We Need To Have An End To Pancake Politics
Read Time:2 Minute, 31 Second
Raging against racism is big business, but it’s inconsistent. To some, cornrows or dreadlocks may not be seen on anyone not of African origin or it’s “Cultural appropriation” although it’s perfectly all right for Starbucks to require the customer to use made-up, pseudo-Italian to order an ordinary cup of drip coffee.
We’ve been seeing images of fictional people like Uncle Ben disappear from rice packages although the image shown could easily be that of a professor, or doctor, or bank president.
We’re dealing with psychological politics, and though facts do matter, it’s in an inconsistent way. It seems OK to mimic what white people sometimes see as “Black talk” and even I find it objectionable.
The insinuation that this is “typical” even though the African Americans I listen to are educated and not restricted to dialect, and when I hear mangled Yiddish used by non-Jews I’m sometimes uncomfortable even though neither of these things is always done maliciously. ( So no you can’t pronounce khutbah. You really can’t.)
Did a Wisconsin dairy co-operative really need to remove the young lady in buckskins because it’s offensive? Is it really offensive in the first place and if so, to whom? When the packaging was designed in 1921, the intention was to portray Wisconsin as a place of pure water and unpolluted land and air as it was when the Ho-Chunk and Potowatomi owned it.
Although Wisconsin is not going to give it all back to them, they want to be sure we don’t think of those people and how they’ve been robbed ever since – so off she goes into the land of sky blue oblivion. I’ll miss her. Can’t you see that we can put Native faces on the coinage but not on the butter? You can’t portray a black chef but you can lock up his children? You must be a racist.
Of course, it’s hypocritical and the worst kind: solipsistic hypocrisy – the kind in a bubble where the insiders tell us what’s acceptable and what’s not; about who it’s all about and who it isn’t.
You can insult, mock, and stereotype the elderly of certain races, but not others. You cannot portray certain groups in certain occupations. You can mockingly imitate the way some talk but not others and you can praise certain foods but you can’t show certain people serving or cooking it.
Yes, it’s complicated because minds are complicated and illogical and irrational and touchy. I understand the benefits of sensitivity and tolerance but it’s nothing but trouble unless we require such standards of all people and unless we accept the therapeutic effects of humor.
Did Richard Prior and Eddy Murphy allow us to see our flaws as well as those of our culture? I think so and I think it’s time we stopped attributing ugliness and meanness where it is not. Our real enemies are proliferating – our common enemies. Can’t we please just get along and have an end to pancake politics?
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0
Again, I’m talking about how we seem to take refuge in the extremes in order to hide from responsibility. We have and always have had problems with prejudice and with institutions founded on tribalism, but my concern is about how innocent people are abused. I don’t think anyone has been harmed by butter packaging or maple syrup.
As long as a family of religions has been able to survive for nearly 200 years on vicious persecution of unbelievers and the murder of millions, I continue to laugh at pictures of dark skinned gentlemen being treated as the real problem we need to address first.
the lust for gold and sugar and cotton and to spread gospels has killed millions and millions and millions of people around the world. Pancakes are not the problem but only an ego game played by bourgeois Americans for whom saving the world of the past in cartoon form is a social event.
What you will find in a truly great library is something to offend everyone.
Books that have been banned (the interesting ones) all rest side by side. Perhaps we should have a museum where Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben and Land O’ Lakes products can be viewed by a public yearning for the good old days A strict dress code will be enforced at the museum, a Washington Redskins T-shirt will be compulsory and Fcuk You Hoodies optional.
My opinion and my experience is that less of the protest against offensive this or that comes from the people allegedly offended than one might think.
It has gone much further than it should have although blaming the general group of people who are allegedly offended is usually not productive. The problem, of course, has spread primarily because of the malicious use of racial degradation of the different races that make up America. A black principal once told me that it was curious that whites could say hero or Nero but could not say negro. While John Q. Public has always had a problem with slurring the names of most immigrants. Most, if not all, immigrants have been called degrading names usually in a degrading manner. Most have been offended by others referring to them to some names other than proper usage. Some have become sensitive about these terms because they are used with the intent to degrade them, especially those of the Negroid race or the Hispanics and Chinese by certain people of the white race. The whites in the South were probably the worst at doing this. These terns were meant to putting the minorities in their place. One may not appreciate the characterization of minorities like those of that race unless they experience it themselves. Often the offensive terms are used by less intelligent people and become offensive to racial prejudice.
Pancake politics! I love that and will use it at every opportunity, as it certainly describes the state of the nation.
I find all of this nonsense quite exhausting. One never knows what’s next given this bizarre ‘you must be a racist’ climate.