
An Ice Cream Truck Jingle's Racist History Has Caught Up to It - rbanffy
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/14/902664184/an-ice-cream-truck-jingles-racist-history-has-caught-up-to-it
======
moistly
If you follow through to NPR and then to another (NPR?) piece, you get to
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VsnZxfkkoKQ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VsnZxfkkoKQ)
... where I read the first cogent YouTube comment I’ve ever witnessed, which I
quote wholly(added italics):

“Virginia Connor To everyone who came here from Twitter wondering how this
song could be racist: THIS ISN’T THE VERSION WITH RACIST LYRICS.

A lot of different takes on this song exist, using the same tune but with
different words. Non-racist examples include “do your ears hang low” and
“donut shop”.

The original tune came from a Scots-Irish folk song “The old rose tree”.
However, the majority of Americans were first exposed to the tune in the 19th
century, through traveling blackface minstrel shows - which set the tune to
their own, ahem, misguided lyrics. Multiple times.

The most overtly racist version was literally titled... and I shit you
not...“N __* love a watermelon, Ha! Ha! Ha!”

That racist version of the song just so happened to be a popular song in the
late 1800s when ice cream parlors first sprang up, so it got played a lot in
there and people associated it with ice cream. So when the first ice-cream
trucks rolled out, it was one of the iconic melodies chosen to announce the
truck’s presence to all the kids on the block.

Most young people today, myself included, know the tune from innocent, non-
racist campfire songs. Hell, I spent my entire childhood thinking it was
strange that an ice cream truck always played a song about a donut shop,
because that’s the version I heard first. “N-word love a watermelon” has,
thankfully, been relegated to the moldy dustbin of history where it belongs.

So, while I’ve gotta admit that learning of the history behind something as
random as an ice-cream jingle is oddly fascinating, I don’t think the tune
itself should be labeled racist. Racists have always hijacked little things,
but unless those little hijacked things end up turning into something major
and horrible (like what the Nazis did to the Hindu swastika) then we as a
society shouldn’t cede control of those little things to the racists - if we
do, that just gives the racists more power over our culture, it makes them
seem more relevant and valid than they deserve.

 _The only reason “turkey in the straw is racist!” is trending, is because
Good Humor made an instagram post about it_ and said that they’re “doing
something to change it” - which wound up being a collaboration with Wu-Tang
Clan singer RZA to produce a new jingle. Good for them, I have nothing against
a new jingle. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Good Humor corporation
_deliberately dug up this piece of history & inflated the relevance of the
racist parts_ to a modern audience with no connection to 19th-century minstrel
shows. There’s only one reason for them to do this: opportunism. Very real
issues with racism are on everybody’s minds, lately, and this corporation is
taking advantage of it, dredging up this “dark secret” from ice cream’s past
specifically so they can make a show out of changing it. Long-dead racists
once hijacked the tune of “turkey in the straw”, and now Good Humor is doing
the reverse: hijacking today’s fight against racism. They’re _exploiting it
for PR and reducing it to an advertisement._

It’s irresponsible. The more that companies pull dumbass stunts like this,
stunts that literally nobody asked for, it only _serves to make the real fight
against racism appear shallow and petty_ and babyish in the eyes of uninformed
onlookers who don’t know what the protestors have gone through, what they
really want & why. 16 hours ago (edited) 87 15 ”

------
Fjolsvith
Soon they will be calling Christmas songs racist.

~~~
ksaj
The song was known as "N____r Love a Watermelon, Ha! Ha! Ha!" among other
clearly racist names in the early 1800's through early 1900's. A hundred years
of Americans singing it in blackface with racist lyrics. That's the problem
being pointed out here.

Not that its impossible, but I can't think of any Christmas jingles like that.

