Racism and baseball cards

[sbfinley]

I'll preface this saying that I'm not explicitly saying this card is "racist", but my teenage son was sorting some cards a couple months ago and brought to attention the back of Hank Thompson's 1950 Bowman card. He said, in more words or less: "Was it okay to use the term 'Negro" that loosely?" 1950 was 30 so odd years before my time so without getting in too long of a lesson that night my best response was "well the cards were made for kids to sell bubble gum so yeah... that was pretty tame and kosher for the time." It also gave me a nice segway to start teaching him more about the Negro Leagues as we have since then.

[commishbob]

Lots to unpack in this thread. I missed it originally so I am glad it was revived.

For one thing that Stahl-Meyer Campy is awesome for sure.

The Larry Doby talk reminded me of my tour of the NLBM in KC a few years back. Was part of a small group lucky enough to be have the director, Bob Kendrick, lead us around. He had a lot to say about Doby and what he went through. It was quite the tour.

[Mungo Hungo]

Originally Posted by sbfinley

I'll preface this saying that I'm not explicitly saying this card is "racist", but my teenage son was sorting some cards a couple months ago and brought to attention the back of Hank Thompson's 1950 Bowman card. He said, in more words or less: "Was it okay to use the term 'Negro" that loosely?" 1950 was 30 so odd years before my time so without getting in too long of a lesson that night my best response was "well the cards were made for kids to sell bubble gum so yeah... that was pretty tame and kosher for the time." It also gave me a nice segway to start teaching him more about the Negro Leagues as we have since then.

I'm not sure I understand what is meant by "loosely." To my knowledge, in 1950, the word 'Negro' was not offensive in any sense whatsoever. That didn't come until much later. The U.S. Supreme Court still routinely issued opinions, into the mid-1980s, using that term (not quoting from earlier sources but simply as a description of a person's race). Of course they were out of touch with what was standard in the '80s. But it's an indication for what was standard language when the then-elderly members of the Court were much younger.

[oldjudge]

Here is the back of the 1936 WWG DiMaggio