RACIST CARTOONS - (Click on photo to enlarge)

There has been some discussion recently on the topic as to whether black history month is really necessary anymore now that we have a black president. Into this debate blunders the New York Post. Yesterday, the day after President Obama signed the stimulus bill, the paper ran a cartoon depicting the bill's author as a dead monkey, full of bullet holes and covered in blood after being shot by police. “They’ll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill,” says one of the cops. On the previous page of the paper was a photo of President Obama signing the stimulus package. It is reported that threats against the President’s life have been on the increase in recent days.

A firestorm of criticism did not dissuade the editor of the Rupert Murdoch owned Post from claiming that the cartoon has no racial undertones, that it's not about Obama, and that it was simply referencing an incident earlier this week when police shot a pet chimpanzee. Moreover the editor claimed that he was unaware that blacks had ever been portrayed as apes.

I find it astonishing that the editors of the New York Post would claim ignorance of the long and disgraceful history of cartoons both depicting and insinuating that all those who are not “white” are more closely related to apes than human beings. This practice may have begun as a convenient, if ignorant, misreading Darwin’s Origin of the Species, but the idea was quickly embraced by white supremacists and planters in the South to justify slavery. (Animals and beasts of burden do not require the rights of human beings.) Confederate cartoonist Adalbert Volck used simian features to depict not only blacks but political figures who favored emancipation. Abraham Lincoln was repeatedly drawn with pronounced simian features, and was frequently described by his detractors as “The Original Baboon.” (See Cartoon)

The recent New York Post cartoon, which bluntly asserts that the stimulus package must have been conceived by an ape is therefore doubly offensive given President Obama’s pronounced admiration for Lincoln. The claim that no racist aspersions were being directed at President Obama by asserting that the stimulus package had it’s origin in the mind of a gorilla does not bare scrutiny. The cartoon is a throwback to the worst kind of racism.

Through the 19th century it was common practice to portray anyone who was not white as Ape-like. Not only blacks, but Irish, Chinese and Jews were often categorized as subspecies of human beings inferior to Arians and White Ango-Saxons – as the cartoons amply demonstrate.

Rum by Gum

News item: The State Legislature is in session and Governor Huntsman has proposed that the State of Utah do away with its Private Club Law. Senate President Michael Waddoups, Republican from Taylorsville and Sen. John Valentine of Orem have responded with a law that would eliminate private club memberships and replace them with drivers license scanners in every tavern, bar and restaurant in the state. The data collected would be fed into a central law enforcement data bank: The Senators explained the notion behind the new system:

“If a restaurant is serving alcohol, a person would have to show ID when ordering alcohol. That way if the restaurant patron later went to a bar, the bar tender would know how much the patron had already drank.” Sen. Valentine

“We need to know who is going into these establishments and how much they are drinking… The system would also be most helpful in facilitating DUI arrests.”
Sen. Mike Waddoups.

Senator Waddoups is also proposing amendments to State Liquor laws requiring that restaurants store alcohol and prepare drinks behind blinds in secure areas away from patrons so that “impressionable children” could not see the drinks and be influenced or tempted by their allure.

RUM by GUM
The Anthem of the Utah State Liquor Control Commission (AKA DABC)
Lyrics by G.M. McDonough

Oh we’re coming, we’re coming, the righteous and true
We have an agenda that we will push through
With laws most Orwelian, oppressive and odd,
Abusive, intrusive and ordained by god,

Chorus
Away! away with rum by gum
Rum by gum, rum by gum
Away! away, with rum by gum,
The song of the Liquor Commission.

Oh you don’t have to drink to sell gin, rum or rye,
Just remember your marketing class from the “Y”
It’s really quite simple for everyone knows,
It all tastes the same when you’re holding your nose.

Chorus
Away! away with rum by gum
Rum by gum, rum by gum
Away! away, with rum by gum,
The song of the Liquor Commission.

We put little labels on all that we sell.
To warn that the contents will not do you well
Don’t laugh at these warnings, or think it’s just guff,
We know that it’s poison we ordered the stuff!

Chorus
Away! away with rum by gum…etc.

We’ll put paper bracelets on all who drink beer
At ball games and concerts so we needn’t fear,
That innocent children outside the turnstiles
Will fail to recognize who are Gentiles.

Chorus
Away! away with rum by gum… etc.

