History cannot be changed. It is HISTORY.
Aunt Jemima is leaving with Uncle Ben and the Cream of Wheat black person. The animal crackers are no longer in cages. Eskimo pies will have a new name. Alaskan Airlines will have to repaint all their aircraft. We have Asian rugs now instead of Oriental rugs. Land o Lakes products will no longer have a Native American as part of their logo. High school and college mascots and now onto professional sports teams are busy getting new names and mascots.
As we humans evolve, we must put racist and ethnic terms behind us. But I see a historical value to keep these items in museums where my great grandkids will know the how and why.
I've trying to get used to non-sexual pronouns and long curls on boys. It's taking me longer than I'd like.
I will never get used to the non-sexual pronouns. That's just a step too far for me. Come up with a new pronoun that covers those who aren't female or male but don't do away with those two.
ReplyDeleteThere is a museum of racism near me on a college campus and that place is really interesting. My God, the amount of racism in product packaging that has already been pulled off the market decades ago is amazing. Alligators eating little black kids on candy snack food is one example. Aunt Jemina and Uncle Ben don't seem racist now but they've come through a lot of changes since their original packaging where they were depicted as slaves.
I really wish more of the statues would end up in places like that musuem or Civil War museums where there are guided tours to put things in to historical context. As an artist, it hurts to see great works of metal casting get destroyed. But on the other hand it doesn't make much sense to have statues of confederate soldiers that were made and placed during the Jim Crow era to intimidate the black community still standing in public squares. Southern communities need to move them before they are all destroyed.
But to judge the people who want them destroyed too harshly isn't in me either because the same thing happened after WWII with statues of Hilter and Mussolin and to other dictators around the world in more recent times. When you're on the losing side of a war those statues become a source of pain for those who lived under their hateful regimes.
Most whites in our country don't see the statues in those terms with our confederate generals because we've never looked at them through the eyes of the black community. When you dig into the history of who paid for those statues you see the message they were trying to send back in the Jim Crow era: White Supremacists control this city.
They. Them. Their or they're. It is difficult for this old brain.
DeleteALL statues have messages behind them, of course. I feel like we could preserve them WITH THE MEANING so that future generations can "get it"
I dislike the mandated and even voluntary use of the new pronouns. Where I used to work people are now adding with their signatures, "preferred pronoun She" or whatever. Keep the statues, it is history. A major BLM activist with a million followers recently tweeted about Christian churches, "tear them down." That is where this is heading.
ReplyDeleteThat's just crazy about the churches.
DeleteThe mandated and voluntary new pronouns is not something I'd fall into line over. What are they suggesting to use instead of she or he, her or his? Very awkward?
Keep the churches ... use for homeless, addiction recovery, whatever. We have a church in our town that has been converted to a home. Put a plaque in or on explaining why it is no longer a church.
DeleteI never thought of that by buying a box of Aunt Jemina pancake mix I would be viewed as racist! Would I be classed as racist because I don't like her syrup and prefer Log Cabin and I prefer Minute Rick to Uncle Bens and don't even get me started on Cream of Wheat...I hate the stuff.
ReplyDeleteEVERYTHING offends someone. The latest? Dixie Chicks are now The Chicks.
DeleteI think they will have to change White Bread to something else ... Bleached Bread?
I agree with you about the statues. Put them some place where they can be part of a history display. We visited Gettysburg 2 years ago. There are tons of monuments to both sides of the war, each infantry or battalion put up a memorial for lives lost. Hearing of other statues being toppled down I thought of Gettysburg and hoping that was not happening there. I would imagine all of them are under guard.
ReplyDeleteWe should learn from history, not destroy it.
I must admit we bought a box of Aunt Jemina pancake mix and a container of her syrup last week at the store and we don't even make pancakes here. Just for "old times' sake" though I'm sure we'll pass both on to son and his family where pancakes are a daily event.
betty
I stopped by here when you first posted this and read about half of it before something happened (I can't remember what) that took me away and I'm just getting back.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds ridiculous, but when someone mentioned to me that they were removing Aunt Jemima from the box, I was surprised. I thought they'd removed her back in the 80s or 90s when they talked about doing it. I am out of the loop. Well, you know I'm for putting the monuments in museums. After the Charlottesville fiasco, I thought they would do that in Virginia. Then the monuments could have been preserved, and put in a museum with the history in context. Some of them have been damaged. I don't know what they will eventually do with all of them.