Thursday, July 14, 2005

Negro enjoy banana! Yummy!


This is from an ABC book I found in a flea market couple days back. It says: "Negro enjoys a banana." [Due to popular demand, I changed the word from "nigger" to "Negro". - JN]

I couldn't find a year in the book, but it's approximately from the late sixties or early seventies. This is what the Finnish kids were taught quite recently. (It's not an official ABC book, thank God!)

4 comments:

pHinn said...

I think a more approriate translation to the Finnish word "neekeri" would be "Negro". Both were still innocently used in those earlier years, their context not so clearly derogatory as "nigger" ("nekru" in Finnish).

jukkahoo said...

I was going to say the same thing as pHinn. Just so you know.

And if I actually managed not to thank you for the Geis's. here is a BIG, bally huge THANK YOU!!!

Juri said...

Sorry all! Yes, you're right, I should've used the Negro word instead.

But still, hey, great picture! And as for the Geis's, you're truly welcome. They found a good home.

Anonymous said...

You can tell it's from an enlightened time because the tiger isn't (yet) attempting to eat the child. That was kind of an odd running visual theme in 20th C US illustration involving small black children, usually involving alligators rather than mammalian predators about to devour them...some suggest to help the viewer keep in mind that black children were closer to nature/beasts than other children...so much to be proud of, in pop culture.