Pregled posta

Marketing

I found this along with a number of other similar items in a bin filled with iron scrap at a Flea Market.

People (black & white) were searching the bin for items. I was born and raised in the south, but I had never seen such a display of racist items. I looked around and no one, regardless of race seemed the least bit troubled.

I wondered why someone would sell &/or buy such items. I snapped the picture and decided to do some research.

Here is a few excerpts from one article I ran across:

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The Garbage Man: Why I Collect Racist Objects

by David Pilgrim, Curator, Jim Crow Museum

I am a garbage collector, racist garbage. For three decades I have collected items that defame and belittle Africans and their American descendants. I have a parlor game, "72 Pictured Party Stunts," from the 1930s. One of the game's cards instructs players to, "Go through the motions of a colored boy eating watermelon." The card shows a dark black boy, with bulging eyes and blood red lips, eating a watermelon as large as he is. The card offends me, but I collected it and 4,000 similar items that portray blacks as Coons, Toms, Sambos, Mammies, Picaninnies, and other dehumanizing racial caricatures. I collect this garbage because I believe, and know to be true, that items of intolerance can be used to teach tolerance.
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All racial groups have been caricatured in this country, but none have been caricatured as often or in as many ways as have black Americans. Blacks have been portrayed in popular culture as pitiable exotics, cannibalistic savages, hypersexual deviants, childlike buffoons, obedient servants, self-loathing victims, and menaces to society. These anti-black depictions were routinely manifested in or on material objects: ashtrays, drinking glasses, banks, games, fishing lures, detergent boxes, and other everyday items. These objects, with racist representations, both reflected and shaped attitudes towards African Americans. Robbin Henderson, director of the Berkeley Art Center, said, "derogatory imagery enables people to absorb stereotypes; which in turn allows them to ignore and condone injustice, discrimination, segregation, and racism."2 She was right. Racist imagery is propaganda and that propaganda was used to support Jim Crow laws and customs.
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Where is the Jim Crow Museum located?

The museum is located in the Starr Building, room 314, at Ferris State University, in Big Rapids, Michigan. Big Rapids is fifty miles north of Grand Rapids, Michigan.


Q:
What is in the museum?

A:
The museum is a room housing over two thousand Jim Crow Era artifacts. The museum's holdings are of two types. First, there is the Jim Crow memorabilia -- signs, tickets, brochures, photographs, and books -- that promoted segregation. Second, are caricatured everyday items, for example, Mammy candles, Nellie fishing lures, Picaninny ashtrays, Sambo masks, Coon toys, and Golliwog marbles. The museum demonstrates how racist ideas and anti-Black images dominated American culture. It also shows how these images and ideas have resurfaced in recent years.

Q:
I have some of these items in my home,
does that make me a racist?

A:
No, it does not. There are many reasons why people collect these contemptible collectibles. Some people, Blacks and Whites, buy these pieces in the hope of reselling them at a huge profit. The prices of these items have escalated in the past two decades. A Sambo clock that sold for $12 in 1975, might sell for $350 in 2000. Some people, mainly Whites, collect because of the nostalgia. We see this with collectors of Mammy cookie jars. Some Blacks collect this material to remind them of America's racist past. There are also those, ourselves included, who have built large collections for educational purposes.
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I apologize if my photograph offends anyone. One of the purposes of photography is to capture slices of life. I took photos of other items at this flea market, but none sparked my interest or curiosity like the image captured in this one.

I expect that some form of bigotry will always be part of the human race. That is a truth each one of use must face individually and collectively. We will all be held personally accountable for our part in these matters.

Things Darius must try to remember,and repeat over and over in his head,,,,

We do not have a doorbell. I will not bark each time I hear one on TV.
I will not play tug-of-war with Mom's underwear while she's on the toilet.
The garbage collector is not stealing our stuff....(just let it go...let it go...)
I do not need to suddenly stand straight up while I'm lying under the coffee table.
I will not roll my toys behind the fridge.
I will shake the rainwater out of my coat before entering my house.
I will not eat the cats' food, the cat's poop or anything belonging to the cat. (Just keep away from the cat at all times...)
I will stop trying to find the few remaining pieces of clean carpeting in the home when I am about to throw up.
The garbage pail is not a cookie jar.
When in the car, I will not insist on having the window rolled down when it's raining outside.
I will not steal Chrissy's underwear and dance all over the back yard with it.
My head does not belong inside of the refrigerator.
I will not bury Lisa's shoes in the back yard no matter how bad they smell!
I will not chew on every thing I see no matter how much I may want to.