"It's not racist! My mother says it!" objected an acquaintance when I
suggested she not continue to use the phrase "that's white of you"*
Why
is it that people assume things associated with childhood or their own
loved ones are magically not racist simply by virtue of that
association? When I saw Little Black Sambo on the banned book
list, I winced. Because there's more than a small part of me that
would like to see such minstrel-esque images of Black people erased
from the culture. (And before someone dismisses this by telling me that
he is Indian, "Sambo" and his ilk migrated to America and came to be
representative of the enslaved and formerly enslaved population here,
too.) Maybe the world wouldn't be any worse off without Aunt Jemima,
Uncle Ben, all those mammy-figurines made into salt and pepper shakers,
pickaninny dolls, the film Birth of a Nation...
Two parts of me are at war when I see these things:
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