Colorful Prism Of Racism

I got to wondering about Japan’s place in the marketing of these products. The country was a major producer of salt and pepper shakers by the 1940s, and many of them were made in the stereotypical images of African Americans that was omnipresent in this country.

I know that Japan was not the only foreign country that made money off these items (I found some on the web that were said to be marked Germany). So I Googled, which turned up thousands of results of ”Made in Occupied Japan” Black Americana stuff that folks were selling – many caricatures and decidedly crude.

According to Howard Dodson, director of the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, “There are two kinds of collectors of black Americana: those who are interested in collecting as a financial investment and those with a passion for finding ‘the missing pages of history.’”

...There is also some concern that part of the drive in purchasing black Americana is pimpin’ black culture.: that this adoption of old images and negative stereotypes is being glamorized in a perverse way. Like hip-hop’s bad ‘rap’ (pun intended), collecting black Americana is sweeping the nation in a concerning way.