Buying the Monsanto House of the Future art is sorta like buying a vintage mink coat. Very un-PC, yet not exactly benefiting the bad guys.
That catalog is a bit annoying to use, but wow! There are a lot of amazing things in that auction - a Skyway gondola would be a perfect addition to any home.
The gondolas and the covered tram cars would make a great little gazebo-like structure in a small yard.
So far the Aunt Jemima promotional cigarette lighter is most un-PC thing I’ve spotted. I don’t think the act of buying it would benefit the bad guys, though how you chose to display/use it once purchased could go either way.
Careful with that. I knew a man who collected Coke memorabilia and someone gave him a brass Sambo bottle opener. This led to a form of antiquing psychosis which resulted in a large and really offensive pickaninny collection.
Unfortunately, the USA’s culture being what it was (and still is) means you can collect nearly anything and eventually something racist will find its way into your collection even if you’re trying to avoid it. America put blackfacey shit on everything.
I have a family member (related by marriage) who has a ton of those, er, racist figurines of black people (I don’t know what the name for them is). They’re scattered all over her house. My sister and I called her out on how racist they are and she defended herself by saying that they were her grandmother’s and she’s not racist. She lives in a very white part of the country whereas we are from the south. She didn’t get why they were racist. She said she’s not racist. Ok, maybe she’s not, but she’s ignorantly celebrating her grandmother’s own racism and to us with a little more awareness, it’s still effing racist.
I was being glib when I referred to a ‘antiquing psychosis’, but there is a real phenomenon with collectors where they get a tunnel vision about what they collect.
Basically if you see this thing that is unusual you feel you have to own it, and you tell yourself you’re doing your part to preserve history. You can even say ‘I don’t want people to forget how racist we all were’. It’s all a rationalization or course, but a wise man once said rationalizations are more important than sex. After all, when was the last time you went a year without a rationalization?
/full disclosure: When I was young and in a higher income bracket I collected smuggled Tibetan artifacts for a while. But I was ‘reserving cultural history’.
It’s true. Basically the only thing safe to collect are foot stools and Ottomans.
Oh and Negro League baseball cards and jerseys. I had some of those.
Here in New Zealand it is common for people to defend golliwogs as not racist, and they are regularly found in gift shops. I’ve had a few conversations with people who strongly support them as memories from their childhood. There’s a strong sense of "I’m not offended by it therefore no-one else should be and if you are it’s ‘PC gone mad’ ".
[pst: You can save all JPGs at once via this URL]
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