« Dancing with the idiots | Main | Snowmanicide »
December 09, 2010
Mmm, soap
Soap_Crystal, originally uploaded by GL.ANDIS.
A few years ago, there was a faux documentary that came out. It was a what-if movie, depicting a presidential election in the South, after the Confederates had won the Civil War. It was packed with fake advertisements, for blatantly racist products. (Such as Darkie toothpaste.) At the conclusion of the movie, it was revealed the fake ads were for actual products that existed during the 1920's and 1930's.
So, I thought of that movie when I read this story, about a store in Indianapolis that is selling reproductions of vintage soap, including some with racist imagery:
Some people found more than an offensive odor in a soap for sale in a central Indiana store. They find the labeling, and the brand name, offensive in a different way.
Noblesville is dressed up for the holidays, but not everyone likes what's being sold. Inside Logan Village Mall, one of the vendors is selling novelty soaps from a bygone era depicting minstrel and other racial images which we've intentionally blurred.
"I don't think it's much of a joke," Joe Slash, Indianapolis Urban League.
"It's not okay and not something that people would take very lightly anywhere," he said.
Slash heard about the soap through an email asking the Civil Rights Commission to look into it.
After I stopped chuckling because I envisioned Slash from Guns n' Roses speaking, I was annoyed. Are products with unflattering caricatures of black people racist? Yes. Does the store owner have a right to sell them? Yes. Should he sell them? I don't think so.
To me, the annoying thing is that apparently these are reproductions of vintage products, not actual vintage products. I tend to chafe when people attempt to revise history to conform with current attitudes - what was okay in 1930 is not okay nowadays - and I don't think we should try to change the past. But, if it's a reproduction, what is the point? There is no value to it.
However, I also doubt the damage these things could cause - will some kid become racist because of a bar of soap? No. Is it a violation of someone's civil rights? I highly doubt that.
The owner of the store, unsurprisingly, doesn't see what the big deal is:
Attorneys Gary and Kim Dewester, who own the general store, have leased the space here for ten years. They sell much more than soap and Gary says they haven't had a single complaint.
"As far as I'm concerned, we're conducting a legal business and if these people are upset about it, they don't have to come in the store. Again, if it didn't sell, we wouldn't have it in the store," Dewester said.
He's right, of course. Though, my main question is, who is buying this stuff? Does buying one of these make you a racist? If anything, stuff like this will reinforce why racism is slowly dying away. I'd say it's a mark of progress that there is a controversy over this, rather than a simple chuckle.
entry no. 1529
Posted at December 9, 2010 12:58 PM