Eastern Technical High School students suspended after drawing racist picture of Pres Obama, posting it to Twitter

Three students at Maryland’s Eastern Technical High School, have been suspended after drawing a racially offensive picture involving President Barack Obama during class and posting a photo of it to Twitter, The Baltimore Sun reports.

According to Baltimore County police spokeswoman Cathy Batton, the image depicts three nooses hanging from the rafters of a building. Next to the ropes is a burning cross with three stick figures in pointed hats, a clear reference to the Ku Klux Klan. To the right is a grave marker with the name “Barack Obama” at the top, and under the president’s name appear two racial epithets.

Two students drew the picture during the end of a class period the morning of June 7, the day before school ended. According to Batton, their teacher was busy talking to several students about their final exam grades when another student told her about the drawing. By the time she went to go investigate, most of the images had been erased, Batton said.

A student in the class, however, had taken a photo of the drawing before it was erased and posted the image to Twitter, where it was seen by other students and eventually a parent, who emailed the photo to an assistant principal.

All three students involved in the dissemination of the picture have been suspended, with final disciplinary actions pending, according to Eastern Tech Principal Tom Evans. Batton says charges will not be filed against the students because the incident is not considered a hate crime, The Sun reports.

A magnet school, Eastern Tech has entrance requirements and is a National Blue Ribbon High School. It graduates a high percentage of students who have passed at least one Advanced Placement test.

According to The Sun, Evans does not believe the racist display is indicative of the culture at his school, which boasts a 30 percent minority population of Asians, African Americans and Hispanics. He adds that the school will use the incident as a teaching opportunity next year, as it strives to be national model for diversity.

“The culture here is very positive. These kids all get along very well. This issue is the first time in my five years here that there has been any group targeted because of their race. We have no tolerance for this sort of thing,” he said.

This is the second piece of student “artwork” to drum up controversy this month, as parents at Fresno’s Hamilton Elementary School took issue with a student-made sign depicting Jesus with a caption reading “I want you to kill all the infidels.” The poster was made by a seventh-grade student as part of an assignment during a history unit on the Crusades.

Some Florida students ignited outrage in February when two YouTube videos surfaced of shocking and racist rants by teen girls. The first was created by girls in Gainesville, while the second — with the same disparaging sentiments against black students — was recorded by girls in Lantana.

Just last week, Waterbury, Conn. math teacher Kathleen Pyles was placed on paid leave while school officials investigate allegations that she addressed a black student with a racist remark. She is accused of inappropriately calling a student “black boy” when she couldn’t remember his name.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/14/eastern-technical-high-school-racist-drawings-obama_n_1596802.html?ir=Black+Voices&ref=topbar

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anti-black imagery

Coon Chicken Inn Coon Chicken Inn was a small restaurant chain in the American West from the late 1920s through the 1950s. The restaurants were known for their entrances, which featured the head of a winking, grinning, grotesquely caricatured black man wearing a porter’s cap. The words “Coon Chicken Inn” were written on teeth framed by oversized red lips. Visitors entered through a doorway in the middle of the black man’s mouth. The menu included southern fried “Coon Chicken” sandwiches and chicken pie, as well as hamburgers, seafood, chili, and assorted sandwiches. Blacks (especially ones with very dark skin) were employed as waiters, waitresses, and cooks. More information about the Coon Chicken Inn

Racism In The Kitchen During the Jim Crow period a typical American kitchen had many products with images that portrayed blacks in negative ways; these included packaging for cereal, syrup, pancake mix, and detergent; salt and pepper shakers; string holders; cookbooks; hand towels; placemats; grocery list reminders; and, wall hangings.  Any object found in a kitchen could be-and often was-transformed into anti-black propaganda.

Aunt Jemima In the 1880s, Chris Rutt, who had recently developed the idea of a self-rising pancake batter, attended a minstrel show that included a skit with a southern mammy character named Aunt Jemima.  Rutt and his partner, Charles Underwood, decided that the mammy, dressed in an apron and bandana, would help distinguish and sell their pancake mix.  When the R.T. Davis Mill Company purchased Rutt and Underwood’s company, they employed a real person to portray Aunt Jemima in their marketing scheme. Nancy Green, born a slave in Kentucky in 1834, became the first “real” Aunt Jemima. She impersonated Aunt Jemima until her death in 1923. At the 1893 World’s Exposition in Chicago, Green, as Aunt Jemima, sang songs, cooked pancakes, and told romanticized stories about the Old South as a happy place for blacks and whites. Afterwards, her image was plastered on billboards nationwide, with the caption, “I’se in town, honey.” In her role as Aunt Jemima, Green made appearances at countless country fairs, flea markets, food shows, and local grocery stores. By the turn of the century, Aunt Jemima, along with the Armour meat chef, were the two commercial symbols most trusted by American housewives.

