My tea bags are racist!

[lady_kishiria]

It's been brought to my attention that this is Blog Against Racism month. I wasn't sure what to write about, since it's such a huge subject and in this blog it's Cinco de Mayo all the time. (And that's a reference to the holiday being a celebration of Mexican victory over the French, not to a lot of drinking. If you drew the second conclusion, this column is for you.)

A couple of months ago, a friend offered me a box of Yerba Mate chai because she didn't care for it. Okay, I like yerba mate. I like chai. The product was merely okay, and then one afternoon I happened to read the box. It featured this poem:

The warm glow of the campfire
Reflects in their eyes
Around them, shadows of a culture fading,
the techno race at their back fence
But they have not noticed yet.

They pass the beautiful gourd
From hand to hand
A gentle smile reveals the sincerity
Of a cultural innocence
Western culture could use a strong brew
Of old fashioned fraternity.

Sit down, join our circle, and learn
From the natives of the far south.
The drinking of mate is more than meets the eye...
It is a cultural tradition
of Brotherhood.

Yesterday on the wagon in Brazil,
Today steaming in your cup...
Make yourself at home...

(Bad punctuation theirs.)

The poem is accompanied by a picture of some kind of labourers under a night sky, drinking out of (Argentinian) mate gourds. Oh yeah, and they're all white.

There's so much racist and wrong about this that it's hard to know where to start. The part that offends me most is that the native people of Brazil are really in the process of being brutally wiped out. Their accustomed ecosystem is disappearing, the Brazilian government has few hesitations about exterminating them, and their culture has been vanishing at a fantastic pace since the book "Yanomamo: The Fierce People" was written in the 70s. Yes, I know they're not the only Amazon native group, but they're the ones everyone thinks of. So this picture on the box is a nice continuation of the process of removing the native people of Brazil from anyone's sight or mind.

This poem would also have you thinking that they all had Downs Syndrome or something. They haven't noticed that the rest of the world has technology? Everybody on the planet knows that. There's this thing called television, and I bet every man, woman and child on Earth has seen one at least once. Plus, if your habitat is vanishing and there's government thugs keeping you on the move when they're not killing you--how the hell could anyone write a line like "But they have not noticed yet?"

The "native person as Downs Syndrome child" continues with the whole "gentle smiles of cultural innocence routine". The "old fashioned fraternity" is a laugh riot as well. Brazilian natives are famous for their warrior culture. The Yanomamo were fiercely proud of it. But no, everyone knows that native culture is simple and pure and natural. You know, like animals.

Third stanza just ties into the whole "noble savage who can teach us SO much" mentality. However, that plays well to the people who tend to buy organic, exotic teas, the New Age crowd who have no guilt whatsoever about plundering native cultures for their "wisdom". We all know the pattern: destroy a people, find something in there you like, take it, distort it, and feel special.

Okay, yes I hear you, it's just a box of tea. That's the point. There was a time when "mammy" imagery was just fine in advertising, and most people didn't realize that was a symptom of a problem that finally got named. This little box of tea shows clearly that the problem, now named, still exists but that people don't recognize it for what it is.

Racism still exists. It often looks different from the systemized forms that people think of with the word "racism", but it's there.

I'll summarize this one. If you think native people are "so close to the earth", "so simple and different from us", "full of such wisdom" or anything else that would make you start laughing your techno race head off if a third part said it about you--you might want to do some soul searching.

Comments

[garpu.livejournal.com]

You can sometimes find it on sale, but one of the ethno profs here wrote a book on the myth of the Noble Savage. It's worth a read, and I've seen it on sale through U. of CA press. (Ter Ellingson.) But he makes the same points you do.

[bork.livejournal.com]

What's the title of this? I'd like to see if I can get it from the library.

[garpu.livejournal.com]

The Myth of the Noble Savage.

[bork.livejournal.com]

Sweet - thank you!

[just-sigrun.livejournal.com]

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

I would hug you now but you're in the next county over.

Oh I simply LURVE the New Age cultural pirates who think they can pick and choose from each culture and blend it all together into whatever is most marketable. I love the white guilt people who hold to the Noble Savage theory not realizing the people they work so hard to not offend are actually more offended.

