Malena Amusa

How the “Nigger-Brown” Couch got its Legs

Our last post about the “Nigger-Brown” labeled couch delivered to Doris Moore’s house got a lot of attention. Some readers argued that Moore over-reacted by threatening to sue the manufacturers. Others believed the racist labeling is evidence of a lingering slave culture around the world.

Not since that post have I read something so informing as Earl Ofari Hutchinson’s piece that ran yesterday. “Swapping, selling and collecting a huge array of racist furnishings and home decorative pieces is a brisk and lucrative business,” he reports:

These items adorn thousands of American homes. There’s a Coon Chicken Inn dinner plate, and a little Black Sambo block. They sell for hundreds of dollars. An original Aunt Jemima Cookie Jar can net upwards of $2,000. There are hundreds of counterfeits on the market. They sell for only a few dollars. The original Jolly Nigger Bank made in the early 1900s sells for hundreds of dollars at auctions. Even the hundreds of fakes of this grotesque little item are sold at swap meets and on the Internet for a few dollars.

Then there’s the Sambo Dart Board. The All Metals Products Company, an outfit out of Michigan, originally made it in 1940. Fifty years later the AAA Sign Company in Ohio reproduces the Dart Board as a decorative tin sign and mass markets it at about $15 dollars. AAA Sign also makes, and sells, hundreds of wall clocks, ashtrays, and plates emblazoned with choice depictions of Sambos, Mammies, Toms and Coons. There’s more than one kitchen where the cook lights up their stove with matches from matchboxes that have Nigger Head shrimp, Nigger Head oysters, and Mammy Brand oranges on the box cover.

The sale in racist furnishings is so good that many other countries have jumped into the business. Fake Jolly N Banks, for instance, are made in Taiwan exclusively for the American market. Japanese and Korean manufacturers have also churned out thousands of racially offensive products. The racist couch that shocked Moore was made in China. These items are more than just historical curiosity pieces. They are almost certainly the butt of jokes, scorn, ridicule, and are used to degrade African-Americans by many that sit, lie, or gaze at these items in private homes. That’s exactly what they were originally intended to do. The sale of racist collectibles with no disclaimer, or warning, and with no attempt made to sensitize buyers and sellers to the historic damage these items still wreak on African Americans is a tragic mix of commercial irresponsibility and racially tinged indifference.

See the full story here.

Posted at 4:29 AM, May 01, 2007 in Media Analysis | Permalink | View Comments