Racism On The Lawn The lawn jockey is a decorative yard ornament that caricatures black people and promotes the idea of their servitude.  Typically a cast replica about half-scale, it depicts a black man dressed in jockey’s clothing carrying a lantern or a metal ring suitable for hitching a horse. The black lawn jockeys often have exaggerated features, such as bulging eyes, large red lips, a flat nose and curly hair. The flesh of the figure is usually a glossy black color. Traditionally, two styles of lawn jockey have been produced: the stocky, hunched “Jocko” and the taller, thinner “Cavalier Spirit.” Both styles were still manufactured in 2012. Many Americans, especially African Americans, feel that lawn jockeys are racially offensive.  It is common for homeowners to repaint the figure’s skin with pink or white paint to avoid charges of being racially insensitive.

Caricaturing Black People In the United States, all racial groups have been caricatured, but none as often or in as many ways as black Americans. Blacks have been portrayed in popular culture as pitiable exotics, cannibalistic savages, hypersexual deviants, childlike buffoons, obedient servants, self-loathing victims, and menaces to society. These anti-black depictions routinely took form in material objects, such as ashtrays, drinking glasses, banks, games, fishing lures, detergent boxes, and other everyday items.  This case holds objects that illustrate some of the major anti-black caricatures. Pickaninnies Golliwog Tom Coon Jezebel Tragic Mulatto Sapphire

Savage Caricature The Savage caricature showed Africans as animalistic, crazed, or comical cannibals, often with bones in their oversized lips. Drawn from the pseudo-scientific early anthropological theories of the late 1800s, the Savage represented Africans as primitives who were less evolved than their supposedly superior European counterparts.

Racist Cartoons Between 1928 and 1950, America’s premier animators-Walt Disney Corporation, Warner Bros., Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Merrie Melodies, Looney Tunes, and R.K.O. Radio Pictures-produced many cartoons that ridiculed the appearance, behavior, and intelligence of African Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities. Racist Cartoons

Charbonnet Doll Collection From its inception, the Jim Crow Museum had dolls, mostly Mammy, Tom, and Pickaninny versions.  In 2010, Marc Charbonnet, a prominent interior designer in New York, donated a collection of dolls to the Museum, including some that defame African Africans and some that exalt them and celebrate African American culture.

Games And Toys Games are effective vehicles for spreading racial stereotypes and prejudice.  All of the common caricatures of blacks were represented in games.  Players, often children, received messages through a game’s graphics and text that blacks were, for example, lazy or deviant and deserved to be mocked or hurt.

Racist Imports In 2011, approximately one-fourth of the objects in the Jim Crow Museum were produced in other countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, and Taiwan.

The N-Word The word nigger is a shorthand way of saying that blacks possessed the moral, intellectual, social, and physical characteristics of the Coon, Brute, Tom, Mammy, and other racial caricatures.  Although considered by many people to be a hateful slur, the word is used in different ways and contexts to connote different meanings. More information on the N-Word

Racism As Commodity All of the objects in the Jim Crow Museum have market values.  In 2011, there were more than 50,000 collectors of “Black Americana,” a category that includes racist artifacts.  Generally, the more racist an object is, the higher the price it commands.

Mammy From slavery through the Jim Crow period, the mammy caricature served the political, social, and economic interests of mainstream white America. During slavery, the mammy caricature presented the idea that blacks-in this case, black women-were content, and even happy, as slaves. Her wide grin, hearty laugher, and loyal servitude were offered as evidence of the supposed humanity of the institution of slavery. The mammy caricature romanticized the realities of slave and servant life and obscured the unequal foundation of the master-servant power structure. Portrayed as an obese, coarse, maternal figure, the mammy had great love for her white “family,” but often treated her own family with disdain. Although she had children, sometimes many, she was, by mainstream standards, sexually unappealing. She “belonged” to the white family, though it was rarely stated. She was a faithful worker. She had no black friends; the white family was her entire world. More information on the Mammy Caricature http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/antiblack.htm

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