Via Sadly, No! I learn that the mayor of Los Alamitos—a city whose proximity to Los Angeles disqualifies its citizens from claiming they live behind the Orange Curtain—recently sent the city council an email entitled “No Easter egg hunt this year.” It contained this picture:
When questioned as to the propriety of sending poorly-executed racist photo-shops to government employees, the mayor claimed to be “unaware of the stereotype that black people like watermelon.” Putting the issue of what exactly is “funny” about the picture in the absence of said stereotype aside, there are some conservatives who claim that the real problem here is hypersensitive blacks and their “rat-fink” instincts:
The fink who ratted him out was a black woman who sacrificed friendship to the motto, “Never Fail to Be Offended.”
His commenters agree:
How dare [defenders of the rat-fink] be offended at everything? So far the list is getting pretty long: fried chicken, monkeys, watermelons, poverty, any number of words in several languages referring to the color Black, any mention of Africa as anything less than the greatest cultural center in the history of mankind, any suggestion that there is some kind of bell shaped curve in the intellectual and physical attributes that all humans share and that Blacks are not clustered at the far right percentile [ . . . ] There is one thing that is certainly apparent and that is that Blacks seem to have a serious genetic deficiency in the lack of a sense of humor.
Being offended because they cannot violate decorum with impunity is bad enough. This is worse:
What is wrong with Blacks liking watermelons? Should a Scot go crazy if somebody mentions plaid? Should a Norwegian go nuts if somebody has an axe or a spear or a horned helmet and God forbid a mention of lefsa or lutefisk? Should an Irishman go berserk and start screaming discrimination if somebody has a potato?
Scotland is a country. Norway is a country. All the other countries mentioned in this comment are countries. Black is not country. Even if it were there would be nothing wrong with liking watermelon per se. The same cannot be said of the claim that blacks have a special affinity for watermelons. Why?
From “Dr Spencer’s Melons,” The Youth Companion (7 April 1881): 127
It is next to impossible to teach many of the colored people of the South that it is as wrong to steal a watermelon as a calf. The color man will admit that the calf larceny deserves the severest penalty of the law, and if he were on a jury, he would enforce it too; but let a case of stolen melons come before a court, and he’ll stand up stoutly for acquitted, and he is the delinquent, plead his innocence with an injured air of being unjustly persecuted.
[Dr. Spencer] was asked if he was not afraid to have his melons right on the public road, when just to cross a low fence would being a robber into the very midst of his fruit.
“And what would Fury be doing when the rascals were climbing my fence?” he laughed. “You’ve never seen my bull-dog, Fury, have you? Well, he keeps guard over there. No fear of my melons being touched.”
There was no fear until, in the height of the season, Fury was taken ill, and in a very few hours gave up his breath. “Those lazy, thieving boys will be down on my patch to-night,” he said to his wife.
[ . . . ]
Meanwhile, the news of Fury’s death had spread through the colony of O—. “I tank the Lord!” said old Hannah Dickson, when the news of Fury’s death reached her cabin. “I prayed agin dat dog eber sence he tuck a nip outer my Joe. He wa’nt no dog, but a plumb debbil, and now he’s gone to jedgment.”
Knowing the blacks will be unable to resist his unguarded melons, Dr. Spencer poisons them. The blacks steal the watermelons and fall ill. “Lord hab massy on us!” they cry. “Jist let us git out ob dis prickly brier.”
From the New York Times (6 July 1895): 9
From the Chicago Defender (12 September 1925): A1
From the Chicago Defender (20 July 1935): 5
From “Hate Mail: The Black Athlete’s Heavy Burden.” Los Angeles Times (18 February 1975): E1
From the New Yorks Times (27 August 1989): 23
History’s only ancient if you’re an idiot.
41 comments
February 27, 2009 at 5:10 pm
dana
Or, all that aside: of all the plants one could put in the yard, they just happened to pick a watermelon? And they had no idea at all? And they sell bridges, too, I expect.
February 27, 2009 at 5:37 pm
rosmar
Excellent final sentence.
February 27, 2009 at 5:48 pm
JPool
This is just like that misunderstood Post cartoon, isn’t it? Look, the image broadly mocks a number of unrelated topical elements, to wit the local foods movement and gardening revival, Washington’s efforts to revive the economy, and the existence of the Whitehouse and of various seasonal rituals associated with it. Again, SEK reveals himself as nothing more than a publicity opportunist.
