Photo: Brazilian Carnival. AP
From the “Dude, what are you thinking?” file, more displays of genius from my InBox. This time from a brother who signed his name and address (but I’ll spare him his own mistake) and had a real problem with a recent article in our sister publication, Ebony, about finding love and sex in Brazil.
Said brother will also never have sex with a woman in America again- ever
: To Whom It May Concern:I am upset and concerned about an article in your recent magazine about
“What Happens in Brazil Stays in Brazil.” The title should be “Why
Black American Men choose to go to Brazil for their sexual appetites.” I
can not believe the anger presented by Black American Females over a trend
that they more than helped to create. If they, as a group, were satisfying
their men then this trend would not exist.
The plight of Black American men, when it comes to sexual satisfaction or
adventure, is just as blighted as many of the neighborhoods they are forced
to live in, in large American cities. There are several advantages that
most cities in Brazil present to Black American men that do not exist here
in America.
1. The male to female population distribution in a country like Brazil far
exceeds the population distribution that exists here in America. In large
American cities that have a reasonable Black population, I believe, the
ratio of Black females to Black males, to be almost 50 – 50. That is about
1 to 1 or at best 1 to 1.5 males to females. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil the
ratio is around 25 to 1 females to males. This is the case because not only
Black Brazilian women but several other racial groups of Brazilian women are
available to Black American men. There are no taboos to race mixing in
Brazil as there exists here in America.
2. Unfortunate[ly] for Black American women, about 85 % of the available
Brazilian women are naturally beautiful in face and figure to about 10 %
here in the States.
3. Brazilian women are extremely passionate, willing and able to make love
almost on the spot. This is due to their different culture where as our
Black American women seem to be prudish which is a direct result of American
culture. And worse, Black American women who give it up to easy are labeled
as sluts and whores while Black American men do not bother to label foreign
women the same way. This is more of the impact on these men by our culture.
4. In Brazil, race does not matter and neither does age. I have had lovers
from 19 to 40 that never even asked how old I was. In American culture in
general and in the minds of Black American women in particular, I am robbing
the cradle if I want to be with a woman more than ten years younger than I
am. Young Brazilian women are much more mature than a Black American woman
twice their age.
At 59 years of age, as a Black American male, I have had tremendous
experience in dating and marriage to Black American women in my lifetime.
Before I got married I dated Black American women exclusively, so I know the
deal. When I found one that was interested in settling down and starting a
family, we did just that. After 25 years however, she decided to move on
after announcing that I was “Oversexed.” Now I more than realize that each
woman is different but my experience was repeated over and over in my circle
of friends.
Read the rest of this entry »
So, the wife decides to buy some classic Christmas-related movies for the children and the issue of the song White Christmas comes up. I tell the wife to pick up a copy of White Christmas starringBing Crosby and Danny Kaye for both the song White Christmas and a fun scene on a train when Danny Kaye and Rosemary Clooney sing the song Snow. The wife gets to Best Buy, forgets what movie and asks the salesman for the movie where Bing sings White Christmas. Said dude gives wife a copy of Holiday Inn (where Bing also sings White Christmas). Easy mistake, no harm no foul, right?
EXCEPT, I’ve only seen Holiday Inn in re-runs on commercial TV, which means a substantial bit has been cut out. Specifically, a substantial part was cut out of Bing Crosby in Blackface. Imagine my surprise when I step away from a light holiday moview to get a drink for my 3 year old, only to come back to Louise Beavers and pickaninnies singing about Lincoln freeing the slaves. WTF? Where’d that come from?
Turns out that with the notable exception of Turner Classic Movies, which keeps the scene in for historic purposes, most people who have seen that movie only on television have no idea whatsoever that the blackface scene exists. It was edited out years ago. Aside from the the crows in Dumbo, it stands out as one of the most offensive scenes I’ve seen in movies. It took a good minute to even register what I was seeing and cut the thing off.
Not like I was a big Bing fan before. He always seem to have something dark hidden under the more visible boring. He was really only tolerable in films paired with actors with better personalities - Astaire, Kaye, Hope, Sinatra, even David Bowie in that Christmas special. But you know, couldn’t that box have come with a Warning: Explicit Cooning label or something? Gee Bing, thanks for the Christmas surprise. Bamboozled again. Punk.
Dick Parsons is stepping down as CEO under some pressure, and Stan O’Neal was pressured right out of Merrill Lynch. But rice baron/recently appointed CEO Uncle Ben and his corporate chieftain friends, Aunt Jemima and Rastus, the Cream of Wheat Guy (yes, that’s his name, really) remain at the helm of their respective corporations.
Sure, they’re only logo characters, but maybe it’s an object lesson to real Black CEOs - offend only Black people and you can stay forever.
High Jive at multicultclassics has a post about the problems the Uncle Ben’s folks have been having with response to that character’s repositioning.
I don’t feel any less intelligent today, but, then again I’m not a Nobel Prize winner. There’s been plenty of dust thrown up in the last 48 hours over comments by James Watson, who was quoted in The Sunday Times as saying “he hates black people,” he was “inherently
gloomy about the prospect of Africa…all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really.” Um…well, I’m a bit gloomy about Africa too, but that’s more about the first world myopia around genocidal regimes and the Sub-Saharan HIV/AIDS epidemic. Guess I had it all wrong. Mr. Watson had been in the midst of a tour to promote his new book, “Black People Ain’t Smart,” “Avoid Boring People,” which I suppose, in the vein of all publicity being good, will now either begin tanking or raking in sales. And frankly, he’ll need those royalty checks since he’s been suspended from his job. Now I may not be a smart man BUT I do know that race baiting is probably not the way you want to kick off a promotional tour.
Speaking of imagery, here’s some of that good old-fashioned German sensitivity on display in this recent UNICEF Germany campaign to African aid.UNICEF has been handily slapped about the face for this poor handled exercise in Everybody is African - ism that has been permeating print campaigns for aid to Africa of late. For the record, UNICEF apologized “for any offense it may have caused.”
Nevertheless, international advertisers are apparently clueless about trends in the industry, since they seem to continue to make the same stupid mistakes.
As in this campaign from computer chip maker, Intel, which also promoted a recent apology.
And this momentary lapse in judgement from Sony which ran on billboards in Holland.
It’s all very interesting that major corporations, many of whom have to be convinced with a hammer that diversity is important in hiring because of cultural differences, seem to have no problem understanding the kind cultural differences that allow them to get away with the kind of borderline racist advertising in Europe that would never fly in the United States.
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