Racism and baseball cards

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by Brian

Awesome story about your cousin, Adam, and nice anti-racist memorabilia!

Valid points about the cards, although I have not seen any other hyphenated cards, like "Roman Catholic-American", "Muslim-American," or "Protestant-American." I have also seen Jewish-American. But what confounded/amused me was to refer to someone as "Hebrew". Maybe it was a sign of the times, and maybe that is how we were referred to, but I thought that language was last used by the Pharaohs! I had thought that its usage in the early part of the century leaned toward the derogatory (but maybe it's just me).

There were many cards that identified the fighters with hyphenates. Here is "Irish-American" Tommy Loughran:



The only religious call-outs were the Hebrews. There is also this Exhibit wrestling card from the 1930s:



It is the only card in that series that uses a religious label.

Different times and different sensitivities.

Seems to me that we've had a gradual move towards the groups in question setting their own terms of reference, and resetting them over time. Check the cards of the black fighters: "colored" was the phrase of the day. "Hebrew" was one of the polite terms used at the time. Abe Attell was nicknamed "The Little Hebrew". There were a lot more derogatory phrases available to describe "Hebrew" fighters, same as there were for "colored" fighters. It's all contextual. I mean, when I grew up "Negro" was archaic but not impolite--your grandma would use it--but the word of the times was "black". That's what I was taught to use. That held true for about 25-30 years or so. In Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing (1989), the characters didn't tell each other to "stay African-American", they told each other to "stay black"; that was the term in 1989. About 15-20 years ago, the term "African-American" picked up and my "black" usage was considered archaic and even somewhat demeaning. I switched it up. Recently, it went back to "black" because African-American was too USA centric, and I was told by my Gen Z kid to switch it up again. I am sure Jackie Robinson would have been just fine to be called a "Negro" in 1947; lord knows he was called a lot of other things. In 1977, it was different, and it woud have been mildly offensive. Not punch in the mouth offensive, but more like drunk uncle at Thanksgiving offensive.