Places Showcase ⇒ "Your Kind Is Not Welcome Here"

[Charles Haacker]

I toyed with the notion of creating a Whites Only sign in Photoshop and hanging off the pelicans' log, and a sign that said "Colored" for the cormorants. I grew up with those signs everywhere, and asked lots of questions about them as a child. I'm glad the signs now are confined to museum exhibits but it troubles me that the mindset behind those signs has become resurgent with a strange acceptance.

When I first opened my tattoo shop I decorated the walls with some typical "tattoo shop" style signs; "If your Shopping, I'm not Selling", "Good tattoos aren't cheap. Cheap tattoos aren't good" and "Tipping isn't a town in China". I created one that said; "Colored people only. Or those who are about to be colored". I thought it was hilarious but I was cautioned not to hang that particular one up as it may be taken the wrong way. "Screw 'em if they can't take a joke." was my mentality but I deferred to their counsel and never put it up.

PC can be a touchy subject so it's probably wise to be safe than funny.

That's the whole thing about PC; touchy. But there're many good reasons. Your friend was right; that sign would not have been funny and it could have led to real trouble. You were innocently trying to be funny, and to some in the audience it might have been funny, but any person of color would have been mightily offended (and yeah, "person of color" is not offensive but "colored person" is). They would not have read past the first half of the sign before letting you know what they thought of your humor. Depending on how long ago you opened your shop you may get that now. You are Nicaraguan by birth. You've said you have an accent. I have the misfortune to be a natural mimic, which was useful when my wife and I trod the boards as actors, but to this day I have to be careful not to pick up folks' accents lest they be offended. I can do lots, and I can do them funny, and I do, but I try to be mindful of my audience, and it's not so much PC and/or not wanting to get punched out as that I sincerely do not want to offend or upset anyone. As an American born white male I carry a load of privileged baggage and I know it. Where do I get off making fun of people? My ancestors were not colonialists, not in this country anyway, but most of them were German. Wanna talk baggage? Yeeks. But they weren't German colonialists either. My great-grandfather on my mother's side was a "butter and egg" grocer with a tiny corner storefront on Third Avenue in NY. He spoke German at home along with his wife which is how their 4 kids became bilingual. Nevertheless they were harassed during the "Great War" because they were German! At the outset of WW2 they feared internment along with the Japanese!

I think PC is just Polite Company. I love to be what I think of as "funny," but I also try to think through how something I do or say or (especially!) write may be perceived because I genuinely do not want to hurt someones else's feelings. Once it's out there it's hard to recall. As an American born white Christian (not but that how I was raised) male I am beyond lucky and I know I am perceived by many as the wicked child of colonialism, probably including Nicaraguans who, along with everyone else in South America have been cheerfully screwed over by Big Brother for most of 200 years. I bet I don't have to tell you we got Panama...

[PietFrancke]

I toyed with the notion of creating a Whites Only sign in Photoshop and hanging off the pelicans' log, and a sign that said "Colored" for the cormorants. I grew up with those signs everywhere, and asked lots of questions about them as a child. I'm glad the signs now are confined to museum exhibits but it troubles me that the mindset behind those signs has become resurgent with a strange acceptance.

When I first opened my tattoo shop I decorated the walls with some typical "tattoo shop" style signs; "If your Shopping, I'm not Selling", "Good tattoos aren't cheap. Cheap tattoos aren't good" and "Tipping isn't a town in China". I created one that said; "Colored people only. Or those who are about to be colored". I thought it was hilarious but I was cautioned not to hang that particular one up as it may be taken the wrong way. "Screw 'em if they can't take a joke." was my mentality but I deferred to their counsel and never put it up.

PC can be a touchy subject so it's probably wise to be safe than funny.

Wise is good - but laughter (the type that isn't mean) is better! We need laughter.

About PC: It can be arrogant, and elitist. It reminds me in some ways about the pedantic rules regarding what is and what is not acceptable in a photograph. Take Southern statues for an example, suddenly they have become symbolic of the Southern institution of slavery, rather than of the man, or his city, or state stuck in a desperate situation. After the war was won the North brutally raped the South. Perhaps we learned something because after WW2, the Germans and the Japanese were treated better than we had treated our own South.

