Valentine observations in elementary schools. There was a lot of trophy-display behavior as classmates demonstrated their superiority by waving about the fanciest cards they received and announcing their huge card counts. A couple of decade later, things got “better” in the sense that schools enforced an “all or none” policy: my baby brother was expected to give a card to each and every one of his classmates or none of his classmates (to give an out to the less fortunate students who didn’t have budgets to buy cards in bulk). Of course, that changed Valentine’s Day from a popularity contest into a meaningless egalitarian card blizzard, but I guess it was too fixed in our culture to just kill the damned thing.
I am not current with today’s elementary school Valentine practices, but I imagine the “holiday” survives. Hallmark wills it!
Anyone up for a sweepstake on how long it will take for someone to claim that the card isn’t acually racist?
I place 5 cephalopod dollars on somewhere between posts 40 and 50.
@6:
It isn’t necessary to compare the United States with any other country to see that we are seriously deranged. Just look at the “news” about our alleged election campaigns (“alleged” because at this point, as Chris Hedges pointed out in a recent column, they’ve become a joke) if you need proof, or look at the articles trashing science or promoting the latest woo-related “medicine”. America is even more dysfunctional than the British royal family, and that’s saying a lot.
(BTW, before the Brits weigh in about that, let me say that I’m an American, though I can’t say that I’m very proud of it at the moment.)
What things do we do today that seem perfectly acceptable, but will be vilified in the future? Eating meat? Circumcision? The wholesale murder of people in foreign countries?
I doubt anyone will claim it is not racist. I will, however, make the claim that objects such as this are a valuable part of history and are worthy of being preserved, either as a physical artifact or (which is far more likely) in digital form. Those who claim that stronger state’s rights will magically solve all problems need to have shit like this card rubbed in their face. Vigorously and often. Jim Crow laws, lynchings, voter suppression, segregation of schools and public areas, are all part of an ugly past ennabled by a federal government that was unwilling, or unable, to step in and force states to pay attention to the US Constitution or US law.
And this is not from the far distant past. My sister, when in kindergarten, recieved a couple of virulently racist Valentine cards in which the racism was presented as a joke. My mom still has one of them — complete with watermelon. And this was in a recently desegregated school. When I was in Middle and High school, though my school had zero black students (in Maryland!), the KKK was extremely active and kids wore Klan shirts to school regularly. At least one told me that the Klan had kept the n****rs out of the school so far, so I should join to make sure it stays that way. This was in the late 70s and early 80s.
That so many of us recoil in horror at such a depiction is a plus. But I also applaud PZ for shoving this in the face of racists who would return us to this ugly past via state’s rights or libertarianism.
This is certainly one of the worst examples of tasteless crap imaginable, but is depicts a suicide, not a lynching.
I first became ‘aware’ about 1952. At that time, photos of real lynchings and of piles of bodies in Auschwitz were common. They were burned into my memory and made me the pacifist, atheist, and science oriented person I am now.
Of course the card is racist, it is just not a lynching.
I think it might be more accurate to say that we are a screwed up species with an ugly history, as there probably isn’t any other country whose past would bear close scrutiny, either. The difference, of course, is that we were supposed to be the ‘New World’ founded on enlightenment principles. We just failed to live up to that promise in many ways.
Abdul Alhazred, re: ‘original sin,’ I feel so bad for people who are indoctrinated with the vile notion that we come into this world hopelessly tainted–and that a loving creator planned it that way. It’s a perverted concept of human nature that allows for unjustified rationalization of the horrible things we do.
Anyone who looks into the story of “Saint” Valentine (all 12-14 of them) might develop a slightly jaundiced view of present-day mementos of man’s inhumanity to man.
“What’s Opera, Doc?” just showed on TV, in fact (before I read your post) and I did note the Chinee-grin face Bugs made before running from Elmer. As a kid I didn’t know what that was, of course. Why is it even there? WB has a million “yipe!” faces.
Agreed. It does depict a threatened suicide, not a lynching.
However (you just knew I was going to write that, didn’t you?), given the historical context, the reference to lynching (a black man with a noose attached to a tree) is innescapable.
I am not trying to play oppression olympics, I am merely pointing out that, in context, it definately refers to lynching.
One of the side effects of the removal of this kind of crap from our society is that it allows conservatives (and all others to varying degrees) to pretend that this atmosphere never existed.
In the 1990s I was working on a book of toy trademarks. Trademark applications filed with the feds were not well categorized so it required me to search, one by one, through every trademark application filed between 1877 and 1946.
Over a quarter of a million of them.
It was very educational. I learned about events of the era(s) that were reflected in trademarks, but the most startling thing was how many hundreds upon hundreds of sickeningly racist trademarks there were for all manner of products.
I realized that I could compile all of them into what would be a revealing book, but felt that it would need chapters of discussion and analysis that I simply was not (and am not) qualified to write… so I dropped the idea.
It did open my eyes as to how virulently racist our culture was (is?)
It’s too easy to dismiss the occasional “Mammy” character in a Tom and Jerry cartoon as being an “affectionate” portrayal when you don’t know that that imagery and worse was everywhere – on toys, cards, on tubes of toothpaste, boxes of cereal, garden tools, tires, everywhere. And of course in film, radio…
“I am not trying to play oppression olympics, I am merely pointing out that, in context, it definately refers to lynching.”
