From this idiot, James Lileks, who knows he's wrong
I am now bracing for the mail that accuses me of missing the days of Jim Crow. Whatever. It wasn't all Amos and Andy.
and doesn't care. More than not caring, this little quip acknowledges his nostalgia.
Had I less discipline I could come to hate people who so blithely enjoy his fantasies (because he's not old enough for them to be memories) of Black subjugation.
Now this. To make up for the paucity of bleatitude, I present first an ad from 1943, one of the castoffs from the next book. It’s a long one, from Colliers:
Note the opening premise: We’re not traveling anymore. That was a given. Everyone got it, and everyone knew why.
The Steward was one of those peculiar archetypes of American apartheid – along with the Porter and the Maid. Unlike the domestic servant, though, he contained no sass. Think Uncle Ben: big toothy smile, yassir. Domestic servants, however, were allowed a great deal of sass – listen to the old Great Gildersleeve shows, and you get a perfect picture of the popular idea of this idealized relationship. Gildy is henpecked and outdone by all his domestic associates, but the only person who comes across with any degree of pride or level-headedness is Birdie, the servant, and Gildy’s relationship to her is one of kindness and deference. You could say that’s easy: she didn’t count, so it was easy to be nice to her. But that’s wrong. There was a fundamental decency and mutual affection in their relationship. Yes, yes, idealized depiction of inherent inequalities, etc. As the argument no doubt goes, the shows perpetuated inequality by pretending they really didn’t exist. But it’s instructive to note what the popular culture held out as the ideal. Equality, not subjegation. Birdie was fully integrated into the family, and shared the same values. Nowadays I suspect a sitcom with a Black servant in a middle-class family would milk the clash of cultures, not the similarities. Wanda Sykes would star.
I am now bracing for the mail that accuses me of missing the days of Jim Crow. Whatever. It wasn't all Amos and Andy. And even Amos and Andy wasn't all Amos and Andy, but that's another story, and need to listen to a few score hours of "Lum and Abner" before I tackle that one.
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Birdie's Values
Quote from James Lileks column: "Birdie was fully integrated into the family, and shared the same values."
I find it interesting but not surprising that people like James Lileks still need to engage in magical thinking. He knows absolutely nothing about Pullman car porters, their working lives or culture. He and people like him have even less of an understanding of the role that these men played within black culture and society. In addition, his blithe assertion that family servants like "Birdie" were fully integrated into the families they worked for is absurd. Black domestic servants knew their place much better than the white families they worked for which explains why so many of them survived and held onto their jobs and "place" within these familes.
BTW, I am old enough to remember traveling on trains and eating in dining cars staffed by Pullman porters. I recall all of them as being dignified, intelligent men who didn't shuffle or grin all the time. Chester Himes, the author of "Cotton Comes to Harlem", once wrote a wonderful and memorable short story about a group of Pullman porters that full revealed their complexities and the complexities of the world they worked in. I think it was one of the best short stories Himes ever wrote.Â