I say, if we wish to heal, and Southern statues are an issue, then remove the ones in the North also!! The American Civil war was horrible and shameful. There was nothing Nobel about it. It occurred because we as a nation Failed to work out solutions and move forward in a positive direction. Do we really think that the owners of the Northern steel mills cared about black slaves? They certainly didn't care about their own Irish slaves and the railroad barons didn't care about their Chinese slaves either. But (said with sarcasm) at least the coal miners had it good!!!

[St3v3M]

When I first opened my tattoo shop I decorated the walls with some typical "tattoo shop" style signs; "If your Shopping, I'm not Selling", "Good tattoos aren't cheap. Cheap tattoos aren't good" and "Tipping isn't a town in China". I created one that said; "Colored people only. Or those who are about to be colored". I thought it was hilarious but I was cautioned not to hang that particular one up as it may be taken the wrong way. "Screw 'em if they can't take a joke." was my mentality but I deferred to their counsel and never put it up.

PC can be a touchy subject so it's probably wise to be safe than funny.

You can always offend those that want to be offended. S-

[PietFrancke]

That's the whole thing about PC; touchy..... I bet I don't have to tell you we got Panama...

Chuck, I hope that fever of yours is long gone. BTW, I enjoy immensely your well thought out and in depth analysis - I read and treasure each of your words perhaps in a similar fashion as I do Duck's words when he puts on his Mentoris hat.

[PietFrancke]

When I first opened my tattoo shop I decorated the walls with some typical "tattoo shop" style signs; "If your Shopping, I'm not Selling", "Good tattoos aren't cheap. Cheap tattoos aren't good" and "Tipping isn't a town in China". I created one that said; "Colored people only. Or those who are about to be colored". I thought it was hilarious but I was cautioned not to hang that particular one up as it may be taken the wrong way. "Screw 'em if they can't take a joke." was my mentality but I deferred to their counsel and never put it up.

PC can be a touchy subject so it's probably wise to be safe than funny.

You can always offend those that want to be offended. S-

truer words have never been spoken!

[Duck]

In retrospect, I am glad I never posted it. Do I find it funny still? You bet, but more as a slap in the face of all the PCers that are overly touchy. I do recognize the thin line delineating vulgarity from polite conversation and I steer clear of any vulgarity or hate speech. I have little tolerance for hate and I often kid that I'm color blind, even if I'm sometimes naive about it.

My maternal grandmother (full native Nicaraguan) was definitely racist, but not in the manner Americans see racists (Southern white supremacy). She was Nicaraguan racist where there is a definitive racial divide between Spaniard descendants (my family) and indigenous native Indian descendants. The "colonialism" mentality you talk about, but from a different angle. Boy did she use to embarrass me in public. For her, blacks were lower in the hierarchy than the "Indios".

As for my 'accent'; for the most part it's barely perceptible for most people. Being the son of two fluent English speaking parents, both who were English teachers, I was subjected to a lot of correction in my early upbringing. When we came to the States my mother took it on herself to work the accent out as much as she could. I remember all those corrections whenever I was talking; "the" instead of "da", "mouth" instead of "mouf"... you get the picture. Add to that the fact that physically I take after my father's Lithuanian side, not many people peg me as hispanic.

Basically, I'm a mutt once you add my maternal grandmother's Irish heritage.

[Charles Haacker]

Wise is good - but laughter (the type that isn't mean) is better! We need laughter.

About PC: It can be arrogant, and elitist. It reminds me in some ways about the pedantic rules regarding what is and what is not acceptable in a photograph. Take Southern statues for an example, suddenly they have become symbolic of the Southern institution of slavery, rather than of the man, or his city, or state stuck in a desperate situation. After the war was won the North brutally raped the South. Perhaps we learned something because after WW2, the Germans and the Japanese were treated better than we had treated our own South.

