BOGUS "CHOCOLATE" NEW ORLEANS
CONTROVERSY SPAWNS REAL RACISM

Am I the only person in this country who thinks that this image...



...bears an uncanny resemblance to this image?



The first picture is, of course, part of the bullshit controversy about New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin telling an audience of mostly African-Americans that he is determined to do what it takes to ensure that their city will regain its majority black status. If you haven't heard by now, Nagin referred to the Big Easy as being "chocolate," which has gotten a lot of white people pissed off. The picture is, apparently, some sort of protest.

Ha ha. I get it. Nagin talks about chocolate, so he must be like Willy Wonka. Very funny and clever. Gotta love those socially concerned cyber-pranksters.

The second picture is a 1906 postcard advertising a minstrel show. And minstrel shows, at one point the overwhelmingly dominant form of American popular entertainment, were extraorinarily racist.

From Wikipedia:

However, in the 1850s minstrelsy became decidedly mean-spirited and pro-slavery as race replaced class as its main focus. Most minstrels projected a greatly romanticized and exaggerated image of black life with cheerful, simple slaves always ready to sing and dance and to please their masters. (Less frequently, the masters cruelly split up black lovers or sexually assaulted black women.) The lyrics and dialogue were generally racist, satiric, and of largely white origin. Songs about slaves yearning to return to their masters were plentiful, and some of these are still popular today, such as "Dixie", "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny", and "My Old Kentucky Home". The message was clear: do not worry about the slaves; they are happy with their lot in life. Moreover, figures like the Northern dandy and the homesick ex-slave reinforced the idea that African Americans did not belong, nor want to belong, in Northern society.

Minstrelsy's reaction to Uncle Tom's Cabin is indicative of plantation content at the time. "Tom acts" largely came to replace other plantation narratives, particularly in the third act. These sketches sometimes supported Stowe's novel, but just as often they turned it on its head or attacked the author. Whatever the intended message, it was usually lost in the joyous, slapstick atmosphere of the piece. Characters such as Simon Legree sometimes disappeared, and the title was frequently changed to something more cheerful like "Happy Uncle Tom" or "Uncle Dad's Cabin". Uncle Tom himself was frequently portrayed as a harmless bootlicker to be ridiculed. Some troupes, known as "Tommer" companies, came to specialize in such burlesques, and theatrical "Tom shows" integrated elements of the minstrel show and competed with it for at time.

Minstrelsy's racism (and misogyny) could be rather vicious. There were "comic" songs in which blacks were "roasted, fished for, smoked like tobacco, peeled like potatoes, planted in the soil, or dried up and hung as advertisements", and there were multiple songs in which a black man accidentally put out a black woman's eyes.

Click here for the rest.

Perhaps the makers of the "Willy Nagin" images circulating around the internet these past few days meant no racist harm. After all, Wonka, featuring the bland but beautiful superstar Johnny Depp in the lead role, was remade only last year--it's on people's minds, and an easy connection to make. Indeed, it's probably a stretch to assert that these guys were thinking about the minstrel shows of the 19th century at all when they booted up their Photoshop programs and got to work; I especially doubt that they were intentionally trying to create a racist caricature of Nagin because the ostensible purpose of these images is to protest what they deem to be some kind of bigotry towards white people.

On the other hand, cultural memory is powerful, and the racist stereotypes created during the minstrel era persist to this day. The stupid and inarticulate black "dandy," personified today by Hollywood's over-the-top portrayals of flamboyant pimps, bling-laden rappers, and flashy African-American leaders, is a stock character that goes straight back to minstrelsy. The "Willy Nagin" pictures make pretty much the same racist point: a black man gets some power but he's too stupid to wield it correctly.

I must again state that I don't believe that this was the conscious intention of these cyber-pranksters. But the unconscious usually finds a way to break through to the surface, especially in art. And because the whole "chocolate" controversy totally reeks of being yet another manifestation of white resentment of diversity, or multiculturalism, or the concept known as being "politically correct," whatever you want to call it, I feel pretty safe asserting that these "Willy Nagin" artists are, indeed, racists.

You know, the more I think about this whole thing, the more my stomach hurts.

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