Prejudice and Its Absence
I have learned some of my readers have no interest in blogs on town matters but they do enjoy the personal ones. It occurs to me the web site would be the best place for town matters and the blog for the personal. My website is being updated, for the first time, by my friend Heather. It is taking time. In that time, the winter has ended. My garden is tugging at me for attention and the warm sunshine is an enticement to be outdoors.
I have also discovered Facebook. Most of my grandchildren and some of their friends have claimed me as a friend. It is another reason to look forward to each day.
I had an anonymous comment on my Scarlet Fever Blog this morning. “Anonymous” thought my reference to a penny bank which was in the shape of “the bust of a black man” was “an offensive and derogatory term”.
The penny banks were made of iron. The colour was applied so that it never chipped or faded. I have seen them for sale in antique stores. They look smaller than I remember them. Canada was not an industrialized society until after the second world war. Manufactured items were, in the main, imported from other places. That must be why so many items familiar to my childhood, are almost as common here as they are there.
There were very few black people in the place where I grew up. I recall nothing offensive or derogatory about being black. Nor was there anything offensive or derogatory about being Jewish. It seems we were not touched by these lethal prejudices.
The only class deemed to be offensive or derogatory in my particular part of Scotland were Catholics. I was one of those. I can't say I ever felt my religion to be a blight on my life. Of course, that may have had something to do with the teaching that we were the only ones who ever had a chance of entering Heaven and seeing God. It wasn't much of a chance mind you, considering we were all such sinners and all.
Yet even the institutionalized bias against us never did impress itself upon me. Nor does it seem any of the previous generations of my family on hand were ever particularly unhappy about their state in life.
I think, it may be, that those who find it easy to criticize others and use terms like “offensive or derogatory” with regards to people or penny banks, may very well be the ones most negatively affected by their own thinking.
I bid them peace. 
Posts
The Offensive Penny bank
ReplyDeleteBe not alarmed that my comment on your blog was by someone opposed to you in any way. I do not know you and I do not presume to know where your prejudges lie. The morning I posted the comment I had seen you along with the other members of the town council, for the first time, on a televised town meeting. I decided to read up on these people who represent the town of Aurora. Today is my second time on your site.
I came across your blog, and that picture I must say, stood out. It reminded me of an episode I once saw of one of those shows where mothers switch families for two weeks. A black woman switched with a white family who happened to have a “mammy cookie jar”. This woman appeared from what I can recall to be an intelligent and rational person, yet she refused to be in the house with that cookie jar. The first opportunity she got, she tucked it away in the back of a cupboard out of her sight. She found it and what it represents, a reminder of a very ugly part of history, very offensive. The white family initially could not get how anyone could be offended by the cookie jar. I think it sometimes boils down to the limits of our individual experiences. It was just something this family had never before been challenged to think about. A mammy jar or doll, or the penny bank, to some may be just that, but to others it represents something unkind.
In your blog, the way you (seemingly, innocently) described this object, and referred to it as being “the bust of a black man” made me feel I should give you a nudge to say look back at what you have written and how this could come across to some. I have never before seen any black man looking anything remotely close to anything that that penny bank could be a representation of. The action you described of it fetching pennies in its mouth, just made the image that more ghastly.
Not everything that is old is worth keeping. Surely these things are considered antiques, but in whose company would you and would you not find these? I do understand the penny bank is a part of your experience, and this blog is about you sharing this experience, but things and times are not nearly the same as when you were a little girl neither is the demographics of the town. As an elected official, it would be nice to be mindful of all you represent.
I maintain the penny bank is as awful as I first commented. What I truly never expected, though I do not know you, was for you to defend it in any way or post that image again.
Peace.
The Blog has entered a new phase. Sharing opinions. A reader feels the picture of the penny bank was offensive. I acknowledge it is not a work of art. As I remember it, it wasn't an antique either. It occupied a place on a neighbour's mantelpiece for purely practical purposes. We had gas mantles for lighting. Gas was supplied through a meter and paid for with pennies in a slot. The little bank provided a regular supply.
ReplyDeleteIt was no doubt cheap and tacky but it wasn't alone. There were many cheap and tacky items in ordinary homes. Holy pictures abounded as well. A favourite was “The Sacred Heart” a saintly good looking individual with his eyes raised to heaven and pretty heart exposed in his chest dripping with blood.
This was early in the twentieth century.The industrial age was not that old. Stuff like that was being churned out in the multi-millions. Britain was shipping it everywhere. I doubt it contributed much of anything to the culture of any society.
It did however create a market and work.
The story about the Aunt Jemima cookie jar is a useful comparison because Aunt Jemima could just as easily have been white. The jar could have been an ample fellow in a Chef's hat instead of a kerchief and proudly sporting a black moustache. Either one could just be signifying excellent eating. Ample curves are an occupational hazard for a cook of any colour.
I can understand though why a black person might have a negative reaction. When my children were reaching adulthood, I noticed how often mother was the butt of humour in stand-up comedy. Even before I became elderly ,I did not enjoy the skits of an old lady with stockings rolled down to her knees, high cracked voice and senility pronounced. It was a favourite routine of a very popular comedienne. I hated it.
Jerry Lewis never made me laugh. I did not appreciate his mimicry of people with physical and mental handicaps.
I'm not trying to make an intellectual argument to defend cheap and tasteless items that were churned out by millions a hundred years ago, for the popular market. There isn't one.
The culture I came from was no stranger to slavery, nor that far removed from it. They called it Feudalism. Then they called it the “Class System”. I don't claim to hail from the right side of that track. Maybe that's why I don't think of myself being denigrating to others.
I do think life is not long enough to dwell on the injustices of the past. We live in a different society now and we do seem to be getting along quite nicely.
My grandchildren are very happily a part of a multi-cultural society and I hope I have made a contribution to that.