I say, if we wish to heal, and Southern statues are an issue, then remove the ones in the North also!! The American Civil war was horrible and shameful. There was nothing Nobel about it. It occurred because we as a nation Failed to work out solutions and move forward in a positive direction. Do we really think that the owners of the Northern steel mills cared about black slaves? They certainly didn't care about their own Irish slaves and the railroad barons didn't care about their Chinese slaves either. But (said with sarcasm) at least the coal miners had it good!!!

Great American historian Annette Gordon-Reed uses (maybe even coined) a term she calls "presentism." Presentism is the tendency to view the past through the prism of the present. For a historian it is a pitfall; the people of the past must, as much as humanly possible, be viewed in the context of their own times, not ours. What happened, happened. What they did or failed to do, they did, or failed to do. Historians are (or should be) primarily reporters, reporting on the times and the human beings that made them. Tearing down statues does not change the past because the past cannot be changed; it just is. Past is past. We do, I think, have a responsibility to study and strive to understand it. I am fond of quoting George Santayana: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Being yuman we are fallible (seriously, dude?). I believe we must understand the mistakes of our forebears to try not to step in the same (ah-hrrrmmm...).

My study of history suggests that had Lincoln lived, "reconstruction" would have proceeded far differently, justly, and gently. Lincoln's horrifying murder by a badly misguided southerner flung open the door of rampant stupidity to the hawks and no one needs recap what actually happened. The Robber Barons of the north were breathtaking in their arrogance toward their workers, without whom they would not have been robber barons in the first place. So on so forth ad infinitum ad nauseam. The evil that men do...!

I am a natural born pessimist (who guffawed?!), so much so that my Kidz presented me a copy of Stephen Pinker's epic book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2011). I have still not been able to wade through the entire book because statistics and charts and statistics oh my, but the thrust is all in the title: over time we yumans have become incrementally less violent. That's a good thing. IF (big IF) we can manage to not utterly extinct ourselves with a bang not a whimper, Pinker believes the trend toward less violence, like the moral arc of the universe, bends incrementally toward maybe-things-get-better. I keep reminding myself that we are a very young species, highly aggressive, highly defensive; we have the capability to evolve beyond ourselves; we have been doing it for 200,000 years. Hang on!

[minniev]

That's the whole thing about PC; touchy..... I bet I don't have to tell you we got Panama...

Chuck, I hope that fever of yours is long gone. BTW, I enjoy immensely your well thought out and in depth analysis - I read and treasure each of your words perhaps in a similar fashion as I do Duck's words when he puts on his Mentoris hat.

Ditto here. We are the lucky purveyors here of so much rich thought, deep knowledge and skill. Though the village is small, it is remarkable. As someone who loves words as much as pictures, it is a special blessing.

[minniev]

In retrospect, I am glad I never posted it. Do I find it funny still? You bet, but more as a slap in the face of all the PCers that are overly touchy. I do recognize the thin line delineating vulgarity from polite conversation and I steer clear of any vulgarity or hate speech. I have little tolerance for hate and I often kid that I'm color blind, even if I'm sometimes naive about it....

Basically, I'm a mutt once you add my maternal grandmother's Irish heritage.

Most of us are mutts if we're honest about it, though some of our more interesting ancestry may be further back in time.

I'm pretty sure we are preaching to the choir here because we appear to have assembled here a group of folk who are not extreme in either direction but find the beauty in diversity whether it's in photos or philosophy or origins. That is a blessing for me I know. But overall, I do see a slippage that I'd call "permission to hate". It is a stance that will burn itself out eventually but will probably be replaced with an extreme on the other end of things, still missing the point that we are more alike than not, and that we are all in the same boat, floating through an endless universe on a bright blue ball that needs our stewardship, not our disregard, simply because we cannot make another if we break this one.

[Charles Haacker]

In retrospect, I am glad I never posted it. Do I find it funny still? You bet, but more as a slap in the face of all the PCers that are overly touchy. I do recognize the thin line delineating vulgarity from polite conversation and I steer clear of any vulgarity or hate speech. I have little tolerance for hate and I often kid that I'm color blind, even if I'm sometimes naive about it.

