I’m troubled reading
white people post they are upset they are losing Aunt Jemima. You’re that attached to a corporate logo? Have you lost your freakin’ mind? Get on ebay, they’re selling Aunt Jemima
clocks, wall hangings and jackets, buy all you need. I think by the time you take it out of the
box you will realize you were ridiculous
I’m reading if we destroy our history, we’re doomed to
repeat it? When was the last time you
saw a statue of George III in the United States? Anyone want to take bets as to when we become
part of England again? Florida was part
of Spain. New York was part of Holland. Anyone think we’re going back?
Someone asked about Gone With the Wind, are they taking Gone
with the Wind from us? I remember the
first time GWTW was on television. It
was mid-1970s. We sat around the
television as a family and watched it, true story. I believe it opens with a slaves in the field
scene. Even in the 1970s my parents saw
that and said “OMG, this is terrible.
This is going to disturb people.”
Ask your children and grandchildren if they’ve seen GWTW and what it
meant to them.
And then you’ve got the whole issue of the Confederacy. Every year, from the time I was 10, until I
was 16, I took a road trip with my grandparents. We started in Florida and went to Canada, but
as we made our way to Canada, we spent a fair amount of time in Kentucky, with
my grandfather’s parents and then in Detroit, with other relatives. Georgia, Tennessee and Kentucky were full of Civil War sites, battlefields, markers. In Detroit I asked where the Civil War stuff
was, one of the relatives said, “We won that war and we don’t talk about it
here.” The Detroit relatives had
originally been Kentucky relatives. They
moved, during the Depression, and stayed.
My grandfather’s parent had also moved to Detroit during the Depression,
but they retired to Kentucky.
I like history. I
have visited numerous plantations, which are museums. They sell books you rarely see, written by
emancipated slaves and collections of the stories of emancipated slaves. I’ve bought and read a lot of those
books. I think there’s a big difference
between museums of Southern History as opposed to statues of losing generals in
the cities where they were defeated, Aunt Jemima and the Confederate flag on
your truck. If flying the Confederate
flag on your truck is not intentionally meant to be racist it, at a minimum,
reminds me of high school kids who tell you they are Wiccan or Buddhist. I remember one saying that in my house and my
daughter said, “You’re not Wiccan. Are
your parents Wiccan?” They were
not. “What do you do as a Wiccan? What do you believe? Do you go to Wiccan church? Or did you just pick that so you wouldn’t be
like your parents?” Or do you fly the
Confederate flag to be just like your parents?
One of my friends posted yesterday the Civil War was not
only about slavery. She read that. I’ve read and heard that too. I read and heard it so much I asked my cousin
who’s a history professor at a college in Kentucky. I asked him right on FB, I could
probably find that post. He said there
would have been no Civil War had the issue not been slavery.
I recently responded to a Save Aunt Jemima post where a
commentator said racism comes from families.
My Grandpa’s grandfather was in the Confederate Army. I have never known a finer man than my
Grandfather. Each and every day we were
together, he was so good to me.
We were genealogy hunting in a Kentucky cemetery where we
came upon this marker. I was 13 years
old. Grandpa told me Calab was a slave. Calab died when he was about 20 years old. Calab is buried in the same cemetery as my
great-grandparents and my great-great grandparents. Calab's is the only slave grave in that
cemetery. I look for Calab’s marker
every time I go to that cemetery. I asked
Grandpa how Calab died. Grandpa said he
probably got sick. How come they aren't sure how old Calab was? That stone bothered
me. I stared at it for a long time, wondering about Calab, and his relationship with R.C. Robertson. What was it like at the cemetery when they buried Calab? Where was Calab's mother? And then, on that day in June of 1977 my
grandfather said the only thing he ever said to me that was terrible and
wrong. Grandpa justified slavery. He said it wasn’t so bad. Slaves were expensive. They cost as much as a car. You take care of your car; they took care of
their slaves. And I was quiet, for I was
a bookish, nerdy, glasses-wearing, high IQ, Grandpa-loving girl. And I thought about it, and Grandpa’s logic
was terrible. What Grandpa said was
wrong.
How can you be such a wonderful person and make such a
terrible statement? Is it because your
grandfather was in the Confederate Army?
Would it be okay if you had been the slave, as expensive as a
car? Jimmy Carter says you have to take
people, like his father, and relate them to their times.
That’s the only racist remark I ever heard out of my
grandfather’s mouth EXCEPT my grandparents called Brazil nuts by an
impermissible name. I can’t tell you
that name because if a white person says it, lighting strikes us dead, google
it. We told Grandma and Grandpa they had
to say Brazil Nuts. We corrected them
every time they said the wrong words and they got it pretty quickly.
I think there are terribly racist families, but I think,
when I was growing up, I was more touched by systemic racism than overt
racism. We were so segregated when I was
growing up in Lauderdale-By-the-Sea. My
grandparents owned a motel. They had several employees who were black. Black
people were not allowed in Lauderdale By the Sea after dark. If an employee worked late my grandfather or
my father, drove them home. Normally they would have taken the bus. It is
striking that looking out for the black employees was a job for the men. If an
employee was staying the night, which was not unheard of, my father or
grandfather called Town Hall to report a negro was sleeping over and explained
why. We were doing this in the 1970s.
When I was in fourth grade, 1974, my elementary school was
desegregated. I was not close friends with any black children. The chance of me
marrying a black man was zero. I was a nerdy, bookish, not rebellious young woman.
I was 34 when I had my daughter. My daughter heard not one
word of racism in my house. She didn't know racism existed until they told her
about Martin Luther King Jr. in Kindergarten.
When I picked her up from school that day my daughter was horrified. We
talked about it for a long time. I think we talked about it for days. She kept saying, "You knew this, and you
didn't tell me? How could you know this and not tell me?" "YOU'RE FIVE YEARS OLD AND IT NEVER CAME UP. I wasn't trying to withhold information from
you." When my daughter was in preschool, I picked her up one day and she
told me she met the boy she was going to marry. I said, "Tomorrow, show
him to me." She did. I told her, "I think you picked the best
one."
White people, get over yourselves, kick Aunt Jemima to the curb.
She can’t possibly mean that much to you.
