I never thought that I would be thanking an AmeriKKKan for his contribution to Australian culture. After all, their appalling entertainment industry dominates ours to the point that we might as well be their fifty first state! But I have to say a big "thank you!" to Harry Connick junior for his courageous act of defiance on
Hey Hey It's Saturday!Appalling racists in the media have made much of the fact that the Jackson Jive were mostly non-white members of racial minorities. So for white people to impose their idea of what is acceptable upon them is somehow ethnocentric - even racist - in itself. What nonsense! Far from insulating the performers from criticism, their ethnicity shows just how deep the racism is. They were participating in their own oppression - and in doing so,
they were oppressing countless others!We can pity them for cluelessly perpetuating the paradigms of white colonialism while we simultaneously condemn them. I see no contradiction there. (Those who
do see a contradicition are still obeying an absolutist "either/or" dichotomy. We on the left are much more open to - and more tolerant of - a diversity of analyses.)
While many appalling racists might have thought that the story would disappear after the first flurry of publicity, thankfully it has kept going. The latest development has been the removal of Golliwogs from Australian toy stores.
Well, that's a good start. But one might ask - as I'm sure you are, fellow travellers - why these grotesque objects are still being sold to children at all!
Far from benign, these "toys"
are instruments of race hate. By teaching toddlers to despise and look down on black people they are creating still more slavery. Those who sell them should be prosecuted for hate crimes. They should have their assets seized, sold off and the proceeds donated to the United Nations. And then they should be thrown in jail, shackled to the wall until they rot!
Then they might start to understand just what they are doing to others.
Appalling. Just appalling.
