In 1980, my sister and I were walking down a street of our new "hometown" of Wichita. We had just moved to Kansas from a country club in Santa Barbara County, and I'd just arrived from a summer in Europe. (We must have watched "Footloose" a dozen times-UPDATED). That day, two guys in a pick-up drove past and yelled "N*****r want a watermelon?" It was all so Dukes of Hazzard.
Now, thirty years later, a watermelon cartoon materializes about the first African-American president. "What's the big deal?" livid posters protest across so, so many boards. And I am reminded of an incident only a few years ago, when a young AP battled me over the pronunciation of Gianni Versace's name. She did not want to say it correctly in the show (vare-SOTCH-ay) because she had "never heard it pronounced that way." Her realm of understanding - of legitimacy - of any fact, was solely what she had experienced in her own life. She ultimately called the slain designer's company to get permission to mispronounce his name.
Ignorance is a part of life. Passionate ignorance is disturbing. Enraged ignorance with a healthy dose of apathy is...no longer to be indulged.
More below the fold. (ALERT: Not for the squeamish or already pissed off.)
LATimes.com
What do watermelons have to do with black people? I'm white and I like watermelon. Is there some law about that? This country, and in particular this country's media network, is outrageous. You can't do anything without offending anyone, and frankly I don't care if I offend anyone anymore because I'm going to offend them regardless. People want to be offended and go around looking to be offended. They invent things to be offended about if they can't find anything semi-legitimate to be outraged about each day.
Posted by: ***** | February 26, 2009 at 11:36 PM
Of course the cartoon is racial in nature. However, I see nothing derogatory about liking watermelon. Most black people have a fondness for watermelon, so what? Quit being so thin skinned already!
Posted by: *****| February 26, 2009 at 11:34 PM
The assumption/statement-as-fact that "most black people have a fondness for watermelon" - what might that be based on?
LATimes.com
I'm in my mid-20s and had no clue that there was a racial link between blacks and watermelons... I also thought the claims of racism with the chimp cartoon was a stretch, it definitely wasn't the first thing I thought of (I followed the exact line of thinking that the artists claimed).
Posted by: ******| February 27, 2009 at 06:47 AM
In 1989, after "Bensonhurst," "when 300 black demonstrators marched through the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn yesterday to protest the racial shooting of a black youth, they were met by scores of jeering young whites who chanted, 'N*****s go home,' yelled obscenities and held up watermelons to ridicule the demonstrators."(New York Times)
LATimes.com
That is one of the funniest emails I have seen---thus far. If you are offended - get a life!
Posted by: *****| February 27, 2009 at 06:58 AM
[65-year-old] Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose has apologized and said he wasn't aware of the racial stereotype that blacks like watermelon.
Associated Press, February 27, 2009
IGNORANCE. It is one thing to say "I did not know."
DISREGARD. It is another thing to say "I know, but I do not care."
NARCISSISM. It is another thing to say, "I did not know or experience it, so it cannot be true or possible."
ENTITLEMENT. It is another thing to say, "I did not experience it, and therefore, I challenge the possibility that you ever experienced it. I did not suffer from it, so it is not conceivable or acceptable that you could suffer from it. And, seriously, I do not care so, therefore, it is not valid that you care."
So are we a nation of cowards with regards to race? We are less so after this week, I think. With relatively little national news coverage, no Special Comment from Keith (!), no montaged references to the chimp cartoon and the Vanity Fair cover, fifty states' worth of outrage shut down the Los Alamitos city phone lines, and now the mayor will resign and return to his chair in the council.
And the rest of us? We will be vigilant, resilient, or just occasionally aware. Or maybe, at the very least, we will grow a tiny bit more sensitive to others' experiences/pain/memories/histories that we don't share but no longer need to invalidate because those experiences do not de facto make us racist or undeserving or somehow less-than. They just make us informed.
Remember "Los Alamitos."
UPDATE:
First, I had so much work to do today, but I melted my BB trying to keep up with this incredible dialogue. Thanks for sharing and being honest and insightful and tragic and kind and funny and frank and so very real.
Second, thanks for the date reminder on "Footloose" - we were still in KS when the movie came out, but it was not that summer. My sister further reminded me that there were many such occasions as the "drive by" day - we had quite an interesting call all these years later.
Third, for the several queries about the provenance of this particular stereotype, in simplest terms - it was a pervasive apologia for the institutionalized oppression of and violence toward African-Americans throughout slavery, Jim Crow and beyond. If Blacks were do-nothing, merry, watermelon-eaters, then clearly they deserved no rights, advantages or advances. "Look what they would do with their time if left to their own devices? Lie about in the sun eating the watermelon they stole from honest, hard-working Whites." Even with this post, one commenter pointed out that the Black people DID look quite happy eating their melon. Of course they did - but those were not historical photos; they were drawn caricatures. The specific intent of those grinning depictions was to emphasize - "See? Slavery/racism/segregation/oppression/lynching/dehumanization is not so bad! Leave us and our ways alone!" As the image below states, "You can plainly see how miserable I am. Not." (All right, modernism added by me.) In addition, the "melon-head" evolutionary theories further dehumanized Blacks and reinforced their less-than-human, second class status.
Fourth and finally (for now?), for the evolution of the term "African-American," here it is from my life's experience. In this country, before the '70s, the term "Black" was a terrible insult, due to the horrors heaped upon people with brown skin. The same was true throughout the world in other countries of the diaspora who had been colonized. BUT. Here in the U.S., there was a Black Power Movement that did, indeed, reclaim the term - and it did not happen everywhere else.
Somewhere in the '80s, as many more African descendants joined us here in the States following coups, droughts, wars and for myriad other personal, political, academic and professional reasons, I will never forget calling some of my fellow college students "Black" and HORRIFYING THEM. As a more embracing term for all those of African descent in this country, we now say "African-American." I don't personally know many American-born Blacks who mind being called Black, but A-A is all-inclusive of everyone in the family. Of course, I do not speak for all African-Americans, just from my own experience.