Ok “Let’s bring this close to home!” NE thread pt 2: a trip to a Grand Island thrift shop
MAJOR tw for racist imagery & depictions. I strongly condemn these stereotypes, but think it is important to show just how DEEPLY ingrained they are in the fabric of our culture

Growing up in typical small town Nebraska, I think many of us could claim the shared experience of very little exposure to “diversity”

While this comes w/ all sorts of problems, it actually makes this thread’s imagery even MORE disturbing & harm causing

I also want to preface by saying, I did NOT go into this store thinking “I’m going to find all this racist stuff & make a thread!” (I was actually trying to help my friend find a cute vintage table)

But once I started seeing it, I couldn’t stop.

It was everywhere.

The first thing I noticed was this. *Almost* comical bc it *clearly* () has nothing to do w the hate group... but the fact that it’s still available to purchase for like, $20 and no shop owner or employee has thought to pull it...

This “oversight” started to make a lot more sense when I started to see horribly characterized “Native African” (!!!!!!) (labeled by the shop) and “Black Americana” things all over the place

These clearly racist depictions (including the “black mammy”) are NOT from the Deep South- this is NEBRASKA! These are literally things people HAD IN THEIR HOMES! And probably thought of as “cute knickknacks”!

So, Nebraskans.. did we stop at black stereotypes? Oh no. Plenty of “Oriental” (shop’s label) items AND…Yep, you read that right “Monkey” (!!!!!!!) salt and pepper shakers

Additionally, there is a long history of erasure of Native Americans existing in the PRESENT (not just as historical figures)...We can see evidence of this by the weird white washing in these “Native” characters:

The Disney “Tonka” book appears to star several white people in brownface…reinforcing the idea that there weren’t LIVING native people who could have played the characters. And fts some pretty gnarly language about “friendly white soldiers”

These terrible and offensive objects were all in ONE store- and no- this isn’t some museum of racist objects… these are commercialized objects that were mass produced NOT SO LONG AGO. And are still available to purchase TODAY (2020)

Though I take serious issue with someone continuing to profit off of these objects, and their blatantly racist labeling in some cases.. do I think this is a problem with a singular racist shop owner? No.

we’ve all seen these types of objects- whether in a shop or perhaps an older relatives home. For rural nebraskans, the travesty is that these images and stereotypes may have been their foundational exposure to people different than them. They are dehumanizing inaccurate and wrong