I think, based on the idiocy of the card, that something so subtle as context would escape the writer of this shit.
Also, this sort of thing was so common in the past as to escape notice. Darwin said terribly racist things. We hopefully live in a different world.
There is nothing subtle about this card.
If it said “I’ll be hanged if yo is goin’ to say YAS”, then it would be depicting a lynching.
It’s still incredibly insensitive – what’s the betting it was produced by god-fearin’ xians?
But now the rules are that everyone has to give out a card to anyone else. So now the divider is how good each card looks. My kids’ schools never seemed to be too into that, though; all the cards were right out of the dollar packs. At least, the ones my kids got were. Hmmmm….
Oh, absolutely. They have to be preserved so we know how bad we are capable of becoming. And anyone who doesn’t think that a lynching is being referred to here is being deliberately obtuse and revisionist, and is definitely Part Of The Problem.
a3kr0n
Optimist? It’s frequently down to percentages. This craptastic card, for example, may be vilified by a majority, but there are plenty who would openly admit to finding it funny.
I often wonder which way humans will swing in the next hundred years or so. A resurgence of all forms of bigotry, stupidity, and authoritarianism, or will we really come to a place where most people and powers are disgusted by such thinking and behavior, and want to create something better rather than turn back to a half-imagined past.
“It’s too easy to dismiss the occasional “Mammy” character in a Tom and Jerry cartoon as being an “affectionate” portrayal”
Particularly when sho hops up on a stool at the sight of that evil mouse Jerry and accidentally drops a straight razor out of her clothing……
Goddamn it.
I went looking for that story from a few years ago about a black man finding a noose in his office cubicle and his co-workers trying to pass it off as a joke, so that I could say that this shit isn’t exactly over with, and instead found
this from December.
And this from September.
Yeah. So apparently, in any one-year period, one is likely to find a story about lynchings being referenced to send a message to those uppity blacks. Yeah, that kind of thing was sure a long time ago.
Abdul Alhazred says:
“Holy christ, but the United States is a screwed-up country with an ugly history.”
“Compared to what? Ancient Egypt? Medieval Europe? The Soviet Union?
Is the problem America or “original sin”?”
I don’t measure how moral my actions are by comparing them to immoral people. I know what is good and right, and, I know what is evil and wrong. I also don’t blame my personal failures on non-existent “spirits”. My failures are my own and I work to overcome them and become a better person.
Pointing out that someone else is more evil than yourself doesn’t excuse your actions, nor does blaming your shortcomings on mythical beings.
Don’t forget Black Vulcan!
I grew up reading Tintin comic books in the 60s and, since I was a kid, I had no idea that racial caricaturing like that was so stupid. I had it sorted out by the time I was in high school, but I’m still occasionally shocked when I realize what nonsense I adopted just because it was in a printed book. It helps me understand religion.
*sinking feeling* As if everyone didn’t know everyone’s social status already.
Now I remember the Simpsons episode with Lisa giving Ralph a Valentine card out of pity and Ralph taking it far more seriously than intended… but the Simpsons are very confused about age in general, with all the kids being pre-, post- or pubertary, sometimes within the same episode, as the plot demands, so I didn’t jump to the conclusion “this is what the US is like for 8-year-olds”.
It happens, yes, but it’s very rare.
*culture shock*
Over here, not only do kids from, say, 7 or 8 to puberty generally find the opposite sex mysterious and stupid, but they ruthlessly enforce total segregation on each other as a social norm. Simplest way to bully someone? Write their name, a heart, and another name on the blackboard.
(…That’s exactly why I think that education must not be gender-segregated. If you relieve the kids of each others’ presence, they’ll probably never find back together again. Various tales from segregated ages seem to confirm this in highly unpleasant ways.)
What’s up with straight razors? Why does she carry one in her clothes?
Holy christ, but the United States is a screwed-up country with an ugly history.
It is not the only one.
http://memory.loc.gov/service/pnp/cph/3a40000/3a44000/3a44200/3a44236v.jpg
Yeah but when you’re a kid in the 80s and you don’t even know about the existence of the “Mammy” stereotype, and she’s only shown from the knees or waist down and you have no idea what a straight razor is…
It just occurred to me what PZ meant (#23) by “If it said “I’ll be hanged if yo is goin’ to say YAS”, then it would be depicting a lynching”.
Ha, right, and I am way out of my league here. Brilliant. I will keep my mouth shut in the future.
Best Wishes Tom
Am I the only one to find the strange way the pants are drawn in that image to be uncomfortably suggestive?
I had thought that my ex’s gift of a 3-VHS set of “Cops: Too Hot for TV” was the worst valentine ever, but I stand humbly corrected.
I really loved the valentines I got in grade school, but there was just a lot less visual stimulation in my environment, so any colored picture was a treat. Today you’d have to give a kid a mini-DVD to make a similar impression.
It’s diz-gusting and diz-graceful… (You know, the way Hitchens used to say it)
David M.:
It’s an implication that she’s violent and/or criminal.
Argh, I worded that badly. The implication is that she’s prone to violence, whether it’s interpersonal or because she robs people.