We’ll have guards at the gates to check all your IDs
And if you’re Hispanic, you’d better say: ”Please”
No license no liquor - its righteous we think
That illegal aliens should never drink!

Chorus
Away! away with rum by gum… etc.

Oh our stores are not cluttered with slow selling wine
That cost you a fortune, and tastes so divine.
It’s the alky, the wino we’re trying to please,
If we could just do it, we’d only sell squeeze!

Chorus
Away! away with rum by gum… etc.

We have plenty of agents and all under age
Who help us bust clubs and the St. Pats Parade
Don’t say it’s entrapment or some kind of Joke,
Just look at what happened to Brophy’s Dead Goat!

Chorus
Away! away with rum by gum… etc.

Oh we’re coming we’re coming our brave little corps
To keep our state worthy and wholesome, and pure,
Jon Huntsman appoints us to serve ‘til the end,
As long as we maintain our “T” Recommend”

Chorus
Away! away with rum by gum…etc.

So tourist before you set foot in our state
Take heed that we’ll track every move that you make
The places you enter, and how much you drink
What faith you belong to… the thoughts that you think.

Away! away with rum by gum
Rum by gum, rum by gum
Away! away, with rum by gum,
The song of the Liquor Commission.

"Come to the Cullen"

GHOSTS

(Or The Night I was Mugged)

“Come to the Cullen, the Cullen, the Cullen,
Crockery floors and lights in bottles!”

The first words that my grandmother heard
As she stepped onto the train platform
In Salt Lake City in Eighteen Eighty Four
Were sung by a man in a tall hat from a carriage.

For the young Irish girl fresh off the boat,
The crier’s call defined what it meant to come to America,
A place where all manner of wonders were possible.
There, with the backdrop of the Wasatch Mountains
Looming above the new city, the man was
As strange as something out of Xanadu,
But he offered a world of promise and progress.
She remembered the moment,
And later taught the rime to her son, my father
Who decades later would teach it to me.

One snowy winter day,
While doing research at the Utah History Library
In the old Denver and Rio Grande Railroad Station,
I came across an advertising flyer for the CuIlen Hotel.
The ad called it “The City’s Newest and Finest.”
A photograph in the Society’s archive
Revealed the Cullen to be an impressive five story building.
Occupying most of the south side of Second South
Between Main and West Temple.
Colorful Flags and streamers flew from her roof top,
And directly in front stood a large carriage
Drawn by beautifully matched horses.
Across the top of the carriage’s fringed fabric canopy
Were emblazoned the words: “The Cullen, the Cullen, the Cullen.”
In the carriage sat a thin man holding a whip.
He wore a tall silk hat!
My grandmother’s magic singer had physical form once again.
And after more than a century of stony silence
His ghostly chant was united with his image.

When they closed the library late that afternoon
And I stepped into the swirling wind driven snow
That howled about the old station,
I imagined that I heard the ghostly chant of the crier.
But across the street, in front of the Rescue Mission,
The long lines of huddled homeless were sullen and silent.
Voiceless witnesses to unfulfilled promises.
Behind me other specters circled menacingly.

O’Hozho

Ranting at the Politicians

From O'Hozho
To: The Salt Lake County Council

Dear Councilman,

My old computer is in the process of gasping its last byte of data and I am culling files in an attempt to prolong its misery… and yours. One of the old files I ran across is filled with correspondence (letters and emails) to Salt Lake County complaining of the omission of the Irish from any mention in various Salt Lake County publications most notably Welcoming the World: The History of Salt Lake County.

It is approaching 5 years since I appeared before the County Council to officially register the complaint below on behalf of the Utah Hibernian Society and the Irish families who helped build Salt Lake County. I ended that presentation with the hope that the oversights would be corrected and the insult redressed.

In the fall of 2004 I complained again that nothing had been done and I was summarily dismissed by Mayor Nancy Workman who said something to the effect: ‘I don’t know what he’s complaining about. We let him speak before the Council.’

What I said before the Council was the following:

Salt Lake County Council General Meeting 4:30 PM Tuesday March 16th, 2004


I want to thank the Salt Lake County Council for the opportunity of speaking today. I have duly noted and deeply appreciated the interest that some of you have shown the society through your attendance at the annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade this last weekend. The Utah Hibernian Society is a non sectarian cultural organization founded to promote the study appreciation and dissemination of all things Irish including the arts, music, dance, poetry , theater, literature language and parades. The Society is open to all Utahans regardless of race, creed or place of national origin… making it unique among Utah’s ethnic cultural organizations. I am here this evening to note the celebration of St. Patrick’s Day and to register a complaint.

