Your Colored Eyes is the Den That Hide Your Petty Prejudice

 

Prejudices in America

 

Your squint-eyes store the dark, narrow closet cramped in the hidden prejudices that horde your petty mind.  I can see the veiled intent behind thine eyes.  At the brink of the 21^st century, you would think we have passed the times of prejudice.  Yet I still see hints of prejudices flood into our popular culture.

 

Image of a Mexican

Could I fabricate such a tale?  Then why were Mexicans targeted at the beginning of Trump’s presidential term?  Mexicans are one of the groups classified by their inborn racial characteristics.  Mexicans in the Old California and immigrant Jews in the New York City’s Lower East Side were once crowded and stamped into class markers that essentially identified the entire race.  Hence the Mexican working class was viewed suspiciously. 

 

Racism was once at the root of the restricted access to owning property rights.  Racial stereotypes Americans harbored onto the Mexicans and Indians occluded them from owning properties.  Mexicans were economically assessed as the “have-nots,” so they confronted hefty economic consequences. 

 

Who owned the properties?  The Republicans.  The Republican’s notion was to have “stake in society,” which afforded them political standing thereby increasing their democratic participation.  Racism often resulted in economic realities for some groups.  The economic realities affected the group’s property rights and the labor market segment.  On the other hand, white supremacy brought on economic advantages, political privileges, and social benefits.    

 

W.E.B. DuBois expressed that the white workers were compensated with preferential treatment by their key social and political institutions.  Who were the white workers?  18^th century “free white persons” became 19^th century Celts, Slavs, Hebrews, Iberics, Latins, Anglo-Saxons; since then, they have integrated into the 20^th century as Caucasians.  These 20^th century Caucasians’ racial credentials were not equal to the Anglo-Saxons who were the “old stock.”  But they overcame setbacks through U.S. naturalization laws.

 

Certain people were excluded and observed as unfit for “self-government.”  Racial oppression was embedded in the need for social control.  The Irish were once downtrodden while the Celts were privileged.  Racism in America was defined by organized power structures; therefore, racism can be viewed as a byproduct of power struggles within specific cultural sites for certain racial groups.    

 

 

The political identity implies racial identity in the New World.  The New World’s charters articulated the “barbarous” or “savage” inhabitants as part of a political mandate.  The Third Charter of Virginia in 1611-1612 colony stood by the Christian Religion and reclaimed the “barbarous” people as threat to civility and humanity.  The Charters of Rhode Island in 1663 referred to “barbarous Indians” as “Indian savages” known for rule of warfare for “destruction of ages, sexes, and conditions.”

 

1995 movie Congo

Like an alter ego, certain animals are characterized that drive the old racial slants blinding our sense of democracy.  Gorillas were characterized as “savages” and “barbarous” in the 1995 movie “Congo,” directed by Frank Marshall.  Amy, a domesticated University gorilla cooperates with the group but snarling gorillas in the jungle storm like “savages.”  Like a mirror image of the “barbarous Indians” or “Indian savages,” the wild, hostile gorillas surround a man and attack him with “destruction of ages, sexes, and conditions” to his death.  The images of the snarling gorillas are rooted in our racial history ridden with prejudiced notions.                       

    

The jungle gorillas look different from Amy, a University gorilla from America.  The gorillas exhibit dark, gray features with violent undertones.  Their features are akin to how the Irish were typified in the 19^th century pop culture.  The New York Tribute described the rioting Irish as a “savage mob” or a “pack of savages.” 

 

The "Irish Apes"

The Irish featured as an ape.

Irish and German laborers were described as “coarse skin,” “pug nose,” “broad teeth,” and “big hands and feet.”  Irish were featured as “pot-bellied,” “bow-legged,” and “abortively featured,” with open, projecting mouths with prominent teeth and exposed gums, advancing cheekbones, and depressed noses that bear barbarism. 

 

Powerful languages were used to racially differentiate the Irish.  The Irish were labeled as the “diseased stock,” who had acquired a prognathous type of skull like the Australian savages.  The racial typology “Irishism” featured them with conditions of depravity and degradation habitual to immigration. 

 

Racial Irishness surfaced in wide contexts—popular jokes, political speeches, newspaper cartoons, and social policy guidelines.  Irishism and Celtism were assigned fixed inherited traits.  Fixed physical characteristics in skin and hair color were assigned along with facial types and physiques.  They were cast as “low-browed,” “brutish,” and “Simian.”  Harper’s Weekly in 1851 marked them distinctly by “upturned nose and black tint of the skin.”  A broad popular consensus was that they were incapable of governance of the nation.     

 

More than 100 years have passed since the Irish were racially differentiated by their distinct, physical traits.  But racial stereotypes and prejudice still live through our pop culture.  The last time I witnessed mine was by one of the young, hip retail clothing chain's prejudiced view of Asians in America.  So the next time you flip through papers, magazines, media, or speech, look for subtle nuances of prejudice and racism.  You will begin to see the subtle hints of prejudices that has been deeply buried in our history but remain afloat in our pop culture.