The Native cards are no surprise. I am PZ’s age and remember them. My father was a reservation boy and I also remember, as a teenager, visiting a museum in Texas and wondering why the exhibits featuring natives were in the Natural History section. Even in 1991 when my wife and I visited the Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsburgh, there was a sign in the Natural History section explaining that they were moving the native exhibits from that Natural History section to the Hall of Cultures on the advice of some Lakota gentlemen.
I don’t need Valentines to express my feelings. Moreover, i find it very weird, that someone will set a nice dinner or be gentle once a year to show some kind of affect.
It’s nice to be with person who share my opinion :)
To add a healthy dose of humour. In my country he is holding patronage over mentally ill, epileptics, and those who suffer fatal diseases. Happy Valentines Day. Shake it.
As regards the historical connection between blacks and razors:
In the Jim Crow days, no black person could ever carry any kind of an offensive weapon, such a gun or a knife, a cosh, or knuckle-dusters. One of the frequent and arbitrary police searches disclosing such would lead to a beating, arrest, fine, and jail. HOWEVER every adult man had to shave, and so the one “weapon” blacks could legitimately have on their person was a razor.
And because very, very few blacks could own guns or knives or the other common weapons of thugs, the straight razor was a tool used by the underbelly of black society to fight with. And of course, white society stigmatized the entire law-abiding black community with the sins of its criminal element.
This reminds me of a set of books that I used to own, called “Cole’s Funny Picture Books”. There was one poem in one of them called “Ten Little N******”, which counted down in each stanza the demise of ten black people. For example, one stanza was like (paraphrased):
The poem counts down to one, and the last ends up going to university.
I sort of doubt that the Cole character who compiled the book thought that the poem was racist, owing to the fact that he wrote a long piece at the end of the book titled “The Oneness of Man”, detailing how all races are one and that we are all equal. Even so, I recognise that such material is deeply offensive to the Afican-American community, and should only be preserved for the purpose of education.
scottjordan:
There’s a very similar song in Britain (or rather, there was) called “10 Little Indians”. It even got made into a movie.
The fact that it’s a real string looped through holes in the card is a nice touch. I guess that’s so the kids can practice tying it themselves.
Frank Zappa put it perfectly: “I’m not black, but there are times I wish I could say I’m not white.”
A black woman might need to carry a razor to keep the white men off her.
It was another evil myth that women of color are sexually available.
As far as I know Ten little niggers got changed into Ten little Indians when nigger was acknowledged as a racist term. I think we’re only talking about the book by Agatha Christie as changing names. The nursery rhyme that was its inspiration was called Ten little niggers and I think that there was no name change there.
There was another children’s book called, Ten Little Monkeys, which included the killing off of 90% of the monkeys (dressed in overalls with one strap undone (and (just in case that wasn’t obvious enough) faces just drawn just like the one on the card). Thinly veiled, but at least it was veiled.
I remember four Native American kids, back when I was in first or second grade, getting up together, reading a children’s book called Ten Little Indians (not the Agatha Christie book) and then asking the teacher why this was in the library.
While talking about racist pop culture, I’m surprised no one has mentioned the Busby Berkeley “Goin’ to Heaven on a Mule” production number from the movie, The Wonder Bar. One of the strangest movies ever, on many levels. The combination of jaw-dropping racism (although of the “affectionate” condescending kind, rather than the violent kind, at least) with Al Jolson and the imagination of Busby Berkeley was astonishing, especially since I first saw it at the Melkweg in Amsterdam (if you know what I mean).
Also some years ago I was doing research in the wonderful sheet music collection of the Lilly Library at Indiana University and came across a LOT of racist popular songs I had never known existed. And I heard a very interesting paper at a conference recently about KKK sheet music.
There’s way more racist stuff out there than we like to acknowledge, certainly more than we like to admit was ever so mainstream.
PZ:
Yep. I remember having to do that in school and I went to a Catholic school. I got a bunch of those awful faux-Indian cards too, because the kids knew about my father.
I had no use for the manufactured holiday then and have no use for it now.
The Google ad that appeared immediately under this blog posting was for Nazarene Bible College and was soliciting students to “answer God’s call” and “become an ordained pastor”. Could that ad possibly have been posted in a place less likely to produce results?
There probably isn’t a thread long enough to catalog all the instances. Even my beloved Holiday Inn has that dumbass Abraham number. Not to mention the entire character of Mammy. Who is even named Mammy.
Heck, just this last week, we had a Canadian senator in the government party (on the crime bill review panel no less) advise on how to cut down on national expenses by leaving rope inside the cells of convicted killers so they can lynch themselves.
CuervodeCuero, that is a misuse of the word, “lynch”. A lynch is not done by one’s self, it is done to someone, usually by “hands unknown”.
Though the entire town was there at the time, the perpetrator would still be unknown. Even with the photographs, they were still unknown.
Mobs are scary.
It doesn’t compare to lynching of course, but who remembers the 1960s-70s restaurant chain Sambo’s? Apparently the original inspiration for the name was the first few letters of the founders’ surnames, but they wasted no time in decorating the interiors with Little Black Sambo art. Later on they pretended that Sambo was a little boy in India (which at least lines up with tiger distribtion), and later still they changed some restaurants to Jolly Tiger and then the chain considerately went bankrupt. But the original Sambo’s is still operating.