Dear Gods, and not all South Americans are "the same". Even my Scandocracker butt knows that. It's called books, people, read them.

And this wins the Racistnet:

Around them, shadows of a culture fading,
the techno race at their back fence
But they have not noticed yet.

Uh huh. So I guess machine guns toted by government thugs don't count as "techno race".

A gentle smile reveals the sincerity
Of a cultural innocence
Western culture could use a strong brew
Of old fashioned fraternity.

o_O

I mean I know this is outside my frame of reference but I am edumacated (sort of) and then there's a thing called "respect". Just like I don't like it when people think all Asatruar are Vikings, we need to be respectful of others as well. SHEEEEEEEESH

[kishiriadgr.livejournal.com]

SteveO thinks your term "scandocracker" rocks insanely hard.

[cinchntouch.livejournal.com]

I am so glad to have you on my friend's list. That was beautifully said. I am glad you brought up the context of the impending genocide of indigenous people in Brazil. Thank you two times for mentioning the noble savage. The poem is crap, not just because it is racist and genocidal but it also lacks any depth. It is crap because it is meant to sell tea and the extinction of people.

I am reminded of James Fenimore Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans." I never saw the movie, but in the novel the Indan character bravely accepts the fact that his people are being wiped out and uses a metaphor about leaves to justify it. I doubt if any Indian ever said things like that. However, I think that by portraying indigenous people with a "mystical" quality we dehumanize them and turn their culture into something that is otherworldly. The process of making a people "otherworldly" makes it that much easier to wipe them out.

I am also concerned with the poems infantilization: phrases like "cultural innocence" trouble me. Firstly it makes no sense - are the people innocent of their own culture? Are they innocent of our culture? Are they innocent of pretensious poets? So here they are in their little bit of paradise like little infants, but we can learn from their innocence because we are drinking overpriced tea that they are earning pennies on the dollar for. But they don't care because their gourd is gold...?

But the best part is "Western culture could use a strong brew
Of old fashioned fraternity" -- yep, lets enforce white guilt and bash western culture. This is not done to inform the person buying the tea, this is not a prophetic challenge - this is an escape route. This is using clever marketing to make the drinkers of organic tea feel better about themselves:

Point of poem: if you drink this you are down with the simple innocent child people of the third world -- so sip while they vanish and feel superior about yourself.

I think I will go vomit now.

[americanstd.livejournal.com]

Hell, why not just put them in the anthropological zoo!

[americanstd.livejournal.com]

...and what is this about the Messkin symbol icon...


are you saying that all south americans are messkins?

[zare-k.livejournal.com]

This poem makes me queasy. It's a noxious combination of Noble Savage worship, White guilt, manifest destiny, and indigenous-peoples-as-retarded-children.
The "techno races" are pounding down the door, but the poor tribals are too blind and naive to notice, so they just beatifically pass the mate around the campfire. We know they can't survive the march of progress (which is, of course, cool stuff like television and machinery, not government oppression and environmental upheaval), so shed a tear for the loss of their "old-fashioned fraternity".

[electorprince.livejournal.com]

And yet if one is white and isn't apologetic about the whole thing, it makes one more racist than the poem. I can only wear one cross at a time, thanks. In the end, it just karmically pays to not lose wars.

[kishiriadgr.livejournal.com]

There was a response here, maybe you even saw it, but after a night of tossing and turning over the fact that this has obviously hit a painful nerve in someone who means a lot to me, I decided to rephrase.

I am curious as to why this hit said nerve. My intended target was New Age Hippie Racists, something that under no circumstances could ever be said to describe you. The poem on the box of tea was meant them to feel good about themselves. Recently I've been on a tear about people who ruthlessly steal from other cultures, even white on white. This just happened to add a picture of "native people as Downs Syndrome children" to the mix, which is what bothered me particularly.

[tyrenol.livejournal.com]

You think we should ask Hugo Chavez about all of this? The wiping out of natives, that is. ^_^;

[kishiriadgr.livejournal.com]

Is that yet another one of his charms?