"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated November 01, 1908:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (NOVEMBER 8, 2020):
Not even the ever expanding dough threatening to destroy Nemo's home (as well as the entire city) is enough to detract attention away from the "Mammy" caricature presented here. - 1/11
One of the more popular and enduring racial caricatures which "served the political, social, and economic interests of mainstream white America" (Pilgrim, 2012), the "Mammy" was used as proof to suggest that black women were content serving white families. - 2/11
In an article for the #JimCrowMuseumofRacistMemorobilia, Dr. David Pilgrim provides substantial context and background on this particular caricature and how it served to support white hegemony: - 3/11
While the physical/visual caricature is quite apparent here in McCay's work, some of the finer personality details of the Mammy don't completely line-up. This doesn't change anything though; it still promotes unconscious racism to young children through it's depiction alone. - 4/11
Pilgrim (2012) reminds us that, like all caricatures, the Mammy "contained a little truth surrounded by a larger lie". Unfortunately, the boundary between those two was likely much too blurry for young impressionable readers to discern… - 5/11
Nemo even mentions how, "that cook will get fired for this" because "Mama is angry"… but we saw in panels 1-2 that it was Mama that bought this new dough… the Cook's only mistake was trusting what she'd bought! - 6/11
Couple that with the Cook's caricaturized speech and the mockery that it is intended to be in juxtaposition to the others' speech and it's easy to understand how this (consciously or unconsciously) helped to maintain structures of racism at the time. - 7/11
Personally, I read the white dough that grows and expands to break beyond the restraints of middle class white America and overtake the streets/alleys of the city (thus impacting all its inhabitants)… - 8/11
…as symbolic of the dominant white supremacist ideologies of the time, as well as the dangers it represents. If not combatted, white supremacy will only continue to grow, leaving mayhem and destruction in its wake. - 9/11
I don't think that this type of self-referential reading, which implicates his own work here as dangerous (in my opinion), was what McCay had in mind when he created the strip, but damn it if I'm not going to do my best to co-opt it for the purposes of anti-racist and anti-oppressive efforts. - 10/11
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" #160. What's yours? - 11/11
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