My maternal grandmother (full native Nicaraguan) was definitely racist, but not in the manner Americans see racists (Southern white supremacy). She was Nicaraguan racist where there is a definitive racial divide between Spaniard descendants (my family) and indigenous native Indian descendants. The "colonialism" mentality you talk about, but from a different angle. Boy did she use to embarrass me in public. For her, blacks were lower in the hierarchy than the "Indios".

As for my 'accent'; for the most part it's barely perceptible for most people. Being the son of two fluent English speaking parents, both who were English teachers, I was subjected to a lot of correction in my early upbringing. When we came to the States my mother took it on herself to work the accent out as much as she could. I remember all those corrections whenever I was talking; "the" instead of "da", "mouth" instead of "mouf"... you get the picture. Add to that the fact that physically I take after my father's Lithuanian side, not many people peg me as hispanic.

Basically, I'm a mutt once you add my maternal grandmother's Irish heritage.

Duck, I think we are all mutts. I like mutts. The whole idea, concept, whatever the hell of "pure blood...?" What the hell is that?! That's something I personally find uberoffensive because I think it's ridiculous. Hitler rhapsodized in Mein Kampf about "blood purity" and yada silly BS except WW2 and the Holocaust.

Purity of blood (pureza [limpieza] de sangre) was an obsessive concern that originated in mid-15th-century Spain, on the basis of the biased belief that the unfaithfulness of the “deicide Jews,” (god-killing Jews) not only had endured in those who converted to Catholicism but also had been transmitted by blood to their descendants, regardless of their sincerity in professing the Christian faith. Consequently, Old Christians “of pure blood” considered New Christians impure and therefore morally inadequate to be members of their communities. This judgment was primarily applied to the politically and economically influential group of Iberian conversos (Catholics of Jewish origins) but was extended also to moriscos (Catholics of Muslim lineage) and consequently to the natives and slaves in the colonial contexts.

So there y'have it, folks. We's pure and you ain't. Sucks to be you.

I am proud of mutt-dom. I wish I were more muttish. I confess that PC has had a deleterious affect on me as an unbelievably lucky American-born German-descended straight cis white male nominally christian oppressor guy. (I strongly suspect that a lot of the backlash against PC is due to guys exactly like me getting sick and tired of being on the receiving end. I get it, but to an extent I also think we deserve some of it. Shoe's on the other foot, fellas....) Duck, your grandmother has many, many mirror images all over South America going back to Contact. Look at Mexico (well, try, peek over the wall there); Has there ever been a mestizo in the office of presidente in Mexico? Yes, one, Vicente Guerrero, for a few months in the early 19th century, deposed and eventually executed by his "pureblood" vice president Bustamante, and Mexico "wisely" never tried that again (racist much?).

Any more even referring to oneself as "color blind" is loaded (please don't be offended; I'm just sayin'). The fact is that I sincerely, totally wish we were, but I don't think we are, any of us, of any so-called color. Skin color is a fact of life. Period. Full stop. And the fact is that "whites" (just a sallow shade of brown as I see it) started it. It's a political construct but we are so immersed, marinated in it that for the moment it is inescapable. I see color. We all see color. It's the first thing we see. The problem is that it blinds us to all else. That's why I think that, on balance, long run, Political Correctness is not a bad thing. Absolutely I think it's been used as a nail-studded club! Ow! That hurts! But I totally believe that the pendulum will begin to swing back when a majority of people (color be damned) begin to find common ground. White men need to stop doing the bad stuff we've done for hundreds of years and gotten away with. Hash tag Time's Up! As I've said, I like to think of PC as Polite Company, Polite Consideration. No one wants to or should be a pushover, but politeness is the essence of diplomacy, and I believe and accept that we old white guys (especially, Oprah was right) are beginning to pay the piper for the bad behavior of many generations of ancestors. Why not? Everyone else has had to accept our sh** for all those generations. No, I didn't do it! My direct ancestors didn't do it, and neither did yours, but the fact is that straight cis white male nominally christian oppressor guys have enjoyed centuries of playtime with little to no consequences. I (just me) accept some payback.