Oh, Darlies, How My Heart Grows Weary...

Way down upon the Sewanee River (okay, actually at the local supermarket), there they were:

Packages of Darlie Toothpaste.

Why do I comment on a brand of toothpaste? Well, Darlie was originally marketed in the United States not as Darlie, but as as one of the "less-refined" words for black people. And indeed, the packaging, even today, boasts a picture of a very clearly African-American man in a top hat!

I first heard of Darlie about a year and a half ago, when I went to a screening of a film called C.S.A.: the Confederate States of America. Darkie (there, I used it) Toothpaste was just one of a few products promoted in fake commercials during the film, which was a Ken Burns-style mockumentary of the history of a victorious Confederacy.

Prior to coming to Asia, I had read that Darkie Toothpaste was being sold as Darlie all over the Far East, though Colgate-Palmolive withdrew it from the American market in 1985.

Now, I'm not the most squeamish person when it comes to racist images. Nor am I one to buy or not buy a product because of its past racist marketing practices. I don't see the point, for instances, in foregoing Aunt Jemima products because the product used to be marketed with the now-offensive mammy-in-kerchief image. I even have a certain fascination with blackface, in a historical way, and have read a few books about it.

But actually seeing an image like that still in use was something else.

It's hard to know to what extent Taiwan is really a racist society, or to what extent Taiwanese people have adopted American anti-black prejudices and stereotypes. So far, everyone I have seen or met in Taiwan has been either Han Chinese or white, the latter group all being people affiliated with the ESL/EFL industry. But I have heard reports that, within ESL/EFL, a lot of prejudice does exist against African-African and other non-white teachers. ABCs (American Born Chinese...the term is widely used among Chinese-Americans and is not, as near as I can tell, offensive) apparently have the hardest time, since they often have to convince a skeptical Taiwanese public that they are actually native speakers. Oddly, it seems to be easier for native Taiwanese to find ESL/EFL jobs than for ABCs.

With respect to African-Americans, I gather that some "racism" is really more a lack of cultural knowledge and background. In Japan, the popularity of rap music has spawned Japanese fans who put on ganguro--literally, blackface--makeup, wholly unaware of what blackface signifies in an American context. When I noticed the tubes of Darlie on display, I pointed them out to Ruby, my director of studies, who was kind enough to take me shopping the second day I was here. I explained to her that Darlie had originally been Darkie, and what Darkie meant in American English. A kind of explosion of recognition detonated across her face.

"Ah...a word for despise black people...like nigger!" she said, with a smile that beamed a certain pride. I really have no idea how she picked up the N-word. If she were closer to my age, I could presume she might have gotten it from rap music, but she's on the north side of 50, and this seems unlikely. Her English is fluent but error-prone as it comes to formal grammar; for instance, she frequently fails to make gender distinctions in her pronouns and will refer to Eve, the head of our school, as "he".

But somehow, she knew the N-word.