About 20 years ago in my hometown of Milwaukee, there was a spate of abductions of black lantern-bearing statuary from residences throughout the City and its environs. Eventually, the terrorists, referring to themselves as The Porch Monkey Liberation Front, issued a list of demands to the City through the Milwaukee Journal. The mayor held fast, refusing to deal with them, but alas! it was many years before the abductees would see the light of day. Eventually, they were located in an abandoned warehouse, and although their recovery was widely covered in the local media, fewer than half were ever claimed. What became of the remainder, I don’t know.
I bring this up for several reasons.: First, because I consider the episode hilarious; second, because Milwaukee is also home to the nation’s Black Holocaust Museum; and finally because David Thompson, whose excellent website we often link here, has a piece up about the removal from bookshelves throughout the UK (and relocation to adult graphic novel sections) of Tintin in the Congo, the sales of which have predictably soared. Apparently, it is fine to detail graphically the treatment of blacks in America within the confines of a museum, but not to acknowledge the racial attitudes that pervaded the US generally, or the West as a whole, without the framing.
I’m not particularly unhappy that nobody bothers to buy Little Black Sambo figurines, unless they’re collectors. I don’t think it’s terrible that one can’t buy a box of black baby-shaped candy at the theater concession. I certainly don’t mind that Paddies are seldom depicted, so far as I’m aware, as ape-like creatures in cartoons or piggy banks, these days. On the other hand, the general outcry seems not to have descended to, for example, Jews and other “Zionists” in the Arab press. No, instead academics, who seem otherwise very preoccupied with representation, choose to histrionically sever ties with their Israeli counterparts.
We would probably laugh if one of our colleagues chose to wear hoop skirts and a bustle to work, or asked for our help cinching up her whale-bone corset. Equally, we probably find Honey Combs commercials of our childhood rather too groovy for our tastes. This business of deciding what is appropriate for young people (clearly they need to be indoctrinated to understand the acceptability of homosexuality by the state, seeing that the state cannot entrust such a sacred task to mere parents) ought to be subject to public discussion rather than fiated by our self-designated moral hygienists.
Meanwhile, you are welcome to hold forth at our Online Museum of Unspeakable Racial and Ethnic Stereotypes.
The day that Seinfeld guy did his thing, I told a friend who’s black and all about it and told her that it was on the Internet and it was pretty shocking. She said – you people love when you get to act all shocked. Then the Imus thing happened.
I like to go back and watch [i]Roots[/i] every time my white guilt starts to fade a little. But, it’s nice to know there is a museum close by as well. Every little bit helps.
** We would probably laugh if one of our colleagues chose to wear hoop skirts and a bustle to work, or asked for our help cinching up her whale-bone corset. **
speak for yourself, Collins –
once word gets around that you know how to cinch a lady’s whale-bone corset just right, you’ll be spats deep in bustle, bucko … spats deep.
That’s no laughing matter.
um, depends on the show. funniest thing ever? colleague shaking her bustle singing Baby got back
Tim Worstall has more on the Tintin flap, featuring racist candy from Spain.
Aina Hey! I’m from there, too!
I have my late grandmother’s porcelain figurine of two little boys cheek-to-cheek on a chamberpot. The black boy is grinning, the white one is crying.
Can I donate it to the Museum?
Send a picture, if you like, Ralph. As for the original artifact, flog it on eBay.
But it’s priceless.
And my father would probably kill me.
I think the Roe effect was not enough and Karl Rove is pushing the homosexual agenda now. With libs aborting their children at a record pace – blacks, especially – and libs pushing slightly effeminate or dyky children into un-reproductive, short-lived, and medically unsound relationships (according to the Dutch government), it is the conservatives who wil be the most numerous in another generation. Rove, you magnificent bastard.
You grew up in Milwaukee too?
That explains a lot.
Which high school?
I say Milwaukee. It’s Brookfield Central, though.
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