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Question: Why did not one of them consider that angels aren’t necessarily white? Let me know if you see any more examples… Hat tip to The Y Spot and Hit and Run.
@Avvaa: I'm not sure even WASP male immigrants are welcome. There have been several tourists who have been detained because…
It’s like a giant explosion of originality!
God I’m feeling like contact patronizing.
The second cherub in Brookins’ cartoon looks Black to me. Are my eyes going ?
Nope. That there is a little black angel.
Blasphemy.
Saint Peter (Simon), of course, was a white guy. ‘Cos Judea, was chock foll of white guys.
Why did not one of them consider that angels aren’t necessarily white?
I don’t think that’s it.
Weren’t all the bus drivers at the time of the boycott white? I think one of the demands was for black drivers. Another demand was that white drivers treat blacks with courtesy. So perhaps the very unoriginal cartoonists are simply underlining both points?
ugh.
so patronizing! so unoriginal!
It makes me crazy to see how easily radicals are coopted and history rewritten (MLK is another case that comes to mind….)
Reminds me of a little snippet of poetry I read somewhere . . .
“She thinks that even up in Heaven
Her class sleeps late and snores
While small black cherubs rise at seven
To do celestial chores.”
The “she” in question is not Rosa, obviously, lest some troll attempt to make that point.
In regards to the cartoons, apparently the unoriginal is contagious. This theory explains both the multitude of buses up in Heaven, and the lack of non-white Angels.
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A little off-topic here:
Wherever did the idea that cherubim are little babies with wings come from? Biblically, cherubs are creatures with four wings and four faces, like this. I don’t know why people started imagining cherubim as puttos.
It’s easier to depict one face than four. :/
In the what’s-wrong-with-this-picture department:
Jane went to Paradise:
That was only fair.
Good Sir Walter met her first,
And led her up the stair.
Henry and Tobias,
And Miguel of Spain,
Stood with Shakespeare at the top
To welcome Jane —
I love it that Kipling loved Jane Austen, honest (even if this isn’t one of his better poems) but when Kipling imagined Austen being welcomed into paradise, the other great writers he envisaged greeting her… were all men.
Why did not one of them consider that angels aren’t necessarily white?
Good question! Likely an unconscious stereotype. Of course, white people are easier to draw a little faster (don’t have to fill in the color), but I imagine that’s not the reason.
RonF: Of course, white people are easier to draw a little faster (don’t have to fill in the color)
White people are not the color of white paper. Alison Bechdel wrote some good stuff about drawing characters who are black and Asian without doing the thing about assuming only non-white people have skin color that has to be filled in, white people are the color of the paper they’re drawn on. (It’s in The Indelible Alison Bechdel: I don’t know if it’s anywhere on line.)
Still, though, only 2 of the artists appear to have colored in Rosa Parks’ skin. So they all felt that Parks skin could be the color of the paper. I’d guess that all of these artists have a stock Gabriel design which they use whenever someone famous dies for the inevitable parade of nearly identical “welcome to heaven” cartoons. They thought to make him white long before Rosa Parks. It is the “default” after all.
Yeah, really. Wouldn’t it have been more original if other famous civil rights icons were waiting in heaven to greet her as she stepped off the bus ? Okay, a tad more original, at any rate.
Ok, the concept is a good one, if obvious. But do we need that many versions of it?
Oh yeah, and having just come to campus on the bus, i really wonder whether the things have a place in heaven.
Of course! Where do you think buses go when they die?
Except, they get shiny, tasteful paint jobs in place of the advertisements, perfect shock absorbers, plush cushy seats instead of naugahide, and drink dispenser, music player w/headphones, and selection of free and delicious donuts all built into the back of the seat ahead of you. And the donuts don’t make you fat. And they become as long as necessary, so there are always enough seats for everyone and nobody has to stand up.
I was wondering for awhile why nobody ever depicted a scene of Rosa sitting down in a seat (surrounded by people of every color) while some KKK-ers, complete with hoods, were standing up in the aisle a few feet away. Poetic justice. Of course, I’d imagine that there is no KKK in Heaven; you check your bigotry at the door.
That’d be the *buses* getting as long as necessary, not the donuts. Those, you just never run out of.