6. Minstrel imagery protested from the start but complaints picked up speed during World War II. In 1943, New York school kids wrote to complain about L'il Eightball. They got this responsepic.twitter.com/IjKycUyIe6
1. Writer, The Nation https://www.thenation.com/authors/jeet-heer/ … 2. email: jeetheer1967 at gmail dot com 3. Twitter essayist 4. Drawn by Joe Ollmann
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6. Minstrel imagery protested from the start but complaints picked up speed during World War II. In 1943, New York school kids wrote to complain about L'il Eightball. They got this responsepic.twitter.com/IjKycUyIe6
7. I like this: "Should we leave out the Irish cop, the funny Italian organ-grinder or the fat German delicatessen an, etc. etc.?" Here's how the kids responded:pic.twitter.com/h0emFq0ztO
8. Will Eisner's Ebony White (created as comic sidekick of the noir hero The Spirit) perfectly illustrates how pattern of contestation & generational shift.pic.twitter.com/FElgpmNaul
9. Will Eisner maintained, with reason, that Ebony White was created with affection. But was immediately controversial and Eisner's teenage assistant (Jules Feiffer!) hated Ebony & lobbied to get rid of him
10. Amos 'n' Andy, which to our eyes looks like horrible minstrelry illustrates how generational shifts in attitude are common.pic.twitter.com/ii8FojF5I5
11. As historian Melvin Patrick Ely demonstrated in excellent book, when Amos & Andy created in 1928, it polarized black community. Some (particularly educated) hated but radio show also had a large black audience that loved.
12. To speculate: black Amos 'n' Andy fans, generally belonging to the Great Migration from South to North, were so hungry for representation they took what they could want. Also, radio medium masked aspect of blackface (many thought A&A were black).
13. But what was acceptable in 1928 was intolerable in 1951, when NAACP led major campaign against show -- due in part to rising political organization but also generational shift.
14. Apu is going through the same trajectory as Amos 'n' Andy, with an older generation that tolerated giving way to a younger one that recognizes the offensive features.
Fair warning I'm white. But Apu is generally decent, intelligent and hard working in a setting that includes Cletus the slack jawed yokel.
When school kids use "Apu" as a racist taunt directed at Indian American kids, I'm sure they mean "decent, intelligent and hard-working"
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