February 27, 2009 at 5:54 pm
urbino
Agreed on all counts. But what the deuce is a “racial shooting”?
February 27, 2009 at 6:07 pm
kid bitzer
“I want to defend him and the conservatives….”
is this left over from an earlier draft of this post?
’cause that doesn’t seem like the rhetorical tack you wound up taking.
February 27, 2009 at 7:00 pm
SEK
Thanks, bitzer. I thought I’d eliminated all elements of the previous draft. (In which I valiantly defended their idiocy on idiotic grounds. But I’ve learned my lesson when it comes to race—always with an ostentatiously festooned ten-foot pole.)
February 27, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Walt
This quote is pretty fucking funny:
February 27, 2009 at 7:15 pm
kid bitzer
dr. johnson somewhere says that imperfect revision leaves characteristic marks. i can’t seem to find the passage.
and don’t go making fun of the poles, either. solidarity forever, y’know.
February 27, 2009 at 7:33 pm
SEK
Agreed on all counts. But what the deuce is a “racial shooting”?
It won’t load now, but it had something to do with Spike Lee—happened right before or right after one of his films was released.
JPool, an actual comment from that site:
I think the former friend/rat missed the true meaning of the joke. The purpose was to show how Obama would bring illegal mexicans to washington to harvest this bounty of delicious American fruit, because God knows no American would stoop to such a level as to perform such a menial task. Also, part of the stimulus package specifically calls out for a subsistance garden on the grounds of the white house as a shining example of our glorious leader not acting as an elitist and sharing the pain of the economic crisis in which we are now faced with due to the last 8 years of fiscal irresponsibility.
Sometimes they make parody really, really hard work.
February 27, 2009 at 7:36 pm
SEK
and don’t go making fun of the poles, either. solidarity forever, y’know.
How’d you know I’m from that German/Polish/Russian plot? Is it my name, racist? (Actually, my name’s pathetic: a “Kaufman” is a sea-faring merchant, and a “Scott” is of the highlands. I’m the guy on the boat half-capsized on a hill.)
February 27, 2009 at 7:37 pm
kid bitzer
“the boat half-capsized on a hill.”
i smell ararat!
February 27, 2009 at 8:17 pm
TF Smith
I covered the RNC one year; for the entire week, I felt like a stranger in a very strange land…
Los Alamitos is in Orange County.
February 27, 2009 at 8:31 pm
urbino
SEK as Noah. I like it.
February 27, 2009 at 8:33 pm
urbino
Obama would bring illegal mexicans to washington to harvest this bounty of delicious American fruit, because God knows no American would stoop to such a level as to perform such a menial task.
Wasn’t it McCain who said Americans wouldn’t do such jobs? I guess he’s not exactly beloved by the nutters, either, though.
February 27, 2009 at 8:36 pm
JPool
Sometimes they make parody really, really hard work.
Dammit! I don’t want to work any harder.
This happened when I tried to satirize the post cartoon itself (“Look we’re just riffing here. If you want to read into a bunch of stuff thrown together that’s your business.”), only to encounter the sort of strained excuses I tried to stuff into the Post‘s mouth popping up all around the interwebs.
February 27, 2009 at 8:59 pm
SEK
i smell ararat!
GET OUT OF MY HEAD BITZER. I deliberately didn’t go for the Ararat reference because of this. (Which says something about the difference between how much thought bloggers put into posts and how many people deem it comment-worthy.) (That sounded bitter. Didn’t mean it to. Just saying like Adam said here that sometimes what bloggers think is crystalline comes across as so much mud in flash flood and then it’s all over but the shouting.) (You may have heard elsewhere about insomnia and silliness. This is meant to be proof.)
February 27, 2009 at 9:01 pm
SEK
Los Alamitos is in Orange County.
It is in OC, I won’t argue that. But it’s way too close to Long Beach to be of OC.
February 27, 2009 at 9:03 pm
Tybalt
Blacks seem to have a serious genetic deficiency in the lack of a sense of humor.
Them and the Jews. Why are they all so humor-impaired!?
February 27, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Nora Bombay
I’m going to go with the simple answer: Either the ex-mayor thinks that the entire American public are utter morons.
or the ex-mayor is in fact himself, an utter idiot.
