I read today that the makers of Aunt Jemima’s pancake mix and syrup are redesigning their marketing, in response to our current social conversations. I thought it time to tell a story.
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I'm old enough to remember when Disneyland was segregated. Opening in 1955, it was well known that they didn't hire black employees, although they were happy to take our money if we insisted on giving it to them.
I probably went there first in about 1958, when I was six years old, and didn't really notice the above fact. I was just delighted to see Minnie and Goofy. I was thrilled by it all, and when I went on the Jungle Cruise, and saw the first images of black people in the park--a head hunter and some native guides, I laughed and cheered along with everyone else.
The sobering moment came later. I was at the edge of Adventure Land, and while my family was doing whatever I wandered off and was looking around, by my six year old self. I noticed a large, pot-bellied white man watching me. He was smoking a pipe, and seemed a little "blurry". Was he a bit intoxicated? It's possible. Why was he watching me? I didn't feel any alarm, even when he walked up to me in the crowd.
"Excuse me," he said politely but a little unsteadily. "But are you Aunt Jemima's nephew?"
I blinked. What in the world? I don't remember how, but somehow I learned that there was an Aunt Jemima Pancake House in the park, and there was a black woman who played the part. She had brought her nephew to work with her, and he had wandered off. This guy had simply gone looking for the kid.
I remember laughing uncomfortably, and suddenly, for the first time, really noticed my skin color. Noticed that there was no one else I saw who looked like me. Not in the crowd. Not in any of the rides except the aforementioned head hunter. We weren't in space, or the fantasy worlds, or part of any modern world at all except the jungles of Africa. Later, I heard they didn't hire black people, and my sense of SEPARATENESS increased.
Why, Mommy…?
Why was the only black employee in the park Aunt Jemima? A very comfortable, comforting, antebellum Gone With The Wind image..? Little Stevie was confused, and no one had a really good answer for him.
If I could go back and comfort that boy, I'd say: "Why? Because white people are afraid of what they did to us, and need a harmless, maternal, smiling, non-sexually threatening icon to convince them that we won't kill them. That what they did to us was justified, and we are happy with our lot in life."
I would have made certain that he understood that this was just the way human beings were, that there was nothing special about white folks at all, positive OR negative. It was just…humanity.
And I’d have held him and kissed him as he sobbed.
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I saw Gone With The Wind, of course. It came on television every year, and my mother, a southern girl from Augusta Georgia, enjoyed it…I think. And it was thrilling to see black people on the screen, and I never asked myself about their depiction. Felt vaguely uncomfortable, but wasn't certain why. Figured it out later, though.
And what is interesting to me is that my perspective on what is problematic, racially, about GWTW is something I never hear anyone saying. The problem starts in the opening crawl:
There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South... Here in this pretty world Gallantry took its last bow.. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind...
A dream remembered. A fantasy land, of knights and ladies, a place and time to be yearned for.
You know what? I understand that. Everyone wants to believe that their ancestors lived in a golden time. But what is necessary for this dream to be one of morality and Christian values?
The slaves have to be happy with their lot.
THAT is the problem with the movie. Not that it depicted slaves as they existed historically, but that they present slaves AS WHITE PEOPLE WANT AND NEED TO BELIEVE THEY WERE.
It lies. Those black people have no inwardness. No hopes and dreams of their own. They live only to serve, to yield, to give. And they might be clever at times, but clearly have no intellectual heft ("I don't know nothin' bout birthin' no babies, Miz Scarlett").
And because there are no contrary images, and because we want to sink into the fantasy, we don't even question it. We don't ask why those slaves don't seem to have any identity other than as property. They don't even leave when emancipated.
Now…could there have been slaves who were that happy? Had such a familial relationship with their masters? Of course. There will be a "Bell Curve" of human reactions to anything. And at one end is GWTW. And this image, of literally THE BEST IT COULD GET for those human beings, is the most popular film, in adjusted box office, in history, and might never be topped. $1,895,421,694.
The next most popular? Star Wars: A New Hope, at $1,629,496,559.
Until television's "Roots" GWTW had a virtual monopoly on this "Lost Cause/Happy Slave" imagery. And what kind of human being would be happy serving in such a way? Does it match America's "live free or die" philosophy?