Over the last quarter of the 20th century, a large number of books, articles and educational materials have appeared celebrating the ethnic diversity of the State of Utah. To date no mention has been made of the considerable influence that the Irish have had on the settlement and development of this state and the Intermountain West. The reasons for the omission of the Irish are many, and are worth examining.

Until very recently, American history was written and taught from a distinctly white, Anglo Saxon point of view. It has only been since the Civil Rights movement in the 1960's that any attention was given to the long neglected histories of Utah’s ethnic minorities. Since that time, more than a dozen local histories have appeared, whose expressed purpose was to correct past oversights. The first serious local effort, The Peoples of Utah, focused on the populations from Europe who were brought to the state to work in Utah’s mines. Irish miners made up a large portion of foreign born mine labor in the 19th century and held leadership positions in the militant Western Federation of Miners (WFM). The Greek, Italian and Slavic workers who were imported to Utah at the turn of the 20th Century were brought in to undermine the power of this union. The WFM members regarded these new arrivals as “Scab” labor routinely employed as strike breakers. Their appearance threatened the hard earned gains that union had made over the previous decades. As a result, the new arrivals viewed the Irish as a very hostile segment of the English speaking majority. They did not recognize that the Irish themselves had been discriminated against, and the new arrivals confused the Irish with other hostile nativist and anti immigrant groups. As employment opportunities in the mines declined, many of the original Irish fled the state and the Irish population of Utah declined dramatically in the first two decades of the 20th century. The author of the “Peoples of Utah,” Helen Papanicholis made no effort to distinguish the Irish miners from the larger English population. As a result, no mention of the Irish appears in this first seminal work on the subject.

In the years that followed the publication of The Peoples of Utah, a number of other histories appeared which either enlarged upon these ethnic histories or focused on other minority populations. These include: Utah: An Hispanic History, Toil and Rage in a New Land: The Story of Utah’s Greeks, and The History of the Jews in Utah and Idaho.

The Other Utahns: Missing Stories, is a photographic essay celebrating Utah’s ethnic diversity. It includes American Indians, Japanese, Chinese, Greeks, Italians, Cubans, Hungarians, Poles, Mexicans, and Russians. There is no mention of the Irish. When prominent Irish do appear they are frequently mis-identified as being some other nationality. Many of Utah’s most prominent Irish families - including my own - are identified, mistakenly, as “Canadian.” Ignored by both traditional Anglo writers and the new ethnic revisionist historians, the Irish fell through the cracks.

One of the most egregious of these oversights is Welcoming the World: The History of Salt Lake County, funded and published by Salt Lake County. This publication also features the above named nationalities, as well as Germans, Basques, Croats, Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders. There is no mention of the Irish. The longstanding prominence and success of some Irish families in this valley (Kearns, Gallivan, Judge, Hogle, Ivers, McDonough, McCarthy, Fitzpatrick, and O’Brien to name a few) has obscured the discrimination and hardships suffered in the past by the vast majority of Utah’s Irish. Indeed, most Utahans today do not know the ethnic identity of some of Utah’s most prominent families, nor are they aware of the vociferous anti-Irish sentiment prevalent in Utah during the 19th century. In the 20th century, many writers continued to rely on materials that were stereotypical and racist in writing on the Irish in this state. Dr. Vincent Chang, of the University of Utah English Department -a scholar whose ethnic origins are as remote from the Irish as can be imagined - has documented the racist attitudes toward the Irish in the American Press and popular culture during the 19th century. I have duplicated some examples from Dr. Chang’s book: Joyce Race and Empire to illustrate how prevalent these attitudes were in the 19th century. Unfortunately these attitudes are not extinct. While the stereotypes of Steppin Fetchit, Amos and Andy, Charlie Chan and Tonto have been largely relegated to the past, the stereotypical depiction of the drunken Irishmen is very much with us to this day.

We are unquestionably in a unique situation here in Utah. Perhaps it is not surprising that a culture that is entirely abstemious would tend to pass judgment on one that is not. But the lack of understanding goes far beyond the question of alcohol. The Irish have been excluded from their rightful place in Utah history and most specifically the history of Salt Lake County. Like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man – they are ignored as if they were never here at all.