Either way. No excuse on this one…..
February 28, 2009 at 7:01 am
Jason B.
Good Criminy these conservatives are stupid.
It’s spelled “lefse“–not “lefsa.”
February 28, 2009 at 7:09 am
kid bitzer
a) i didn’t know you had polish roots. i was just riffing off your festooned ten-foot poles above.
b) i didn’t know you’d written about egoyan’s ararat. but boats on hills, c’mon.
sorry to invade your cephalic space, but i think you’ll see the invasions were more superficial than it appeared, guesses based on hints you dropped (how can we know the noah from the known?) in general, if you’re trying to figure out whether i’ve just expressed a deep insight, or i was only picking the low-hanging fruit, then remember that i’m very short.
February 28, 2009 at 8:50 am
lewishayden
Note-perfect snapshot (block that metaphor!) of the current state of a certain “conversation” on racism, in which the right putatively embraces identity politics in order to thrash straw men on the left. The terrifying part is that in a two-party system this rhetoric can take you pretty far–all the way to the vice-presidential nomination, at last report.
February 28, 2009 at 9:54 am
Bitchphd
They’re not idiots. They’re liars. Call a spade a spade.
February 28, 2009 at 10:40 am
RobinMarie
Thanks much for this; my boyfriend and I were just wondering a few weeks ago where that ridiculous stereotype came from. Now we know!
In response to Bitchphd’s point about them being liars rather than idiots; I completely agree with you in concern to the people involved in this example. But unfortunately people who adhere to their basic argument are often idiots/ignorant rather than liars, which personally I feel is more dangerous.
My father, for example, would be completely on board with the “everyone is too sensitive, and doesn’t get over the past and move on” conservative argument. But I know he does not, in fact, realize how inequalities of the past continue to effect people in important, visceral, and relevant ways today; I know in fact that no one he meets, or no news outlet or book he reads, explains this to him. So while he *ought* to be suspicious and do a better job at educating himself — believe me this drives me crazy — he is totally sincere when he spews this stuff. He doesn’t realize how ignorant he sounds to people who do know better. And if he did — if I were ever brazen or cold hearted enough to explain it to him — he would be embarrassed for himself.
February 28, 2009 at 10:41 am
RobinMarie
Or more accurately, if he ever just listened to me long enough to understand what I was saying instead of being defensive and telling me I haven’t been around enough to understand these things, then maybe he would feel a bit embarrassed for himself. I have tried, and failed, to explain it to him.
February 28, 2009 at 1:20 pm
Bitchphd
Yes, but would your father claim that the watermelon cartoon had nothing to do with Obama being black?
February 28, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Prof B
Rush has liberated them. They all feel they can do this for the entire Obama administration and will always be able to grouse, “Whatever happened to senses of humor?” We are witnessing the acme of faux-“anti-PC” outrage, thinly veiled racist tropes, and the triumph of Elmer Gantry Republicanism.
February 28, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Charlieford
It’s not the attempt at humor that should be objected to, but the fact that it’s a failure. It traffics entirely on racial stereotype for its effect.
February 28, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Top Posts « WordPress.com
[…] A brief cultural history of blacks and watermelons Via Sadly, No! I learn that the mayor of Los Alamitos—a city whose proximity to Los Angeles disqualifies its […] […]
February 28, 2009 at 6:07 pm
xolotl
Since we’re making fun of the humor-impaired, we may as well remember the great joke from the 1970s…
Q: How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: That’s not funny!
As for modern-day conservatives, pace Bitchphd, the great majority are indeed foolish yet they are being manipulated by a minority who are consummate liars. The self-righteous right believe in their politics even though their leaders’ policies are opposed both to their self-interest and their beliefs. Only fools could believe the nonsense that has already plunged the world into two great economic depressions.
Little wonder the United Snakes is full of highway signs warning that slow traffic keeps right.
February 28, 2009 at 7:45 pm
Ahistoricality
“foolish” “consumate liars” “self-righteous” “nonsense” “slow”… Is this the same xolotl who accused k.b. of being irredeemably “mean-spirited” and huffed off in high dudgeon?
March 1, 2009 at 9:18 am
RobinMarie
“Yes, but would your father claim that the watermelon cartoon had nothing to do with Obama being black?”
