Imagine walking through the isles of an antique shop looking for vintage items to decorate your home with when your search is disrupted by a racist caricature staring at you. Those images, along with a number of caricatured dolls, were for sale at an antique mall in Milwaukee, per Fox 6 Now.
Chloe Longmire told reporters she had gone to Antiques on Pierce with her 7-year-old daughter to set up their “Racial Justice Apparel” merchandise when across the way, she saw a vendor marketing a piece of racist history. On display were minstrel cartoons with the classic racist depictions from the early 1900s. Black painted skin, red hotdog lips and bulging eyes were sitting on the wall with a price sticker like it was nothing more than a vintage boy band poster. Instead of putting these images in a museum to educate on the history of Sambo art and the shameful defense of slavery and segregation, the pieces were on sale for up to $895.
“That’s the price of Black pain and suffering - The definition of antique is high-value collectibles,” she said. “I’m not sure why others would want to profit off of trauma and pain and history that has brought so many people – it’s re-traumatizing to see those things, and to see people making money from it – from other people’s pain,” said Longmire via Fox 6.
I wonder... who is their target consumer group? ‘Cause it ain’t us.
Read more about this nonsense from Fox 6 Now:
That is the opposite message of Longmire’s small business. She was registered to sell her “Racial Justice Apparel” at Antiques on Pierce, but quickly packed up and complained after seeing the items in Booth 87. The store manager told her, she said, that the items were “Americana.”
“I said, ‘No, this is just racist. It’s offensive.’ She told me, ‘Well, we have Nazi memorabilia, too,’” said Longmire.
Antiques on Pierce owner Brian Belli declined multiple requests for an interview. Off camera, he told FOX6 News he wishes Longmire spoke with him directly before posting about it on Facebook. Belli said vendors must follow established content guidelines, but would not provide a copy of what those guidelines are.
Someone ring Ms. Elizabeth Meaders from New York and tell her there’s some things she could add to her 20,000 artifacts documenting Black history. At least Meaders planned to donate her findings to various museums so people could learn the context behind them.
It only makes you wonder how and where this vendor even found these “antiques.” It’s not like they were the Black baby angels lying around your grandmother’s house. These belong in the Jim Crow Museum.