McSlavery Happy Meal

Do we still really have to constantly remind those Americans of African decent that their ancestors used to be slaves -- in a McDonald's Happy Meal? I picked one up earlier tonight for the wife and was asked by the guy in the booth if the toy would be for a girl or a boy. Cleverly remembering that I now have a four-month-old daughter, I said, "girl." As we finished up the salty morsels, hiding out in the baby's room because said baby was slumbering in the living room and we dared not wake her up with the sounds of gnashing teeth and clogging arteries, the wife pulls out the toy that came with the Happy Meal. It was a little book featuring one of the "American Girls," which are a pretty popular type of doll for girls. Each doll is a character with a little back story. Quite popular among the very little ladies.

So she opens this one up and it's about "Addy" the ex-slave who escaped to freedom during the Civil War. The book tells a sad story -- escaping the plantation with her mother under cover of night, Addy's family members being sold off...all stuff you want to be reminded of over that warm McNugget. I thought about the conversation that would ensue had my daughter been old enough to read. No biggie, she's got to learn about tough subjects, but something was irking me about the whole presentation. Take a look at the photo I took, Addy is the black girl and the picture below is a perky little blonde white girl named Kitt Kittredge, who "loves writing for newspapers." Kit is from the depression era so she's been through some hard times too I guess. The American Girls seem to all be facing adversity in some way. Fine. But here's the rub: the black girl has to be the ex-slave. Stay with me here.

When I say "slavery" what are the first images that enter your mind? I've asked this of folks before and usually I hear "black man, plantation, chains, Africa," and this is all correct, but can I ask you one question? Do any of you know where the word "slave" comes from? You probably don't. Not to worry, I didn't either till recently. Let me back up a bit for a brief history of slavery. The idea of owning another person and making them labor for you began with the first humans. Tribal disputes over land, skirmishes and battles resulted in the defeated party being enslaved to the victorious party. Ironically this had to have begun in Africa, since that's where the first humans can be traced back to. But as humanity spread out to the surrounding areas, each local population was enslaving its own through various practices. Now it gets interesting, because the word "slave" actually comes from "Slav," referring to a person of Slavic origin. Apparently at one point in history the Slavic folks were the most enslaved people in the world, everyone seemed to own one. Last time I checked, Slavic people looked a lot more like Kit Kittredge than Addy Walker. Kit could easily have had some Slavic ancestors, or she herself could have been a slave given the right time period. But, no, it has to be the black girl who's the slave. True, blacks in America were among the most recently enslaved people, but it annoys me to no end that a many-thousand-year-old institution -- that eventually ended up in America brought by mainly British seems to take the rap for the whole concept of slavery, so much so that any person who thinks of the word, thinks of America.

A little more history. Once people of Europe and Asia began to outlaw enslaving their own people, they eventually developed the ability to travel to Africa, and there they found a whole other population of people who they had no rules for. So they started buying slaves from Africa. By the way, the idea of colonials going into the heart of Africa and dragging people out of villages is bogus. It was extremely rare for westerners to attempt excursions to the interior of Africa at the time because their life expectancy, what with disease, and predators, and just not knowing the lay of the land, was akin to that of the common housefly. So they basically go to Africa and simply bought people who were already slaves owned by other Africans. And so, it spread to America, sadly, but slavery's dying gasp comes in the form of Christians in the West, starting to realize that this world-wide despicable and horrific practice should end. The writings that emerged, defending whites' superiority over blacks never really existed before these attacks on slavery began to manifest themselves, so pro-slavery advocates had to come up with ways to justify keeping their African slaves. That was really the first time "race" started to enter into the whole idea, before it was "class" thing, or a "debt" thing, or a "we defeated your tribe in battle" thing.

So, on to the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil Rights Movement in America, and that all leads up to: we got the little white girl with the pink sweater who likes to write for the newspaper, and the black girl who was an ex-slave on the side of the Happy Meal box. All that history, and it boils down to that. One of the youngest countries in the world, having had slavery for only a small fraction of the time that the older countries had it, and we're the poster boy. Well. It's wrong. Gotta talk about race, gotta talk about race, gotta talk about slavery (but only in the United States). Pardon me, but I grew up in the 70's and was taught that race was a matter of trivia, and discrimination was a thing of the past. The sooner we teach this stuff as history, in the proper context of the history of the globe, the easier it will be to send it to its grave. Wait a second, don't hate on me for "wanting to forget" about slavery and racism, it has a firm place in my historical memory. I'd just like to see a cute black girl on a Happy Meal box and perhaps hear about how she wants to grow up and be a dentist like her dad. No, she's black...everyone assumes she's a victim, gotta remind everyone about slavery, but, again, only slavery in America. But that's just me.