So, I was looking up some pics for this post, and I googled "sore feet" and this pic came up.....uh - do you see how the black man is portrayed?????Originally this post was going to be about how I dropped my car off at the dealership downtown around 1130 this morning and decided (unwisely) to walk back home not arriving here till now - 430pm. I was going to regale you with stories about the scorching sun, taxi drivers who tried to "pick me up" rather than do their job and the many interesting sites that I saw along the way.
However, this picture trumps all that. At first I thought that it was his pet monkey, and now I see that I was wrong. It's supposed to be a cartoon about Sinbad and his adventures. But I am sadly reminded of "blackface" and all that it entailed...as well as the fact that I'm living in the South.
And then I thought about all the stereotypes that abound. And thought about how during my long walk I encountered a group of young blacks who were loud, and in my ears their Southern voices/drawl/slang was unintelligible. And how I immediately assumed/judged that they were uneducated and reinforcing negative stereotypes. The same stereotypes that I seem to believe and agree with….
3 comments:
there are reasons why there are stereotypes... stereotypes exist on the basis of both the stereotyping party and the stereotyped party.
my brother just moved to SC. he was fired because he heard his boss refer to him as the new: ugly m*fcker
needless to say, my brother had to address the issue and was issued his last paycheck on the spot. *sigh*
ALS - interesting, I have to think about that one...it makes sense to some degree but maybe I'm still somewhat of an idealist to believe that everyone deserves a clean slate and no assumptions...I'll let you know what I come up - or maybe I'll write a post about it!
Tanyetta - thanks for sharing...we all have our prejudices...I guess what I'm wondering is how do we alleviate them and/or change our behavior - or can we?
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