I certainly hope not. But he would claim it has nothing to do with racism, you see.
March 1, 2009 at 9:36 am
Bitchphd
Sure, but whether a thing that alludes to race is racist is at least arguble; the question hinges on how one definesnthe word. That something has no racial component whatsoever is the kind of flat-out lie that demonstrates absolute bad faith.
March 1, 2009 at 11:43 am
TF Smith
Long Beach is also not the City of the Angels; granted, it is within the county, but whatever other problems Los Angeles has, I think you’d have to go back at least to Sam Yorty to find a mayor as tone-deaf to racial stereotypes as the right honorable Mayor Grose (sounds like something out of Dickens, doesn’t it?)
Progress, however slim, remains progress…
IIRC my Lewis, Gantry knew he was a con man…I’m not sure if the current crop of GOP “leaders” are that, or if they really ARE true believers…Palin, I think, actually believes what she says. I dunno about Romney and Huckabee.
March 2, 2009 at 9:31 am
A Brief Cultural History of Blacks and Watermelons. « PostBourgie
[…] A Brief Cultural History of Blacks and Watermelons. By Guest Contributor Categories: Obama and Racism Tags: Dean Grose, Los Alamitos by Scott Eric Kaufman, and cross-posted from Edge of the American West. […]
March 3, 2009 at 12:21 am
Anna
When a friend showed me that watermelon picture a few days ago, my first reaction was: growing crops on the white house lawn in a depression? That’s pretty inventive! That would be a great symbol of solidarity if Obama did that!
My second was: I don’t think watermelons grow at DC’s latitude. My friend rolled her eyes, and then explained that the picture was about racism. But – unless I am unbearably stupid – it seems that people can interpret the picture in different ways.
March 4, 2009 at 12:10 am
herbert browne
Hey… some of us Out West have been agitating for a demonstration in Washington that PROVES we’re at war: Victory gardens, gasoline rationing, coupon books, etc… and a vegie garden of measurable acreage on the White House lawn might fit right into that scheme.
Watermelons are indigenous African plants, where they’ve been grown for millennia… but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t breeding programs going on there, too. The Senegalese have bred an excellent ‘keeper’ that stays resilient to the point of obduracy… & is considered a nonpareil goat fodder: a cross of “Dittohead” & the “Nascar Yellow Stripe”, IIRC… ^..^
March 7, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Ezra
Just to add another bit of “ancient” history: I recall reading in Dream City that, when Congress finally let the District of Columbia have a mayor (albeit appointed) in the 1960s, the Dixiecrat chair of the House Committee on D.C. sent him a truckload of watermelons.
March 8, 2009 at 9:47 am
JPool
I meant to write this earlier, but the conversation was going a different way. SEK’s scene’s from a social history are indeed illuminating and evocative, but the major thing missing from them is the association of watermelons with the long history of minstrelsy and other forms of racial caricature. I’m not an Americanist, so I don’t have a citation here, but folks shouldn’t have to strain their memories too hard for the hateful and demeaning images that wandered unselfconsciously through the (recycled) cartoons of their youth.
There’s nothing wrong with any of these objects or images in and of them selves. Watermelons are tasty fruit enjoyed by most. Little Black Sambo is a perfectly sweet children’s story when separted from its associations with carricature (it was apparently orginally based on an Indian folk tale — hence the tigers). Cartoonish images of black people could be equivalent to cartoonish images of white people if they weren’t based in long virulent histories of racial denigration. Even blackface, in a different racial context, means precisely nothing (see Cole, Catherine M., “Reading Balckface in West Africa: Wonders Taken for Signs,” Critical Inquiry, 23 (1996), pp. 183-215). Hopefully someday these associations will be nothing more than historical curiousities, but this is not that day. Today, an image of watermellons grown on the Whitehouse lawn still means, “That dumb n—–.”
March 13, 2009 at 2:46 pm
dance
In my mania for indexing, am returning late to link an image archive addressing the watermelon issue at the Authentic History Center, which I am not familiar with, but looks like a legit and well-done hobbyist site. I just came across the link here.
Possibly exactly what JPool wants, coincidentally.
March 13, 2009 at 6:30 pm
SEK
Thanks for that, dance. I’m planning a unit based on this little incident and those links, well, I wish they’d been the fruits of my own dogged research.