And this is a scary book.
At The Hands Of Persons Unknown: The Lynching Of Black America by Philip Dray
This is one book I would make mandatory reading for anyone living in the US.
I am happy to at least say that a google search on “burning cross valentine” did not turn up an image of a card with a cross on fire and the words “my heart burns for you” on it. So, um, there’s that.
And now Google analytics thinks I am a crappy piece of shit.
myeck waters:
I remember it well. Used to go there sometimes when I cut class – a cuppa coffee was a dime with endless refills.
Janine:
Speaking of scary books, my grandfather had a book called Cullud Humor or somesuch. I glanced through it once when I was a kid, made me sick to my stomach.
Caine, your family history just gets better and better. I am almost grateful for my own.
Janine:
Yeah, it’s just grand. At least I never stumbled across a robe and a hood…and if there was one, I don’t wanna know about it. It was bad enough my grandfather was a Bircher.
Caine and Janine:
My father grew up in a very southern household in southern Maryland. They did have a black housekeeper. He was twelve when he realized that ‘Mammy’ was not her actual name. His mother was very firm that she was not racist; after all, she employed black help.
I am often amazed at the quantum leaps of social progress which can be attained from one generation to the next.
Ogvorbis:
My grandmother once told me about a friend she had in childhood, back in Jamestown, Missouri. Her friend had a nanny, all the kids adored her. My grandmother said everyone called her Miss Zulu, she didn’t know her actual name. *sigh*
My grandmother did call her Miss Woody, so she did know her name. Her full name was Ementrude Woodia Eichelberger. She and my grandmother died within days of each other. Miss Woody was about ten years older and, for the last decade or so (they died in ’85) I think they kept each other going. They were best friends, but no way would grandmother admit that.
I know which direction I would prefer the population of the earth go in the secular, rational democratic, egalitarian direction vs. tribal, theocratic, violently competitive authoritarian direction struggle.
I have no power nor little control over what direction we will go but I have pretty strong feeling we will not stay the same for long. I do not know if I have any hope or not.
the thing that this card illustrates is the that reality of racist (tribal) history of the U.S. is very real and reminds everyone of the contrast again between what the professed ideals and the real practice of society.
thanks for the “beautiful” reminder
uncle frogy
It’s also too easy to try to wipe racism off the planet by merely erasing evidence of it. What purpose is served by removing historical artifacts from old media, other than to assuage white people’s guilt?
The most popular Disney movie amongst Black Americans doesn’t have a DVD release, because everyone else calls it racist. The mammy character in Tom and Jerry owned her own home in the majority of the cartoons – but she was clipped from all of them in on TV the 90s. And instead of using her positively, she was replaced with Average White Family in the 50s. How did that help?
We need to own up to these characters, learn from them, and don’t repeat their mistakes. But erasing them from history isn’t the answer. Creating positive versions with strong artistic integrity while teaching of the faults of the past is a better answer.
Also, what’s the name on that card? Gencie?
Another ironic thing: If this were a card a black person created and used for themselves, it wouldn’t be racist; merely a depiction of racism for ironic effect.
My dad told me a few times of the one black family in his farming community in the 1930s. Their son, “Sambo,” was Dad’s and his friend’s playmate, and Dad insists that it wasn’t racist because he and his friends didn’t know the reason for the name, that’s just what they knew him as, and he didn’t mind either.
My dad was not very convinced when I suggested that maybe “Sambo” (sorry, my dad never knew his name so I can’t use that…) was not unaware, or at least since they were little, that his PARENTS were certainly aware. I gently suggested that perhaps they might not be exactly thrilled about it.
He said “oh, nobody cared, that’s just what we called him.”
In 1989 I was in the town in the same region that my mother grew up in when I saw the only black man in town walk down the street to the calls from high schoolers hanging around “hey Midnight! Where ya going, Midnight?” and laughing stupidly. The man gave a weak smile that I recognized right away as resignation, he knew he simply could never complain about it in that town.
In 1989.
Both of these towns are in New York State, and they have changed very little.
Growing up, reading Tintin and Babar was de rigueur. Only years later did it dawn on me that there was something wrong with their portrayal of Africans (and also Asians, in the case of Tintin). I mean, they’re as bad as this awful card. I am not sure that the fact that they’re still available, unedited, at a bookstore near you (at least in Europe), is a good thing. I am all for taking into consideration the historical context and against censorship and so forth, but maybe a little editing and updating when sold in a bookstore’s children’s section wouldn’t be a bad thing? Are they even generally available in US bookstores, I wonder?
@Janine, I disagree. A suicide in jail is always dubious. Black deaths in custody may be suicides – but you, know, they may not be. Or they may be heavily encouraged, or risks may be criminally neglected. Racist maybe-murder with plausible deniability.
In Australia, this is *exactly* what would be meant if you were “joking around” (not) with a noose and a black person. It’s been the subject of a royal commission 20 years ago and it still hasn’t stopped. There’s a series at Crikey starting here. Our ABC news actually has a keyword for the topic:
Black Deaths In Custody. (Fuck, look, most recent article Feb 3 2012!)
