On the Secret Pleasure of Racist Stuff

Abercrombie & Fitch, golliwogs, and the thin line between love and hate

2002 - Okay, okay, I admit it: I collect racist stuff.   Pickaninnies, Chief Illini, Fu Manchu pulps, WWII propaganda posters, sundry "mammies" on food packages from the Old South are my guilty pleasures. Or my "guilty compulsion," more precisely, and a powerful one at that.

The bug bit me when I was antique shopping one day in Ann Arbor. As a poor grad student, I was hesitant to lay down a whole fifty bucks for a 1947 child’s toy, however fascinating.  In the clear, palm-sized cube, two BBs rattled around across the white cardboard bottom. This was illustrated with an outline map of the islands of Japan and, hurtling down from the game-player’s airplane view, a fat, pointy, cartoonishly anthropomorphized A-bomb. The dexterous child won the game by steering the metal balls into two holes identified as Hiroshima and "Nacky-sacky".  Its companion game featured a Japanese caricature and a gun -- you can guess what the BBs represented.  By the time I returned to the shop a week later, after my next fellowship check had cleared, these early Cold War "Gameboys" were gone.

Since then, I have kept a collector’s eye out and am decisive about purchasing such "treasures" on the spot. I  usually don’t display these objets, but hoard them in closet corners and drawers, and have often felt a little guilty, a little dirty, when a cashier rings up my Mister Moto or Chop-Chop.  But I heard a rumor (unsubstantiated) that Harvard professor Skip Gates has a terrific pickaninny collection, and I discovered the works of various scholars in recovering racist toys and advertising imagery. Research centers like Philadelphia’s Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies have mounted exhibitions and published fascinating monographs on the theme as well. A Hollywood Entertainment Museum "Yellowface" exhibit [link below] this winter similarly re-examined the practice of white actors’ stereotyped portrayals of Asians in the Hollywood of yesteryear.

But as last month’s Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) T-shirt controversy shows, stereotyped Asian caricatures are not all just subjects of academic curiosity and historical study. They are alive, well, and in mass circulation in our popular culture. But why?

Loving the Golliwog

During a stay in London, I had an ongoing argument with two British friends – one White, one Black – about a line of fruit preserves by James Robertson & Sons whose logo featured a jet black grotesque with a massive afro, clown lips, and bug eyes. When I protested the use of a pickaninny as a corporate logo, my friends expressed surprise. "No, no. It’s a golliwog," they corrected me. "And it’s so cute!"

"It’s a pickaninny!" I yelled.

Oh, it might be construed as a pickaninny in America, they conceded, but Europe was apparently unburdened by such racist historical associations. Far from being offensive or racist, the "golly" was in fact an object of great affection. "The English love our Golly!" they insisted.

(I leave it for you to decide. Before reading on, you can view the "Golly" at a detailed, interesting site called the "Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia" in a new browser window.)

This anecdote is not to pick on my friends, Europeans in general, nor necessarily even makers and consumers of Golly or A&F products. Rather, it underscores the earnest emotional attachment we can have to racist caricatures despite our best intentions. It helps explain why they remain so compelling to so many people who don’t consider themselves racist, "don’t mean to offend anyone," and apparently (in A&F’s case) expect to be congratulated for their views by the very people they have disparaged.

The Thin (Yellow) Line

Yes, ethnic caricatures sometimes intend unapologetically to inspire hatred and instigate violence, as in the more or less officially sanctioned, U.S. WWII propaganda materials depicting hideous, wet-fanged, bestial Nips clutching weapons and naked white women in their claws. Most often, they intend to ridicule. But sometimes, well, they spring from a deeper psychological place, an impulse to domesticate things or people otherwise scary and alien, which can I suppose inspire a kind of fondness. We love our golliwogs!

One needs only to observe the defensive devotion that University of Illinois alumni lavish on their controversial mascot, Chief Illini, to understand how forcefully even thoughtful, well-off, and well-educated people can depend on these attachments. We love our Chief!

One also needs only to observe how defensively and even boastfully comedienne Sara Silverman and presidential candidate John McCain excused their use of Asian ethnic slurs to see how doggedly people will try keep old prejudices alive. We hate our "gooks"!

It is, as they say, a thin line between love and hate, and also between irony and insensitivity. That’s the line A&F haplessly crossed.

What Were They Thinking?

Certainly, A&F was insane or stupid to imagine that we -- Asian Americans -- would "love" their tired old Chinamen cartoons and profane representations of the Buddha. Yet, in the credit-where-credit-is-due department, the company responded to protests with swift, meaningful action. Within days it withdrew the  T-shirts, amended its web catalog, and issued a public apology. Appreciating A&F for acting on its error and encouraging similar, future corporate behavior would be both just and good for our community. It does not, however, answer the question we’re all asking ourselves now: "What were they thinking?"

A&F’s brand managers fatally erred when they mistook racism and insensitivity for irony and irreverence, which are altogether more fashionable and appealing. Had its "multicultural marketing department" hired me as a consultant, I could have saved them much grief (and money). Here’s what I would have reminded them:

Irony – in the literary sense – depends absolutely upon the author knowing better and, further, unmistakably signaling to the reader that s/he knows better. We trust that Twain does not generally share the distasteful opinions of Jim that Huck expresses early in the Adventures; indeed, Huck's actions ultimately betray his true respect and affection for Jim. A&F has earned no such trust, however, just as too many young hip-hop fans have not earned the dubious privilege of using the N-word as a casual greeting as their Black heroes do. Leguizamo may riff hard on Latinos in his stand-up act, but he’d probably be right to punch you out for doing it.

Ironists offend to some meaningful ends; hacks offend because they don’t know any better or they don’t care.

No Big Deal

Still, the complicated fact is that some of us, the target audience, "didn’t think the T-shirts were a big deal." Although we may not have "loved" the images, as A&F hoped, some of us even went out and bought them. Why?

Perhaps the APAs who bought the T-shirts don’t know the loathsome history of these stereotypes and images, and how they have been wielded against people like us for over a century. Or, they know about "Yellow Peril," Orientalism, and Asian exclusion, but are of a generation for whom this social scourge seems ancient history. Or maybe an impulse to censorship makes us want to rip the offending product from circulation, send it back into the void whence it sprang. (This, of course, is a hollow, superstitious gesture when the object is mass-produced, however; it’s also self-defeating to pay someone to offend us.)

Perhaps there are many compulsive collectors out there like me for whom, I think, there’s a measure of self-defense and revenge in collecting racist imagery and memorabilia. If the stereotypes were historically "the Master’s tools," there’s a certain satisfaction in our now being able to buy or co-opt them, and thus control their meaning.  As with the widespread and controversial use of the "N-word" among Blacks, taking in the substance of our degradation inoculates us, takes the sting out a bit when it is turned against us by others. The antidote to poison is poison.

Or perhaps it indicates that we are resigned to being stereotyped, and recognize that we cling to stereotypes and prejudices of our own.  I recall my childhood love for my dog-eared copy of Little Black Sambo, although I would not share this heirloom with a child of my own. I was fond of Aunt Jemima, too. Even now, I adore the outrageously proportioned Jessica Rabbit and my computer monitor proudly displays a plastic Bruce Lee as caricatured in recent Mountain Dew commercials. A&F has caused me to wonder: Are these so different? Do these, too, mistake mockery for fondness?

Above all, I've come to think that my own guilty pleasure as a collector is really about capturing evidence; it’s about bearing witness. The power of the pickaninny and Chinaman is to remind us of where we came from and how far we’ve progressed, and to educate us in how far we have yet to go.