Highly offensive: Karen Juanita Carrillo examines the ongoing currency of racist curios - Culture
“Ay, yie-yie-yieeee! “I am dee Frito Bandito!” the Frito-Lay Company’s infamously caricatured Mexican American advertising mascot used to sing on TV commercials:
“I love Frito’s Corn Chips/I love dem I do/I love Ftito’s Corn Chips/I take dem from you!”
As a pudgy, greasy, illiterate-sounding, jolly thief, the Frito Bandito was an early 1970s racist offense. It took four years for Frito-Lay to pull the image from its ad campaigns.
During that time, the company’s years of aggressively marketing the symbol–as a pencil eraser, a toy ring, and even as the feature on a “Wanted for Theft” poster–made Frito Bandito items a hot commodity. A writer on the toy collector’s website ToyNfo.com notes that, “The controversy plus the age of the Frito Bandito, makes anything with his likeness quite collectible today…. A small pencil-eraser image of this gun-toting junk-food bandit, in good condition, can bring up to $20 today.”
The Frito Bandito is part of a growing trend in the world of racist collectibles. Like Aunt Jemima, Fu Manchu, and Redskin Indians, the Frito Bandito is a stereotyped ethnic image that may ignite controversy, but is also quickly becoming an income-generating antique.
Activist groups are reliably boycotting and petitioning to stop the sale of these items. What’s strange, though, is to find that some of the newest consumers of these antiques are members of the same ethnic groups its stereotypes are slurring. Scores of recent magazine articles have featured middle-class African Americans finding their niche in the world of antiquing by collecting derogatory black memorabilia. Others, both white and non-white, are debating the merits of bucking political correctness and daring to purchase racially “edgy” items. Under the premise that “we could all use a laugh,” or that racist antiques are collectible documentation of “how bad things used to be,” ethnic memorabilia sell like hotcakes in online auctions and other markers. These reminders of the ugly faces of racism continue to have new permutations and continued shelf life.
To the Highest Bidder
There was a time when you could’ve typed in the letters “n-i-g-g-e-r” on eBay’s search engine and pulled up “Tragic Mulatto” books, “Coon” ashtrays, “Sambo” or “Jigger” masks, “Picaninny” toys, “Uncle Tom” matchbooks, and tons of other so-called black memorabilia items.
In February 2003, the California-based National Alliance for Positive Action and the owners of the website BlackNews.com took the lead in urging eBay to stop selling such racially offensive objects. Although eBay banned the sale of Nazi Germany/Third Reich and Ku Klux Klan items back in May 2001, its new policy regarding the n-word will still permit the sale of “Mack memorabilia” and “extreme ethnic” items. eBay is currently setting up a new pop-up screen that will surface whenever the n-word is used to describe an item for sale on its auction site. The pop-up screen will advise sellers that the n-word is “highly offensive” and that its use in describing an item will be checked and could be against eBay policies.
But eBay isn’t the only auction house to blame. Online sites like Yahoo! Auctions and outfits like TrashTalkers.com have taken to selling ethnographic antiques and toys. Sotheby’s, Swann Galleries, Christie’s, and other high-end auction houses also sell racist items to the highest bidder. Items in circulation include the “Talking Alligator Cookie Jar” which, when you open the jar by tilting the alligator’s head back, features the voice of an alligator saying, “Mmm Mmmm, them sho’ is some tasty cookies!” At the website TrashTalkers.com, Perleberg, a company based in Germany, offers equal-opportunity offensive dolls: there’s a male Chinese doll who’s constantly got sex on his mind, and the site offers dolls depicting flamboyantly stereotypical gay white males. The gold-neck-laced black male doll, “Pimp Daddy,” is programmed to utter phrases like “You better make some money, bitch” and “Ooww!!! You got some nice ass titties, birch!”; while a bindi-wearing, turbaned “Mr. Patel” reminds you that in his native cou ntry: “We would’ve already killed you already.”
Racist dolls and ethnographic figurines and antiques have become so voluminous that selectively protesting the companies who sell them can seem like trying to stem a growing tidal wave.
Collecting Garbage
“A lot of people think they know about race and racism,” notes David Pilgrim, curator for the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. “But they don’t.”
A virtual tour of the museum is also available via Internet at www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/menu.htm. Ever since he was a child, the African American sociology professor says he has been both disgusted and fascinated by the proliferation of anti-black, Jim Crow images and racial artifacts. But he’s found a way to overcome his disgust and use the artifacts as teaching aids.
Pilgrim points our, “These things are great visual aids in telling the story I am trying to tell. I see it as such a unique opportunity to teach people about race and racism in an educational setting.