MANSFIELD: Cultural Shifts

In this ever-evolving world in which we live, some changes are profound, while others are more subtle … virtually imperceptible (it’s almost as if things have always been this way). Still others are startling.

An example of the former has to do with the removal of statues in the South that are dedicated to traitors. No other country in the history of the world has had monuments that glorify traitors — men like Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and Stonewall Jackson. The United States has this distinction all to itself.

And it’s a testament to the virulence of racial animus still extant in this country that it has taken over 150 years since the end of the Civil War for some of the offensive statuary to be taken off of their pedestals. Indeed, some backward states, such as Alabama, have passed laws to ensure that the racist symbols of the failed rebellion are never removed.

When the New Orleans city council recently declared the statutes in that city a public nuisance and ordered that they be removed, Mayor Mitch Landrieu said they “celebrated a fictional, sanitized Confederacy, ignoring the enslaved, ignoring the terror that it actually stood for.” He concluded by saying that maybe they could be displayed in a museum, one perhaps dedicated to the relics of America’s ugly past.

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The next cultural shift has to do with television advertising. Of late I’ve noticed integrated couples in commercials, and the one I recall most prominently is for insurance for military families, and it appears to feature a real married couple (not actors) with their biracial daughter. Of course I could be wrong about them being an actual couple, but there isn’t any doubt as to their race — one is white and the other is black.

The next ad is for an automobile company, and this happy black and white couple is beaming at each other as they drive off in this new vehicle, the picture of domesticated bliss. The last one features an elderly white couple and their biracial granddaughter.

What does any of this mean? Have we finally come of age racially in this country? Are these ad agencies sticking a finger in the eye of the newly Trump empowered racists? I really don’t know.

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My last cultural observation has to do with language, and the public use of the “S” word. Now as a fan of comic Lewis Black, I’m used to him ranting “Shitty, shit shit!” But of late I’ve heard professionals in public settings (at a speech at the Wyndham Hotel no less!) casually throwing the “S” word around for emphasis.

This is not the first time I’ve heard it used this year in similar situations, and I am neither appalled nor particularly surprised; in fact, I applaud the loosening of the linguistic rules a bit. I was just about to doze off to sleep when the speaker spiced up his commentary. Maybe he noticed my eyelids getting heavy.

From CoolCleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.

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