http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/21/1338197/-White-SC-High-School-Football-Team-Celebrates-Win-by-Making-Monkey-Sounds-and-Smashing-Watermelons?detail=email
Meet the football team at Academic Magnet High School, a public school near Charleston, South Carolina.
As you can see here, they're almost entirely white, with the exception of a single teammate. Recently, they've played a number of games against teams that look like this:
On the left, you see the Raptors of Academic Magnet. On the right, North Charleston High School, a team that's made up almost entirely of black players.
During a recent winning streak, Academic Magnet has developed what you might call an odd tradition. They smash watermelons on the ground, then eat them. This alone might be offensive after defeating a mostly black team, but the fine folks at Academic Magnet have added something extra to their little celebratory routine - making "monkey noises."
A parent of an opposing team took issue with this practice and complained to the local school board. After investigating, the school took action against the coach, firing him, despite what many people claim is a prolonged run of success.
As you might suspect, some people have really taken issue with the "sensitive" and "overly PC" response to this incident. Just to provide some picture of what we're dealing with:
On local radio this morning, broadcaster Emerson Phillips, who has been honored by the SC Broadcasters' Association with awards, went on a prolonged rant in which he bemoaned the fact that "some people" - namely, black people and Jewish people - "see racism or anti-Antisemitism in everything." According to him, those people "let racism effect everything they do."
These are typical refrains from racists and those who look to cover for racists in all parts of the country, but especially in the Deep South. This event has been met with incredulity on the part of many white people, who seemingly cannot understand how something as innocuous as a watermelon and "monkey noises" could ever be viewed as racist. These people, of course, are either extremely disingenuous or have been living in a cave.
It's in this light that a "Dear White People" lesson is needed.https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=2976999365707113679#editor/target=post;postID=5795587855532411794;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=1;src=postname
As white people, we do not get to tell black people what they can and cannot be offended by. Offense is the province of the offended, especially when such offense is objectively reasonable.
More than that, we inherit - and in fact, occupy - the actual world, complete with its full history. We do not occupy a world where watermelons are neutral fruits in the context of a white person speaking to a black person. Likewise, we don't occupy a space in which one group making monkey noises toward the other constitutes a signal of mutual appreciation for the local zoo.
Rather, we occupy a world in which white people have used symbols - be they the confederate flag, watermelons, fried chicken, nooses, or anything else - to intimidate, de-humanize, and otherwise demean black people. And black people cannot be blamed for learning and understanding that history. When black people understand that in the early 1900s, white people dressed in blackface in order to highlight the "simplicity" of the black man by showing that black man content with just having his fill of watermelon, then we have a duty to moderate our use of those symbols.
When black people understand that even today, the president of the United States is depicted as a simpleton after a juicy watermelon treat, we must understand that the context in which they view, and receive, messages about things like watermelon are through the context of that distant and not-so-distant history. For centuries, watermelons have been used to demonstrate that the black man is so stupid that he would be content with his lot in life - that of the oppressed, the enslaved, and the downtrodden - if a white man would only give him some watermelon. Understanding that, it becomes very easy to understand why a black person today would take great offense at a nearly all white football team celebrating a win over a nearly all black football team by smashing watermelon and ripping a few primate noises.
I don't buy that the Academic Magnet team engaged in its little ritual without nefarious intent. There are few contexts in which young, white boys would use monkey sounds and eat watermelon on the same field as young, black boys that do not suggest the intention of racial subjugation. But even if one gives these boys a benefit of the doubt they have not earned, it is still the responsibility of white folks to understand history and to avoid those symbols which will rightly be offensive to black people or any other ethnic group.
And when those people speak up about the offense, it is incumbent upon us not to tell them that they are wrong - another form of racism in which we elevate our judgment over theirs - but rather, to listen to what they have to say, to study the history behind it, and to understand how, given the hundreds-years context, black people would be angered at the suggestion of their simplicity.
Updated: To add this nugget from News 4 Charleston:
"Further, the students also drew a face on each watermelon and named them, according to McGinley. She said the investigation revealed the students also named the watermelons Junior and Bonds Wilson.
Bonds Wilson is the name of the formerly predominantly-black school in North Charleston where Academic Magnet now sits."
attribution: None Specified
The above image was uncovered in the investigation. It's a sketch that administrators believe the students used to draw faces on the watermelons. It doesn't take a history scholar to see that that picture is a really poor high school artist's rendering of some of the old sambo "art" that was produced in the early 1900s. The overdone smiles. The red eyes. The overdone nose. I know that racists will deny it, but I've seen enough of those types of illustrations to know what these students intended.
White trolls, and their politicians still maintain there is no racism or racial divide are they blind and stupid or are they just arrogantly belligerent?
