Black Memorabilia Part Two

Black Memorabilia is a history book lesson that shows step by step illustrations on how a nation taught itself and its children to degrade, disregard and abuse another human being based solely on the color of his skin.  With a feeling of superiority established and inferiority instilled heinous acts will follow.

I figure there are a lot of strong emotions associated with black memorabilia which is understandable. I have strong feelings towards it, not feelings of offense but strong, hurt feelings.

Despite how painful the below examples are I do see them as important to preserve.. (just not at my house).

One of the reasons I think these two media are important to preserve is because they show how little was thought of black people. It shows that racism was a part of every day life right down to nursery rhymes. It shows that children were taught early on to disregard other humans as valuable and worthy. There are huge lessons to be learned by memorabilia like this. If you view a human or animal as if they are nothing it becomes possible for you to commit unimaginable acts to these bags of nothing. It is not just American slavery that shows this but genocide around the globe. If you allow yourself to hate or you raise your children to hate you personally have a hand in unraveling the fabric of your nation. Black memorabilia are pieces of an unraveled nation whose citizens gave themselves over to depravity on a grand scale.

My point is, I understand that keeping the most hurtful memorabilia can be painful to some, but I think its important to preserve to show exactly how far people allowed themselves to go and how the treatment of another race so poorly was  taught to the smallest child.

Black memorabilia touches me personally. When I was in elementary school my sister and I were the only black kids there. One day the librarian came to me and wanted me to take a book back to my class and read it to them. I can still feel the sting of reading Little Black Sambo to a class full of giggling children some 30 yrs or more ago. That kind of stuff hurts.

 The Sambo book is only one example of dealing with racially charged images and products. Heck, I grew up on Tom and Jerry as well as Bugs Bunny so I know first hand what it feels like to be around this stuff. All of this is to say, when it comes to pain associated with  black memorabilia, I get it. But don’t mistake my pain for offense because I know and understand why its important for this memorabilia to be preserved. It should be preserved as a warning. Don’t allow yourselves to fall back into nation wide depravity.

The plague of superiority and refusal to see others as equal will continue unless you learn from the mistakes and crimes of others.