No. It suggests, in dramatic form, the very foundation of the entire existence of chattel, mult-generational slavery: they were NATURAL slaves. Happy. Subservient. And the civilization that stripped away their names, cultures, religions, history, mythology and autonomy was justified and glorious.
So much was taken that people blathering about "Irish slaves" don't even realize the absurdity. If you can say "Irish" you are NOT talking about what was taken. "Irish" might be equivalent to "Ibo" or "Hausa" but not "black". The slaves had their tribal/ethnic identities utterly destroyed. Imagine white people with names like Kuriengwo or Mubutu, and you'll have a parallel. All the history and connection…gone. Human computers wiped of all but core survival drives, then programmed with "Slave 1.0" software. Then after generation, set "free" in a world that needed desperately to believe their inferiority, and "Freeman 1776" installed atop the old programs. Constant oppression and violence was their lot. Software crashes were inevitable, if not the intent.
And if you don’t see why, simply ask yourself how much pain and fear and force it would take to keep YOU and YOUR family in second-class status for generations. And if you can't imagine that…in all probability you are a part of the problem. You bought into the iconography. You believed the lie. You NEEDED to believe it.
Because if you are proud of the good your ancestors did, the cost is that you will probably feel guilt connected with their evil. That's the balance.
That's the problem with the heroic statues, of course. People say: "well, put up a plaque…" sorry, but visual symbols trump written words. When given a choice between actions and words, only a sad, sick person believes words over their actual observations
The images of beauty, grace, power, and authority resting atop a foundation of happy, empty human vessels is essential. Because once you tear that barrier down, you risk looking directly into horror.
An excellent case could be made that Gone With The Wind had the cinematic monopoly on images of slavery until 2012's Django Unchained. "Roots" was television, not film. It sat in your living room, images SMALLER than you. With commercial interruptions to break the tension. Ever notice that "Jurassic Park" felt different on the big screen than when you watched it on the boob tube? That's a hind brain thing. The theatrical dinos were BIGGER than you. The little chittering mammal in the back of your brain was TERRIFIED and awed. Watch in on television? The dinos are SMALLER than you, and the "ooh! Nice special effects!" is more likely than "Good God!!!"
In a movie theater, you sink into a seat, the lights go down, you roll your eyes up and enter Alpha implantation state, and surrender to the dream. Imprint DEEPLY.
Reggie Hudlin, executive producer on Django, once said to me that only five directors in the world had the juice to get DJANGO made. And four of 'em wouldn't want to do it. It took a crazy man named Quintin Tarantino, a guy who thinks so far outside the box that his movies aren't really about humanity, they are about cinematic DEPICTIONS of humanity, to make it.
For the entire 20th Century, GWTW had a virtual monopoly on cinematic depictions of slavery.
There were no slaves in "Beloved". There were EX slaves struggling to create a life.
There were no slaves in "Glory". There were EX slaves, who died to a man. All of them. Every one.
There were no slaves in "Amistad". There were kidnapped Africans on their WAY to slavery.
There were no slaves in "Lincoln." None. Lots of talk about them…but the human beings themselves, with their hopes and dreams and HOMICIDAL RAGE were not there.
There were slaves in "Skin Game" and I love it. But look at the credits. Let’s define the “star” of a movie as the person whose name comes first. Take the subjectivity out of it: James Garner is the star, not Lou Gossett. A film about slavery starring a white man. Excuse me for feeling grateful for THAT much, but still maintaining awareness that they couldn't get all the way there.
"Django" opened the door to "Twelve Years A Slave," just about the second movie to break this taboo. And people were already saying "too much! Too many slave movies!" Which is like saying "your thumb is too far in my eye!" not really "this has happened many many times."
Compare the number of theatrical films depicting slavery from the perspective of the slaves, with the number of Civil War films, and you'll get the ugly joke.
So all those images, from GWTW on, existed to preserve the myth of a golden time, a natural order of humanity. The former slave states needed the institution, and needed to justify it to sleep at night without wondering if the slaves were putting ground glass in Master’s grits, and the myth outlived the institution it protected. The friggin' ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITTANICA used to flatly teach black mental inferiority as if it was just a fact.
