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An email has recently been circulating decrying a Stanford University poll showing how many Americans have negative feelings toward blacks. The poll was most disheartening in that it showed some pretty low scores for Democratic voters and suggested that many will not vote for Obama simply because of his race. To that I have to ask: People actually get paid for this?

Has America been spending so much time patting itself on the back over the new “Post Racial America” that it doesn’t know how ingrained racial prejudice is to the American psyche. Don’t Americans already know that this country was founded on racism and that its “manifest destiny” could not be fulfilled without the land and labor of the “inferior” races, i.e., blacks and Indians? Don’t Americans already know that racism is a modern construct used to justify the exploitation of third-world resources, both human and natural? Indeed the idea of black racial inferiority has been carefully managed for hundreds of years and printed media has been a key tool in that endeavor.

To that end I’m presenting these images of commonly available American postcards from the early 1900s. These cards were mailed out in the days before phones and emails, back when letter writing was a primary form of communication. In fact former president Bill Clinton caught some flack for sending one of these postcards to his granny in his youth. Some seem harmless enough, they might even make you chuckle; but what’s amazing is this society’s perverse way of demeaning, defining, and reinforcing the idea of black people as a primitive “other”. They are the precurser to TV shows such as Amos and Andy and characters such as Stepin Fetchit. It should be noted as well that there were also lynching postcards; photos of black men hanging dead at the end of a noose. You could write your greeting on the back. Having a great time, wish you were here. I’m not showing those here as the images I have are revolting enough.

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