On Sat, 9 Aug 2003 22:14:50 -0700, "newfy" wrote:
"Wendy Marsden" wrote in message
...
I'm driving behind a white GMC Jimmy SUV and it has
exactly one bumper sticker on it that says, "I hunt black
and tans". I'm looking at this with my mouth open thinking
they MUST be talking about dogs, they can't really be
talking about lynching, can they? I look closer to see if
there's a tiny "with" in there. Nope, but there's a silhouette
which I finally figure out (at a stop light when I can study it)
is a dog barking up a tree trunk.
Well, someone might have already pointed out that a "black
and tan" is a type of coonhound. The black and tan being for
their coloring. I have a redbone coonhound myself. The
reason the silhouette was of a dog barking up a tree is because
they tree the racoon/bear/mountain lion, etc. I would be willing
to bet there was no ill intent, just a proud black and tan hunter.
Perhaps, perhaps not. We cannot tell what was in the person's
mind, but the double entendre is there if one knows that black
people were called coons at one time in this country and that
this derived from the raccoon that black and tans are used to
hunt.
http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/coon/
The coon caricature is one of the most insulting of all
anti-Black caricatures. The name itself, an abbreviation
of raccoon, is dehumanizing. As with Sambo, the coon
was portrayed as a lazy, easily frightened, chronically
idle, inarticulate, buffoon. The coon differed from the
Sambo in subtle but important ways. Sambo was
depicted as a perpetual child, not capable of living as
an independent adult. The coon acted childish, but he
was an adult; albeit a good-for-little adult. Sambo was
portrayed as a loyal and contented servant. Indeed,
Sambo was offered as a defense for slavery and
egregation. How bad could these institutions have been,
asked the racialists, if Blacks were contented, even
happy, being servants? The coon, although he often
worked as a servant, was not happy with his status. He
was, simply, too lazy or too cynical to attempt to change
his lowly position. Also, by the 1900s, Sambo was
dentified with older, docile Blacks who accepted Jim
Crow laws and etiquette; whereas coons were
increasingly identified with young, urban Blacks who
disrespected Whites. Stated differently, the coon was
a Sambo gone bad.
The prototypical movie coon was Stepin Fetchit, the
slow-talking, slow-walking, self-demeaning nitwit. It took
his character almost a minute to say: "I'se be catchin' ma
feets nah, Boss." Donald Bogle, a cinema historian,
lambasted the coon, as played by Stepin Fetchit and
others:
Before its death, the coon developed into the most
blatantly degrading of all black stereotypes. The pure
coons emerged as no-account ******s, those unreliable,
crazy, lazy, subhuman creatures good for nothing more
than eating watermelons, stealing chickens, shooting
crap, or butchering the English language.
The coon caricature was born during American slavery.
Slave masters and overseers often described slaves as
"slow," "lazy," "wants pushing," "an eye servant," and
"trifling." The master and the slave operated with different
motives: the master desired to obtain from the slave the
greatest labor, by any means; the slave desired to do the
least labor while avoiding punishment. The slave
registered his protest against slavery by running away,
and, when that was not possible, by slowing work, doing
shoddy work, destroying work tools, and faking illness.
Slave masters attributed the slaves' poor work
performance to shiftlessness, stupidity, desire for
freedom, and genetic deficiencies.
More at the URL, including pictures.
Btw, the Brits had a songs using the word coon
and ****** back in the before 1930
http://www.bpmonline.org.uk/bpm4-evolving.html
5 The following table shows the number of incidences of the words
'coon' and '******' in titles of songs published in London in the
British Library Collection:
****** Coon
1880-1890 6 2
1891-1900 9 69
1901-1910 12 140
1911-1920 3 23
1921-1930 2 0
--
Dorothy
There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..
Outer Limits