From the New York Times, a black woman writes:
But by the time I was 11 years old, even the smell of watermelon was enough to send me running to the bathroom with my most recent meal returning to my throat. It seemed I had grown violently allergic to the fruit.
I was a brown girl growing up in the United States. By that point in my life, I had seen the racist representations associated with African-Americans and watermelons, heard the terrifying stories of black men being lynched with watermelons hanging around them, watched black migrants from the South try to eke out a living in the big city by driving through neighborhoods like my own — Bushwick, in Brooklyn — with trucks loaded down with the fruit.
In a book I found at the library, a camp song about a watermelon vine was illustrated with caricatures of sleepy-looking black people sitting by trees, grinning and eating watermelon. Slowly, the hideousness of the stereotype began to sink in. In the eyes of those who told and repeated the jokes, we were shuffling, googly-eyed and lesser than.
Perhaps my allergy was actually a deep physical revulsion that came from the psychological impression and weight of the association. Whatever it was, I could no longer eat watermelon.
Comments to NYT:
* Clearly a demon she wrestles with. We don’t pick our demons; they seem to pick us. I am less curious about why she wrote this piece and more about why the Times chose to run it. What discourse does it advance? Misconceptions about whom we let in to our circle of friendship where familiarity pricks the balloons of sensitivity or self importance generally come up when we realize that some things still sting. Ms Woodson does her friend the disservice of lack of honesty at the outset or lack of loyalty at the end of this story. I feel more sorry for her dilemma than for her story.
* I’m a non-white immigrant who has been in this country for most of my life. There are many like me who are tired of this incessant emphasis of the NYT on all things black and racist. Authors (such as this one in the article) who write about this are published and lauded, movies about this are praised, and incidents involving this are blown out of all proportion. The current perception is that if it does not have a race angle, it won’t appear in the NYT. The liberal white guilt is nauseating. There are many other facets to America and American history, and we need to go forward as one people in a society where race does not matter, but culture does.
* It’s pretty clear we need a law that stops all remarks with any ethnic content that could offend or displease anyone — no more Scottish jokes, Irish jokes, cowboy jokes, etc. This would probably be illegal:
“And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or …”