—
As to the trousers, they look to me like he’s supposed to be bow-legged – which is a poverty marker. Rickets used to be very common, and people with more melanin are more susceptible to it.
And the original Little Black Sambo WAS actually a little Tamil boy in South India. No “pretense” needed, it’s technically accurate. Obviously it was interpreted differently later.
@criss:
Context matters. There’s a difference between collecting black americana because you want to preserve history, and collecting it because you agree with the sentiments presented.
Alethea H. Claw, please note, I did not say a thing about the content of that asshole’s quote. But it is contemptible, people placed in jail should kill themselves.
But lynch has a very specific meaning; it is a mob that kiddnaps, tortures and kills a member of a minority class for appearing to transgress a cultural boundary.
Usually, the lynching is a hanging but plenty of times, the victim was tied to a post and burned.
@criss:
Also, yes, whitewashing history to downplay what has been done is despicable. We’re seeing recent tea party movements to remove slavery from the history books. Seriously?
“Zehn kleine Negerlein”
Which I know from my childhood in a fucking progressive home.
And just a year ago my husband’s grandmother dug it up to present it proudly to my kids. It never made it because my mum in law (I love her) told her that this certainly wasn’t acceptable anymore
But look what I just found!
You can still buy it on Amazon. And the reviews are fabulous:
#1: We bought this book again because our original one had lost a side. Our boys love it and already know it by heart.
Summary: a classic to recommend!
#2: How good that this is still out there and hasn’t fallen victim to “political correctness” like the Nigger’s Kiss (old German name for a big chocolate covered marshmallow)
#3: Nevermind “political correctness”, 10 kleine Negerlein is a piece of German culture. Maybe not one we can be very proud of, but that’s beside the point!
#4: Children have loved this book for ages!…If I read it to my 2 yo, I do it without any negative intentions. Racism is something that children are taught and demonstrated, it doesn’t come from a harmless children’s book! (oh the irony)
Only #5 gets it and correctly decries the perpetuation of racist stereotypes, let alone the N-word.
Oh, and very good, we made it to comment #68 without much stupidity
No need to pretend—the story was set in India, not that it mitigates what it became later.
Jafafa Hots:
This doesn’t surprise me one little bit. New York is weirdly divided– the urban centers are pretty blue (not that we don’t have our own problems with racism, it’s just not as overt), but you step out into farm country and the Confederate flags are flown with pride*.
We’ve got pockets of the Klan and various neo-nazi groups in the rural areas just outside the Capital District and in/around the Adirondacks. (According to The Southern Poverty Law Center, there’s three different branches of the KKK operating in New York State.)
carlie:
Oh god, I do not want to see what kind of ads that triggers. :-/
*No, I’m not kidding. I wish I was. I think it’s supposed to be some sort of dumbass “redneck pride” statement (and all the racism that entails), as opposed to “the South will rise again!” sentiment, but who knows? We’re not dealing with rocket surgeons, here.
@ Giliell
Those chocolate-covered marshmallows mentioned in one of the comments you cite remind me of a similar product I used to devour as a kid, and it had a similarly offensive name (it may be the same product?), i.e. “Tête de nègre” / “Mohrenköpfli”. Some brands even had a stereotyped caricature of a black person on the wrapping. And this was just slightly over 20 years ago… The sad thing is I don’t ever remember thinking twice about it, and nobody ever pointed out to me the utter ghastliness of it, either. Thankfully they changed (or were forced to change) the name into “Tête de choco” / “Choco-köpfli”.
The same goes for “Schwarzer Peter” (“Black Peter”), the card game. As a kid I remember the card you had to avoid had a similarly crude, offensive image on it. In its more recent version, as played by my nephews, it has been thankfully substituted with the image of a chimney sweeper. There is such thing as human progress, after all.
criss,
well maybe then it is time to switch to some other TV fare for the little ones. Instead of whitewashing, I think it’d be better to just “retire” the old series and keep them as examples of racial bias. The TV business loves reimaginings and sequels, after all. I mean why would you want to purposefully expose small children to shows (and books) with racial biases before they’re able to reflect on them properly?
BTW, this is also why I think that Astrid Lindgren’s books on negro princesses shouldn’t be read by kids until they’re old enough to understand the racist implication behind those epithets (some even advocate getting them out of children’s rooms completely).
Giliell,
which is why I love die Toten Hosen for their song “Zehn kleine Jägermeister” (ten little Jägermeisters)
here’s the version with the original video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGlMTrQFFdo
10: dies from joint
9: had to die because the others wanted to inherit
8: 7 go to Düsseldorf and 1 goes to Cologne (the band are part of the regional rivalry between the two cities)
7: went out, one didn’t know his date was married
6: one locked up for tax evasion
5: stopped by police, one locked up
4: at the armies, in a drinking contest, the winner expired
3: at the restaurant, two steaks with beans and one with BSE
2: asking for asylum, but only one was accepted, the other is deported
Racism aside, something’s fishy about this card.
