I'm not sure whether this falls under being America-centric, liberal bias or just plain laziness, but this AP report on the offensive Mexican stamp controversy (see post below) describes it this way:
The White House and black activists in the U.S. on Thursday criticized the stamp featuring Memin Pinguin, a sort of Jim Crow-era image of a black child that has been a cartoon character since the 1940s.
The last time I checked, Mexico didn't have Jim Crow laws and therefore didn't have a "Jim Crow era".
3 comments:
The AP report had a national audience, not an international one. Such articles typically use American historical points of reference in order to ensure their readers can better relate to the subject being discussed.
How exactly is it liberal to use context to ensure that your readers can relate to what you're talking about?
First I could argue that nothing from a major U.S. media source has only a national audience, but that's a topic for another day :-)
Jim Crow laws were established in the 1890's and most were eventually rescinded by the 1950's and 1960's. Mexico's Memin Pinguin cartoon debuted in the 1940's and was most popular in the 1970's and 1980's.
Therefore, the Jim Crow laws have very little to do with either the time or place in which Memin flourished.
Now then, why use Jim Crow as a reference (aside from laziness to understand the history)?
I can only imagine that it's becuase the first thing that comes to this author's mind when it comes to racism against blacks anywhere in the world is a compare it to something evil from southern, white, America.
Perhaps a better alternative might have been to say the the cartoon grew in popularity during the era of Hollywood blaxpoitation films which probably had more effect on Mexican (and global) attitudes towards blacks than Jim Crow laws ever did.
This is what we came up with, about the Memin Pinguin. It was kind of hard, becasue we had to unify the views from our american, mexican, and european team members. Check it out, I hope you like it..
http://www.mobuzztv.com/shows/170.html
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