The “a Black sheriff?!” conceit of Blazing Saddles (1974) was really about how race interacted with the sort of postwar American identity mythologized in cowboy movies, the actual Western frontier was the most likely place in American history to find a Black man in a respected position of authority over whites until the post-Vietnam military.
“If we create enough racialized urban unrest, the now-ruling generation of urban leadership born into the 70s and 80s and entering politics in the 90s will see the political necessity of eliminating the police in the name of minorities!” said…
The west side of the river is the “nice” one in Portland, and old money in the West Hills aside, the wealthy suburb on this side of the hills is Lake Oswego, around an artificial and still access-restricted-in-defiance-of-state-law lake. Locals my age say that since at least elementary school it was called “Lake No Negro”, and I can only imagine what it took to get a reputation as monoethnically white in 1980s Portland.
Honestly maybe it’s cause it was so close to the 1980s inner city that was noticeable. Our MLK Boulevard was the first north-south artery just across the river (it had originally been “Union”, early Portland was “Free State, Free Labor” Republicans that appreciated “freeing the slaves” as something akin to “deporting the illegals”).
In Along Martin Luther King, the 2003 coffee table book about America’s MLK Boulevards to get your Afrocentric dad for Christmas, it’s mentioned as the only one where the author saw white people living by choice, but then again I remember people challenging the official civic history of “we stopped residential segregation by asking realtors not to in the 1990s” by saying that no, that was just when the ghetto started to gentrify, reducing our official segregation metric of people who had no one of a different race on their block.
Like I’ve mentioned precedents, the ‘68 NYC teacher’s strike and ethnic succession in the outer boroughs, but at least that had imaginable stakes, I’m not really clear why a Black/Jewish front of the culture war is opening up right now
Anyway I think a cool guy from wrestling history was Sputnik Monroe and I’ll just post this from his wiki article
Monroe cultivated an “evil” heel gimmick. In a wrestling-related incident he had had an opponent locked in a worked submission hold, and threatened to break his arm. A local sheriff threatened to shoot Sputnik if he did to which Monroe replied that he would hold the opponent until he either gave up or starved to death; he eventually released him when the sheriff counted to three.[5] He drew heat from crowds by describing himself arrogantly as being made of “twisted steel and sex appeal”.[6]
In 1957, while driving to a wrestling show in Alabama, Monroe became tired and invited a black hitchhiker he met at a gas station to take the wheel. Upon arriving at the arena, Monroe placed his arm around the man, which drew a chorus of boos and insults from the white crowd; in response to this Monroe kissed the man on the cheek.[6] Monroe would later use this underlying racism as a promotional tactic and become a noteworthy figure in Memphis cultural history. During a period where legal segregation was the norm at public events, and during a general decline in the popularity of professional wrestling, Monroe recognized that the segregated wrestling shows (whites sat in floor seats while blacks were required to sit in the balcony)[7][8] were not properly marketing to black fans. The witty, flamboyant Monroe began dressing up in a purple gown and carrying a diamond tipped cane and drinking in traditionally black bars in the black area of Memphis, where he would openly socialize with black patrons and hand out tickets to his wrestling shows.[6] As a result of this, he was frequently arrested by police on a variety of vague, trumped up charges, such as mopery.[6] In each case, he would then hire a black attorney and appear in court, pay a small fine, and immediately resume the behavior that resulted in his prior arrests. Due to this, and in spite of the fact that he was a heel at the time, his popularity soared among the black community. At his shows, although floor seats in arenas would be half empty with white patrons, the balcony would be packed to capacity with black patrons with many others unable to enter due to the balcony selling out.[9]
Monroe, having become the biggest wrestling draw in the territory, soon refused to perform unless patrons, regardless of their race, were allowed to sit in any seat at the Ellis Auditorium.[6] As a result, the promoter was obliged to desegregate his wrestling shows, which then completely sold out with Monroe’s black fans, in some cases over 15,000 at a time,[6] filling the auditorium. Soon, other Southern sporting events, recognizing the enormous financial benefits, began to desegregate as well.[9]
one point of comparison that I have never seen commented on is the analogy between Black Israelites / NoI / Hoteps and the medieval thing where every newly-christianized Germanic people who had been uncivilized in Roman times decided that they were descended from Trojans. both arising out of a alienation & embarrassment arising from traumatic integration into a civilized culture (much more traumatic in the African-Americans' case ofc) and trying to find a respectable place in the civilized culture's mythistory.
I think American Blacks should say that they're descended from Memnon & one of Priam's daughters. this will bring about Trojan unity and an end to ethnic strife.
Worth pointing out that from the perspective of the slave South, the issue with abolitionists wasn’t merely (merely!) that they were a political movement seeking to tear down the foundation on which Dixie society was built and legitimated, it was that in engaging in “underground railroad” direct action, in refusing to return escaped slaves or even resisting federal agents returning them under the Fugitive Slave Act, this faction indulged by northern Yankees were understood as fancy-talking cattle thieves
Glad to know major publications are taking their grammar and style-guide cues from unhinged weirdos like this.
did she say fuck the bee??
Handy reference for writers and editors:
Like, this kind of makes sense seeing like, the Blacks as a distinct nation – formed locally from diverse sources taken as slaves in Africa – in America, like the Walloons in Belgium, (where whites aren’t Whites but Americans? Kind of the reverse of coining “African-American”) but then you see stuff like
where those South African prisoners might have been black sure, but likely had no ancestors that’d ever even been to the Americas
I’m sure it has been said before, but Chris Rock’s well known bit is deeply reactionary. A whole lot of ideology in that, bad ideology.
And like, perhaps worse, not fucking funny
bcuz the nigger / black guy distinction was particular to the way the ‘90s recovered out of the '80s freefall and to how the '00s had expected a straight-line progression from there
I will say that for all the yearly cod-African Kwanzaa fables, “Curtis” the comic strip never seemed to actually communicate anything about The Black Experience like The Boondocks did