It’s not that it looks photoshopped but the rope looks suspiciously out of place. It’s a different style that the rest of the card. The rope is more detailed and has a shadow while the rest of the drawing is very simple and cartoonish. Also, the gentleman’s posture just isn’t in-line with that of a man about to hang himself. I would think he’d be holding the noose end of it not have it around his neck with his arms out and a smile on his face. And the other end of the rope is tied to a really odd part of the branch
On the other hand, it might be that the person who made the card used an existing picture and added the rope and words to create the racist and (in his mind) comical image.
Does anyone know any of the history behind this card?
43
To cheer a razor fight victim as he sewed him up, a surgeon in Edwardian Baltimore famously asked:
” What do you think of those new Gilette Safety razors?”
To which his patient replied :
” Well doctor, they’s just fine for shaving, but they ain’t much use on social occasions.”
totebag you idiot, the rope is a real piece of string
Totebag:
That’s because the rope isn’t drawn/painted, it’s a piece of twine.
I have no doubts about the authenticity of the card, some of us are old enough to have seen this sort of shit firsthand, ya know.
Aaaaaaand we’ve got “it’s not really really really racist!” clocking in at comment 80. Whoever called it can collect their winnings at The Pharyngula Saloon and Spanking Parlor.
Did you bother to read anything about that card, freetotebag? The rope looks so detailed because it is a piece of string (for a little bit of extra racist oomph, I guess).
Here’s a listing in an auction price guide (sadly, no pics, but it’s the same card).
According to the description:
Jadehawk:
What!? They didn’t have photoshop in the last century?
Some people…
AS far as I’m concerned the implication that it would be suicide makes the racial context even more gross and disturbing. Hey, don’t you know, those dumb n*****s are all the time hanging themselves over stupid shit, so it hardly matters if we string one up once in a while.
*shudder*
Dr. Audley,
you need to tell that to the Hungarian poster, who upon being confronted with the fact that 20% of Roma children are sent to special schools, had this to say:
Yes, have to gather more data. The string looks fishy. 20% in special schools, hm that looks fishy. Need to know more before saying anything, maybe there is another explanation. Groan.
And now Google thinks that I’m a crappy piece of shit, because I searched for that card.
*sigh* Carlie, you and I should start some sort of “We’re not really crappy pieces of shit, Google! Really!” club to defend our reputations (or whatever).
Audley:
There’s a reason I use Scroogle.
Janine, I think we have a semantic argument here, with a cross-cultural difference. To me, saying “it’s not a lynching, it’s a suicide” makes me jump immediately to the horrible issue of black deaths in custody, and the racist rhetoric used to excuse it.
In my vocab, lynching is an extra-judicial killing, usually racist but occasionally other. A mob is not an absolute requirement – that’s what makes it a lynch mob rather than a plain lynching. (eg Freedictionary: to punish (a person) without legal process or authority, especially by hanging, for a perceived offense or as an act of bigotry.)
So it seems we use it differently here. But anyway, you should know that what you said sounded like a common racist denial tactic here. Of course, I’m completely sure that’s not how you intended it. It’s Australian-specific.
pelamun:
It’s always “another explanation”. Jesus, not only in your example* or totedouche up at #80, but how many times have we heard this kind of bullshit come up in sexism posts?
*I don’t think that I read that thread, or if I did I didn’t stick around that long. 20%?? That’s horrifying.
I’m not sure I would trust them to get anything right the second or third time around, though, if the trailer for The Lorax that showed during the Super Bowl is any indication.
Evidently there’s a scene in which the adorable Lorax is getting yelled at or something by a stern-faced old lady. I didn’t catch the line, but somebody says something about “that woman,” at which point the Lorax turns around to the audience and says: “That’s a woman?”
Sexist? Agist? It’s not the Lorax I remember from the book.
I certainly do. I married one of the waitresses.
Alethea,
I’d go with Janine here, and also go with Wikipedia, whose definition of lynching begins thusly: “Lynching is an extrajudicial execution carried out by a mob”. The entire article goes about describing various types of mob action, not once mentioning the type of extrajudicial killing in police custody.
I also did a google search restricted to .au websites, and didn’t come across the usage you describe, again only mob action, e.g. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/travel/world/how-the-west-was-railroaded/story-fn302659-1226259122878
Maybe it’s your idiolect? If this constituted a widespread usage in Australia, this would be a semantic change (because we can trace back the etymology of the word to 18th c. United States) that it would absolutely warrant an inclusion in both Wikipedia and Wiktionary.
The language on the card can also read more than one way. I’ll be hanged isn’t what you would use when talking about committing suicide.
I’ll be hanged is colloquial, though, and it used to be used often by people in various situations, frinst., “I’ll be hanged if he doesn’t lose that bet.” I remember family members using it. Obviously, it’s fallen out of usage so it’s not surprising that people don’t read it that way.
The valentine’s card reminds me of how people would go have a family outing to watch a lynching.
Mom and kids going to watch how the guys would beat, cut, burn and hang human beings, expecting to be well-entertained by the funny faces, the begging and the screaming.
It fits in that picture quite well. A picture of treating murder as entertainment, suitable for all ages.
At least some of the kids who gave or received this card are likely to have been present at such a lynching, too.
I can’t imagine how any black person at the time would think it’s “ironic” to refer to how they were liable to be tortured and killed for such heinous crimes as being suspected of looking at a white woman for more than zero seconds.
