[Katy Evans-Bush]

Marcia, no offense intended, and it wasn't just your comments I was addressing. Obviously thoughtlessness is the opposite of what we're aiming for here - and lively debate of issues is certainly one of the distinguishing characteristics of Eratosphere.

I guess you and I took different impressions from Julie's post.

all best,

KEB

[Marcia Karp]

Dear Katy,
No offense taken. We've just proved the worth of more talk, not none, as the way to respond to talk we are perplexed or made angry by.

Best,
Marcia

[Mary Moore]

Kevin's story about the Milk, Milk, Lemonade, etc rhyme he reported to his mother reminded me of this story from my childhood.
My mother, a school teacher, met the principal of her school on the main street of our hometown. He said,"Your daughter, Mary, just taught my daughter, Faith, a new poem yesterday."
"Oh, how nice!" said mother. "I teach her a lot of poetry. Which one was it?"
He smiled & recited, "A woman and a man pissed in a can."

Mary

[Robert Meyer]

Frank and Brittany, sitting in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
first came Hastings, then Magna Carta,
but Joan broke them up by playing the marta.


Robert Meyer


[This message has been edited by Robert Meyer (edited April 04, 2006).]

[Lo]

I don't think this was a "jumping" chant, I beleive it was a "clapping" song.

Ms Mary Mack Mack Mack
all dressed in black black black
with silver buttons buttons buttons
all down her back back back.

She jumped so high high high
she reached the sky sky sky
and she never came back back back
til the fourth of July ly ly.

I think the trick was to keep repeating it faster and faster until your hands couldn't keep up with your partner's. First one to mis-clap lost.

I could be wrong. I never played. I'm hideously uncoordinated that way.

Lo

[Robin-Kemp]

There was another racist AND dirty rhyme on the playground, alluded to earlier:

Chinese (pull eyes up)
Japanese (pull eyes down)
Dirty knees (touch knees)
Look at these (pull out shirt at nipple level to make "breasts")

"Siamese" (pull eyes sideways) was a variant.

I think kids delight in this transgressive language--they relish the forbidden, they get that something they are saying or doing is naughty, and they laugh about it, usually without a genuine understanding of the hurt words can cause, unless one person experiences being the butt of the joke.

A kid who subverts the Proper Adult World experiences the intoxication of breaking the rules and getting away with it.

Kids also pick up racist/sexist/etc. attitudes from the behavior, words, and attitudes of the adults around them. They learn very qwuickly what (and who) gets adult approval and act accordingly.

Robin

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

Alicia

LOL - you just brought to mind a version we used to do, but rather than 'Lucy', the refrain was 'Bang, bang, Lulu'.

Lulu had a motorbike
the seat was made of glass
every time she hit a bump
a piece went up her

Bang bang Lulu,
Lulu bang bang
Bang bang Lulu,
Lulu bang bang

Lulu had a chicken
her boyfriend had a duck
they put them on the table
to see if they would...

Lulu had two boyfriends
both were very rich
one was the son of a banker
the other the son of a ...

Good lord, A., I haven't thought of these since I was a kid! And I have a hard time remembering what I did yesterday *grin*.

[Jerry Glenn Hartwig]

Marcia

I think a lot these examples you've objected to, and they should be objected to if used, demonstrates how far people can grow, and how they can overcome their parents' prejudices.

I grew up believing, because I knew no better:

A mouth harp was called a Jew's harp.

A brazil nut was called a niggertoe.

These are but two examples that come to mind. I used the terms because I believed that's what they were really called, until I got old enough. Imagine my embarrassment when I learned differently.

I grew up in a white neighborhood. We knew no black people. 'Nigger,' for us kids, was a dirty word, like others, and we used it, in ignorance, in the privacy of our group, as an insult. It's how we were taught. We giggled at the Lulu rhymes I posted above, just as we giggled at parody songs such as:

Daniel Boone was a man
was a big man
but the bear, it was bigger
so he run like a nigger
up a tree.

Then I spent a summer catching a bus, going to a summer day camp at the YMCA in downtown Cincinnati. I was the minority kid, and I had to swim in a large pool, and was shocked to learn we didn't wear swimsuits. Talk about culture shock! That summer, I learned a lot about the kids who I had been insulting. They learned a lot about me, too. Racism can work both ways, and some of their 'truths' came under self-examination, also.

I listened to an interview with Spike Lee, about an upcoming movie. During it, he mentioned actors he'd admired, and the discussion turned to some of those actors who'd done blackface, or portrayed black people in other stereotypical manners. He just shrugged his shoulders and said, It happened. We can't pretend it didn't. Basically, he said it's part of history, and things have changed. We shouldn't forget it. It shows how far we've come.

I've actually taught diversity classes, and gotten a bit emotional while doing it, because I've seen kids turn to each other afterward, wanting to learn about their differences, because I told them it's our differences that make us interesting.

I was pretty much ignoring the racial aspect of the discussion until you mentioned it, Marcia. But our past is a part of who we are. No one's saying these rhymes are correct, now or then, but discussing them has shown a common background, but also demonstrated that we can overcome our early teachings, learn to think for ourselves, and become better people.

[This message has been edited by Jerry Glenn Hartwig (edited April 05, 2006).]

[Lo]

I think Jerry has a very valid point. You have to concede the timing involved. The games we played, the songs we sang, the chants we chanted while jumping rope or clapping hands - they were part of an era - a totally different era than we live in today.

I'd hazard to say that most of us who grew up knowing these songs and games and chants also grew up with some exceedingly sexist attitudes as well. Little girls played with Tiny Tears Dolls and Barbies, and expected to be housewives, mothers, nurses or teachers.......little boys had GI Joes and grew up shooting one another with toy guns in their hands and cowboy hats on their heads. Just as we didn't teach our children to sing "niggertoe" rhymes or "Ching Chong Chinamen" chants, I'm pretty sure that none of us, as parents, gave our children the same dangerous toys or the same sexist attitudes that we grew up with.

That's the thing....we can outgrow things, we can leave things behind, we can change our opinion of those things - but we can't deny they happened. And to be expected to apologize for something we did before we knew it was wrong just seems, well, wrong. We don't do it now and that's something to be proud of - knowing that we grew and changed and taught our own children different things than we were taught.

[David Anthony]

Jerry,
Just for information, "jew's-harp" is the correct name for a musical instrument. It may have been changed in America to "mouth harp" for PC reasons, but it's still called a jew's-harp in England.
Best wishes,
David