Antebellum

[fiorenza_a]

This repugnant piece of object d'art is currently on eBay listed as Vintage Rare Americana Collectible Cast Iron Bottle Opener Alligator Boy. I can't even begin with how wrong this is.

Comments

[tinturtle]

Unfortunately, not antebellum. I’m sure it is much more recent than that.

[fiorenza_a]

The subject is antebellum, but I believe, like many of the statues of Confederate heroes that are now being torn down, the object itself is more Jim Crow - from a time when the minds who clung to that racist past began to feel the tides of history moving against them. I understand it's probably 1930s.

Frankly, I was more shocked by the tone the vendor took in the 21st century. We can't fix the hurts of the past, my country practically single-handedly invented the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but we are obligated to recognise them.

[shooting2kill]

Hideous and amazing to think someone spent their precious time in making it!

[fiorenza_a]

Absolutely beggars belief - and people must have bought it.

The two things that really disturb me are the way it's been advertised in the 21st century, and the absolutely appalling thought that black workers in depression era America may have had no choice but to work on the production line making it.

When you see things like this you can see why Muhammad Ali felt so passionately about refusing the Vietnam draft: “My conscience won’t let me go shoot my brother, or some darker people, or some poor hungry people in the mud for big powerful America...And shoot them for what? They never called me nigger, they never lynched me, they didn’t put no dogs on me, they didn’t rob me of my nationality, rape and kill my mother and father. … Shoot them for what? How can I shoot them poor people? Just take me to jail.”

[shooting2kill]

Such noble sentiments spoken by Ali.

[fiorenza_a]

He took a real hit making that stand. He was by no means a man without troubling flaws - but on this he was The Greatest in and out of the ring.