Alethea H. Claw, because there is an international readership with British, Australian and the US being three out of many dialects of English, I do try to be careful with usage. But it seems that miscommunications can and will happen. I dou to think I was using a racist denial which is why I spelled out exactly what I meant by the word “lynch”. But over the last century and a half, for some people, “lynch” and “hang” has become synonymous.
Caine:
A double entendre, then.
Somehow that makes the whole thing even fucking worse.
Audley:
It was often used that way, yes. It was also widely used as a general exclamation – people used to say “I’ll be hanged!” rather than “I’ll be damned!” because if you used damned, it was profane and god didn’t like that shit.
Yeah, I know.
feralboy,
Oh, of course not, but it’s baby steps. And the TV business always claims that the viewer wouldn’t be able to identify with the protagonist if the protagonist doesn’t look like the viewer (which I think is BS, but apparently it’s a Hollywood mantra)….
I don’t watch children’s programmes any more, but I came across a “reimagining” of Merlin from the BBC, that had black people in Camelot, including Guinevere. (I absolutely love Anthony Stewart Head, so I guess I had to watch it)
Dr. Audley,
if I may cite the Hungarian poster one more time, because it fits this topic so well:
Somehow that makes the whole thing even fucking worse.
You just wonder what went on, and if there was any sense of just how fucked up this is, among the people who devised this.
I mean, the colloquialism is how these little gags get thought up. A writer makes use of some hackneyed phrase, and suggests a “punning” image to go with it. So somebody thought it would be just sooo cute to make reference to lynching in that context. I really wonder if this was done in the spirit of the truly industrial grade obliviousness about matters of oppression and privilege that appears to us to have been the birthright of those born in earlier times*, or if, even then, there was a sense that yes it was horribly offensive but somehow funny, so excusable.
*always wary of exceptionalism, I reflect that this obliviousness is not a thing of the past, but I do think it was the case that fewer members of privileged classes were willing to speak out and at least make the worst offenders bear some opprobrium for their cruelty and intolerance, and that, as much as the mass media serves existing orders of prvilege, it can help too, because ugly little incidents here and there get made into scandals where they would have been at best grist for a narrow, local rumor-mill in the past. Likely most people only care because it’s sensational and somebody is getting their comeuppance, but it’s still out there, in public, and, for instance, Urban Outfitters gets smacked in the media for their racist pop culture gags.
I don’t really want to quibble over usage(*) since it’s a distraction, just to explain why “it’s not a lynching, it’s a suicide” rings all my racist alarm-bells.
(*) Apparently I do, but I don’t want to want to! But I must! So, lacking free will, I am compelled to enquire if, say, 3 off-duty policemen is enough to constitute a “lynch mob”, and if not, what you call it when they get together and murder a black person for the crime of being uppity.
Just in case anyone isn’t pissed off enough, here’s a fun blog post for you all:
I’ll give you three guesses which “humorous” card makes the cut.
pelamun:
ARGHFLGDJSDFJCBLARGL!
So, we go from “There isn’t enough information, it’s probably another cause” to “I’m an expert! Nyah!”
*headdesk!*
Audley:
Oh, really? I’d like an explanation from him as to why that card is “humorous”.
Caine:
Yeah, even though it looks like a graphic design blog, I really don’t want to wade in any further. Who knows what the fuck else you’ll find?
Marcus, it’s funny you should mention Tintin. Apart from the fact that Hergé was apparently not too comfortable with the racial implications of a lot of his work (especially the stuff he did during the German occupation), I happen to be friends with some people who run a Belgian street food joint in downtown Boston. They have a lot of decorations of pages from Tintin and other graphic novels of Belgian origin, and one of them commented to me that she was astonished with how racist some of it was. (Best french fries in Boston though…)
Alethea,
“Racially motivated police brutality/police killing”?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cases_of_police_brutality_in_the_United_States
Dr. Audley,
what would you say if I told you that the second quote preceded the first quote, i.e. they went from expert to “not enough information”.
pelamun:
Jesus Christ. Of course.
I really should just read that thread, but I’m all sorts of busy looking up racist Valentine’s Day cards and cooking dinner.
Surely nonconsensual circumcision forced upon someone is already seen as barbaric?
We were talking about scary books earlier. I got to thinking. When I was 7 years old, my most favourite book was The Rain Forest, by Armstrong Sperry. I checked it out of the library at least a half dozen times. It was about an ornithologist and his son in New Guinea.
I never forgot the deep affection I had for that story. Several years ago, I tracked down a 1947 edition. When I went to re-read it all these years later, I felt like someone slapped me silly. The book was incredibly condescending and racist. Serious white man’s burden and worse.
Every time Abdul appears in a thread here I just want to throw a shoe at him.
Yeah, I think what the language difference probably boils down to is that we are good with using it as a metaphor. Or in a broader sense. There’s probably some linguistic term for it that I don’t know. And as to the black deaths in custody not being strictly lynching, well, I must ask just how many prison staff and police you need to have present, aiding and abetting the situation, before it counts?
alektorophile
It’s “Mohrenkopf” in my dialect. My only hope is that people actually don’t know anymore what a “Mohr” is.
