Honestly, thinking about it, to this day the perpetuation of this stereotype still seems about as bizarre as when I first learned of it:
The vast majority of light-skinned people I’ve known have enjoyed watermelon (and fried chicken for that matter). If this is equally the norm for light-skinned people I don’t know, why would they construe this enjoyment as an archetypal characteristic of black people?
It’s not like eating a particular food is even inherently derogatory. It’s one of those neutral things that only become problematic if you harp on them. Like making fun of someone’s perfectly ordinary shirt or something.
Unpainted blocks, you say. Cubes, were they? You’re sure about that, and will so testify in court? Any other Platonic solids?
All right, I think we’ve seen enough. This house has been deliberately infected with Rationalism, Idealism, and God knows what other troublous philosophies.
If we don’t act now, those kids are going to start self-medicating on the Theory of Forms.
It’s because it’s linked to historical stereotypical depictions that are offensive in other ways. Nobody’s offended when watermelon appears in a normal context — people don’t picket watermelon stands in black neighborhoods — but when it’s used or mentioned in a way that directly hearkens back to the stereotype, that’s problematic.
But I can tell you that in the Netherlands at least any reference to the colonialist past is utterly absent in education and public discourse. Indonesia is only a story of white people who suffered dreadfully under the Japanese occupation during WW2. Suriname and the Antilles? Who knows why they claim some connection. They should about shut up about it too because whatever might have happened happened a long time ago. And it wasn’t so bad anyway.
It is a job that people do. Some people take pride in whatever it is they do, even if their job is as a cook or maid, or whatever. It is also not wrong to teach our children that these people are important, and deserve our respect. People who clean things and do laundry are a big part of us being able to have a safe and sanitary world.
Keep your norms out of my culture, US history and culture is not universal and should be left on your side of that ocean that seperates us. Ok, thanks.
This is not about US cultural norms. It’s a racist character perpetuated by in-denial racist people (“I’m not racist but Zwarte Piet is a tradition for white people that should continue just because we like it regardless of - or perhaps because of - how demeaning it is to other people who don’t matter”). If that’s your cultural norms then bring on climate change, so we can sink them to the bottom of the ocean where they belong.
Wow, I missed this article in June and I don’t understand that children should not be allowed to play with native American warriors or tramps. Maybe it’s because I’m a German who played with Playmobil in the 70s and 80s. But playsets with cowboys, cavalry and Indians were popular even before Playmobil.
I dunno that everyone is in agreement about Native Americans or Tramps, although there is obviously cause for concern about perpetuating unhelpful stereotypes in both cases. In my experience Germany is full of obviously mentally-ill alcoholics (I recall one incident where I was sat on a Strassenbahn and a tramp threw a bottle out of the open door, smashing it near an old woman and justifying this by shouting “Der Alte Man und Das Meer! Hemingway!” which I guess was some kind of allusion to alcohol misuse) and the German government’s response to this issue seems poor, so perhaps the policeman moving on a tramp rather than him been approached by social services, is some kind of social commentary. As for Native Americans, I look forward to the day when I meet a German whose frame of reference extends beyond ‘Winnetou: the Red Gentleman’. I think it’s fine for kids to engage in Cowboys and Indians play, but I think that adult toy designers (that is, adults who design toys, not designers of adult toys), have a responsibility to recognise that depictions of Native Americans are comprised of pastiche, a mish-mash of distinct, separate cultures, and generally present Natives as culturally inferior to white, Christian Europeans.
I agree, Indians are not represented faithfully in German culture (all Indians look like this) and Karl May is probably one of the trope codifiers - but I don’t think you’re on the right track when you see this as ‘generally presenting Natives as culturally inferior to white’. The native American culture is glorified and romanticised in Germany, but imo not regarded as inferior.
Well, I’d disagree, mainly because the ‘Native American culture’ that is depicted is not actually any real Native American culture. How can you glorify something that you aren’t actually depicting at all?
My comments about the depiction of inferiority were broadly aimed at all depictions of Native Americans in popular culture, not just German. However elements like Winnetou’s deathbed conversion to Christianity or referring to him as the ‘Red Gentlemen’, which is like a car-crash of offensive tropes don’t fill me with confidence about the German portrayal, either. Simply turning a foreign race into a conduit for the projection of White, European desires is not good enough. It’s possible to be racist or prejudiced without intending malice.
