Childhood's Double Meanings

I love to sing-a about the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a. I love to sing-a about the sky of blue-a and a tea for two-a…I love to sing!

 I have been singing this song from a favorite Merrie Molodies cartoon for most of my life.  Today, I decided to make the little owl who sings the song my Facebook profile picture.  I wanted to know what the song’s actual words were so I did a quick internet search.  I learned that Cab Calloway and Al Jolson had made the song popular.  I thought, “It’s a Cab Calloway song!  No wonder I like it!”  The name Al Jolson sounded familiar but I didn’t remember why.  Another quick internet search informed me that he was a popular American singer, actor and comedian.  Then came the shock.  I chose to look at the images before reading through all the text of the Wikipedia entry for him.  What did I find?  A picture of him in blackface!  My heart sank.  My stomach went sour.  I thought about every time I’ve sung that song over the years.  I felt tricked, used.  I thought about how Beverly Tatum compares racism to smog in Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria.  She says we are always breathing it in.  Was this cartoon smog that I now needed to clear from my lungs?  Did I need to take down the image from my FB page and cease from singing the little ditty that has made me so happy over the years?

I recalled the two occasions I have heard White friends use the phrase “tar baby.”  For me, that phrase is one I understand as a derogatory term for Black people.  For them (as I learned), it is a phrase used to refer to a sticky situation, a harmless saying connected to the beloved Uncle Remus stories featuring Br’er rabbit.  They had no idea they had ingested the smog and never intended to offend anyone by using the phrase “tar baby.”  The first time I told a friend about how I understood that phrase was one of the most affirming moments in my life.  He heard what I had to say and was clearly concerned about the impact of what he’d said.  After our conversation, he did some research and learned a new perspective on the phrase.  That was the part of his response that impressed me the most:  the fact that he took action to educate himself.  So, that’s what I decided to do.

I read further about Mr. Al Jolson.  What I learned revealed that our country’s racial history is hardly a simple thing.  It is very complex.  I learned first of all that Al Jolson was born as Asa Yoelson.  A Jewish immigrant, he like so many others who come to this country changed his name to something that sounded more “American.”  He began wearing blackface when his career began to stall and became the most popular singer to perform wearing it.  Some speculate that he not only wore blackface out of necessity but that it was symbolic of the oppression of both Black and Jewish people.  So was this guy using blackface to express his own experience of bigotry?

Maybe.  He clearly had some feelings that discrimination against Black people was wrong.  There are examples of ways he stood up for equal treatment of Blacks on Broadway.  For example, he demanded that Cab Calloway be treated with the same respect given to White performers whenever they worked together.  His music selection throughout his career exposed America to the African-American art forms of jazz, ragtime and blues, making space for our nation to embrace people like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Fats Waller.  This guy that wore blackface (a practice that is pretty universally known among Black people as derogatory) also promoted a play by a black playwright (Garland Anderson) at a time when Black people were banned from starring in Broadway plays.  That play went on to become the first Broadway production with an all-black cast.  Clearly, this man was not one dimensional.

It reminds me of the movie Crash, how it includes characters who are simultaneously valiant and cruel.  Personally, given Tatum’s idea of racism as smog, none of us are without bias but as Al Jolson life illustrates, that doesn’t mean we do not have redeeming, open-minded and affirming characteristics as well.  Just like my friends who used the phrase “tar baby,” it is possible to be firmly committed to justice and still discover places where we need growth, where we need to deepen our understanding of other people’s perspectives.

So, I decided not to take down the owl as my profile picture.  It like Al Jolson is a manifestation of tolerance and intolerance ironically sitting side by side, co-existing.  His wearing of blackface is a part of a very hurtful legacy of racism in our country but I get the feeling that it was his actions to promote equality that somehow inspired this cartoon.  When I watched it today, I realized I have been influenced by much more than the cartoon’s song.  Its story line planted seeds in me that I’m sure I am still harvesting.  It is the story of a young owl with a song that is outside of the cultural norms of his family.  An owl who despite being devalued by others is confident about who he is and continues to sing his song, the way he felt it in his soul.  Eventually, it is his song that influences those who had demeaned and mistreated him to embrace his difference.   Sounds to me like this piece of blackface history (something created to demean) has somehow made space for something more affirming to develop.  As they say in the Christian church, what was meant for evil was used for good.  That is something worth celebrating, in my opinion.

All data about Al Jolson taken from Wikipedia.

Watch the cartoon for yourself on Youtube.