But I partly blame the industry for failing to come up with a suitable alternative name.
Really “Schaumzuckerkuss mit Schokoüberzug” is not a catching phrase.
Funny, Schwarzer Peter for me always was about chimney sweepers. We’d play it with a normal deck of cards and just remove the knave of spades from the deck.
(It’s much more fun if you play the Latin American version: Take out a random, hidden card from the deck so nobody knows what the “bad card actually is”
pelamun
For children I prefer this: 10 kleine Fledermäuse
@ pelamun
Children’s program? Oh noez … I thought it was adult drama. I’ve been following it.
Actually black people in Camelot is not that far fetched. We tend to badly underestimate how much people actually got around in days of yore. (This would be especially true of the higher echelons. Sadly later black people would be brought in only as slaves.)
Eg:
Linky here. Unfortunately the story mainly about the slave immigrants. I am wracking my brains to recall where I read about very early black immigrants (wealthy and free).
(Hey, why don’t we ever see you on TET? … since the incident on teh spanking couch … ;)
I’ll argue things like this need to be preserved. If they aren’t it will be easy to deny they ever existed.
“Us racist? Never. If the darkies are poor it’s because they weren’t bootstrappy enough. We were always generous to them. They need to start paying back that affirmative action welfare.”
“Asians were always respected. Anti-Chinese Societies? Didn’t happen. Laws against Asians immigrating to the US? Never.”
Without evidence you can have whatever “facts” you want. That’s why Eisenhower made Germans walk through the death camps and painstakingly documented Nazi war crimes. He didn’t want anyone to be able to deny these things had happened.
10 kleine Jägermeister = awesome. Just too bad you need to know 10 kleine Negerlein to understand where the joke comes from.
and indeed, the most obvious racist imagery has been gradually purged from later editions.
Zehn kleine …
Zehn kleine Fledermäuse is probably more adequate for children. Which seems to be quite widespread nowadays, so I think nowadays the Zehn kleine Jägermeister would work even as a satire on the bats…
Theophontes
Oh I didn’t mean necessarily that it was inadequate to have black people in Camelot, sorry if it came off like that. The Romans first brought some with them, as I understand. There are also knights in the Arthur myth that have been speculated to be black, but Wikipedia says they’re Saracenes, but I don’t know.
(hey, can you shoot me an email?)
Natalie is all over that shit.
Yes, racist and all, but what’s with the autumn leaves??? In February?
Re ‘I’ll be hanged…’
Given the meaning of that phrase that I grew up with, at a basic, instinctive, non-intellectual level that card makes little sense to me.
Now I know that it is the sickest sort of racist cruelty. But I grew up in NZ where ‘I’ll be hanged’ was a forceful expression of defiance, though more socially acceptable than ‘I’ll be damned. As in ‘I’ll be hanged if that bastard next door is going to build his pig-dog run right up against my fence!!!’
It was not equivalent to ‘I’ll be very disappointed’ or ‘I’ll be heartbroken’ or any such Valentine-mawkish sentiment, and it was rarely used humourously.
It also in my youthful experience had no connection to lynchings.
I’m not claiming that there have been no racially-motivated lynchings or murders in NZ’s history. But in my quiet little childhood world of the 1970’s we assumed that people did not hang each other for reasons based on race, or for any other reasons, because that would be murder, which is a crime.
My father sometimes also used ‘Hang me if…’. This too expressed considerable force, though at least as much incredulity as anger, and it could actually be funny. As in ‘And hang me if he didn’t come back the next night and steal the chicken coop as well!’
Listeners’ response at least half the time: shouts of laughter at the audacity of the thief.
And then there’s a song I grew up hearing:
http://www.mp3lyrics.org/t/tex-morton/ill-be-hanged/
Is this song racist (I’ll check with Yo)? The way I understand the phrase it’s an expression of defiance amusing in its silliness because 1) the guy is already in prison, what’s he going to do to stop them hanging him? and 2) he’s defying some unknown powers to hang him if the authorities decide to hang him??? So the song is nothing but funny to me – but how does it seem to others?
And yes I am clear that although ‘I’ll be hanged’ has little to no racist overtone for me coming from my background, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been thoroughly filthed by its associations in the US (and Oz?). I’m only posting this ramble to provide Pharyngulites with a momentary linguistic curiosity.
Anyway, please excuse the OT. It’s way past my bedtime.
Is that for real? Not just a bad joke?
Looks more like a (threatened) suicide to me – lynching requires a mob to do it forcibly.
Not that that makes it any better – emotional blackmail – be my valentine or I’ll kill myself?! Yuk.
Horrible messages either way.
The person getting this should run a mile from the card giver.
@120. leel :
That’s my Aussie understanding of the expression too. Seen it used in nautical fiction set in the 17th-18th centuries used by (mostly english but cosmopolitan) sailors so no obvious connection with that expression to the US lynching custom and racism there. Execution by hanging occurred in the British navy for mutiny and other crimes and was a common method of capital punishment back then.
Of course, in an American context the association with historic racism is evident too & conclusing its a lynching not a suicde ref is quite understandable. Hardly romantic at all though so putting it on a Valentines card makes little if any sense.