GWTW cannot exist without a particular perspective on humanity. The statues and symbols supporting and memorializing the Confederacy all support the same myth. And even the definition of racism, the "differential attribution of worth or capacity on the basis of race or ethnicity" has been weakened to "hatred for another race" (Scarlett LOVED Mammy! No racism there!) or thinking EVERYONE of another group has a single set of characteristics (Thank you, Jordan Peterson. Even David Duke doesn't think ALL black people are inferior. Just…on average). Why, shift your definitions a little and EVERYONE is off the hook! Hallelujah, hallelujah.
How can you tell if someone is racist? Easy, really. Just ask them "under the same historical circumstances, would white people have been as damaged by slavery and taken as long to heal?"
If they start talking about the Irish or ANY other group that still knows its tribal affiliations, you are dealing with, at the very least, a "sleeper." Someone who has been so brainwashed by centuries of GWTW-style imagery that they don’t' even consider the implications.
If they are an honest racist, they'll say "no." If they are dishonest, they'll pretend not to have an opinion, or say the question is unfair.
A non-racist can say "yes" quickly and easily. Now, there are sleepers here too…who will say "I don't know" because they've never thought it through. I understand. But I hope YOU understand that I have to lump them together with those who say "no." I cannot afford to let a sleeper drive the bus. They cannot be a part of the conversation called "how do we heal?"
And snakes hide among them.
The slaves of GWTW are NATURAL slaves. If their analogues existed (and they probably did) they were cherry-picked to express a theme stated bluntly in the opening crawl. All those statues? Symbols of the glorious Lost Cause protecting a society that needed desperately to maintain a lie just to exist….and then clung to that lie for generations afterward. For A HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS afterward.
And poor Aunt Jemima…? A comfortable, soft image. Happy to serve. And Uncle Ben? Why come on in! And Uncle Remus and all the rest.
"Aunties" and "Uncles" who are just delighted to be second-class human beings. That's all they want, all they aspire to. So comforting. And that means that any agitation to the contrary is, why, them "Northern agitators"! Commies!
Sheesh. All in protection of a lie. And the truth? The truth is that at the core, we really don't "know" whether Essence precedes Existence in the way we "know" atomic weight. At the core, we can accumulate data, but really, we use our intellects to support what our heart already says. That's the way we are.
I could look at all of this and conclude whites are evil, weak, and corrupt in essential being. But I have FAITH that is not true. Which means I can sit at the table and negotiate with those who, in faith, extend the same courtesy to me. AND NO OTHERS.
And I'm willing to state for the record that the others, the ones who believe or support the myth, are sleepers, snakes or monsters. They CANNOT have a seat at the table. You see, even though I cannot "prove" my position, I can ask:
Does human equality explain the past without guilt, blame, or shame? Yes, it does.
Does it explain current events without guilt, blame, or shame? Yes it does.
Does it point to a better future?
Absolutely. If the problem was a lie, then the answer is the truth.
Love yourself, extend that love to others until you understand humanity in all its beauty adnd fear. By looking at your own self-justifications, you'll understand how this all happened.
Be STRONG enough to resist the push back. Do you really think this lie could have been supported for CENTURIES without massive cooperation, and do you really believe you can make a change in existential perspective quickly? Hell no. multi-generational wounds require mult-generational perspective and time for healing. Those who doubt this are just telling you they think THEIR tribe would have done it faster.
Sleepers, or snakes. Or monsters.
And what they cannot stand against is a combination of Strength, Love, and Faith. That's what this will take. The "GWTW" flap, the statues, and yes, the symbols like Aunt Jemima are a part of this, and in some ways collateral damage.
I'm sorry about that. I take little pleasure from the discomfort of others. But I didn't start this war. I'm simply committed to winning it.
I remember that little boy who loved Disneyland, and was pained to realize that in some odd way he didn't understand, this land of prefabricated miracles and mechanical dreams wasn’t for him. He didn’t' fit unless concealed by the apron of a serving-woman who would smile and tell the white folks she loved being second class, and would ya'll like more syrup?
I owe THAT little boy my life. He is watching me, and judging me. And to the degree that I am strong, and smart, and loving enough to stand tall, to resist without hatred and bend without breaking…I am worthy to be his father.
Namaste
Steve
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