The not-so-subtle message of racism

All men are created equal, but some are more equal than others...

When I was a kid The Andy Griffith Show was one of my favorites, but it never occurred to me to wonder why Mayberry – a fictional town in North Carolina – didn’t seem to have any black residents.

I also liked The Lone Ranger and the while the show did manage to work in a character that wasn’t white, Tonto was definitely somewhat lower on the vigilante organizational chart — a sidekick with some weird speech patterns.

(According to the internet – and I’m not making this up – actor Jay Silverheels was a full-blooded Mohawk playing a character that was either a Comanche or Potawatomi Indian, who called his boss “kemosabe” which is Navajo for “soggy shrub” which was probably fair because “Tonto” is a Spanish word for “stupid.” Lots to unpack there.)

But I digress.

Same with the Green Hornet; I liked the show and loved Kato (played by the talented and charismatic Bruce Lee), but Kato was definitely subservient to the white stiff that played the Green Hornet.

I grew up in a pretty much all-white town in California and while I don’t remember anybody getting up and giving some KKK appropriate speech about the inferiority of People of Color, the subtle message of racism was constantly being beamed into my largely unformed brain:

“All men are created equal, but white men are just a little more equal than everybody else.”

(Looking back, the message of racism wasn’t all that subtle, I just wasn’t paying attention.)

Anyway…

I loved Marvel and DC comic books, but all the superheroes were white. Black characters would occasionally wander through some white people’s’ storyline, but according to Wikipedia, no black hero had his own mainstream comic title until 1972.

That was the same year “Kung Fu” – another TV show I liked – came out, but the people in Hollywood decided America wasn’t ready to see a Chinese hero played by a Chinese actor, so Bruce Lee didn’t get the part and David Carradine did.  

Black characters could appear in movies as waiters or doormen or railroad conductors, but heroes were usually white.  

If I were black I probably would have noticed all the casual insults offered by everyday life in America, but since I wasn’t I didn’t think much about Aunt Jemima pancakes or Uncle Ben’s rice or whatever that dude’s name was on the Cream of Wheat package.

This constant portrayal of minorities as subservient to and somewhat less than white people has been going on way too long and I think it’s good that we’re doing some national soul-searching on the subject. But it’s only good as long as we don’t settle for getting rid of Mrs. Buttersworth and then go right on shooting unarmed black men.

One last thought: I now realize Mayberry was far too white for reality, but still think Barney Fife was hilarious.

Stay safe, everybody.

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