Racial reconciliation and the deeper meaning of ‘Dumbo’
For many whites, like me, who grew up privileged and isolated from the black community, there is a healthy eye-opening that comes from a frank understanding of the past — not to mention just how harmful those consequences still are on fellow human beings.
Disney Plus’s awkward warning that “Dumbo,” originally released in 1941, may contain “outdated cultural depictions,” is in the news. Excluded from most theaters, I wonder how many blacks saw the beloved original “Dumbo” and how it affects them today. In the original, racially stereotyped black crows, led by “Jim Crow,” teach Dumbo how to fly. “Jim Crow” was the name given to laws that required segregation of blacks from whites into purportedly “separate but equal” public facilities.
With remarkable foresight, Justice John Marshall Harlan, the lone dissenting justice in the 1896 Supreme Court case that birthed the “separate but equal” doctrine, wrote, “The destinies of the two races, in this country, are indissolubly linked together. State enactments … cunningly devised to defeat the legitimate results of the war … can have no other result than … to keep alive a conflict of the races. The thin disguise of ‘equal’ accommodations … will not … atone for the wrong this day done.” Justice Harlan foresaw that this minority would only be further ignored and degraded.
When “Dumbo” was released, Jim Crow laws were still being enforced. Around that time, black novelist Richard Wright wrote what for me were these shocking words, "Again I say that each and every Negro, during the last 300 years, possesses from that heritage a greater burden of hate for America than they themselves know. Perhaps it is well that Negroes try to be as unintellectual as possible, for if they ever started really thinking about what happened to them they'd go wild. And perhaps that is the secret of whites who want to believe that Negroes really have no memory, for if they thought Negroes remembered, they would start to shoot them all in sheer self-defense.”
By the mid-1960s Jim Crow laws had been held unconstitutional, but the segregation, inequality, poverty, and separate cultures they spawned persist to this day for blacks and other ethnic groups who have faced discrimination. While one cannot go back in time and change what one’s forebearers did, today we can deal responsibly with the consequences of what they did. For what I hope is the great majority of whites, an unvarnished awareness of what has happened and a frank discussion with our fellow Americans about the past can lead to an “I never realized” moment that is the first step in responsibly addressing those consequences.
Truth, reconciliation and repair of relationships are the goals. Recent examples of a noose in a college residence hall, racist social media posts, a noose in a GM plant all underscore the need. Black employees at Facebook question its commitment to diversity, perceive they are being discriminated against, and complain they are allegedly persistently seen only as quotas — never to be heard, acknowledged, recognized or accepted. One black worker’s complaint that white workers allegedly asked this worker to clean up after the breakfast of the white workers allegedly only resulted in the black worker being told to dress more professionally. Similar or worse complaints are no doubt present in other industries.
From the multitudes of freed slaves who followed the Union armies as the Union armies defeated Southern armies, to the brave black Union soldiers who fought Southern armies, to the black soldiers who have fought in the nation’s other wars, to the blacks who patiently endured decades of lynchings and degradations, to Martin Luther King Jr., to the mocking of President Obama, to the blacks who endure outright and subtle racism today, a hurt people have largely maintained not hate, but a faith that America can realize the true meaning of its creed.
In “Jim Crow” and his fellow crows in “Dumbo,” I see something more meaningful than an “outdated cultural depiction.” Perhaps intended, the subtle message of “Dumbo” mocked Jim Crow laws in depicting these black crows as brilliant, warm-hearted individuals who cried on hearing of the lockup of Dumbo’s mother and taught an elephant how to fly. For the nation to soar, it’s time for us to learn from one another.
Daniel O. Jamison is an attorney with Dowling Aaron Incorporated in Fresno, California, reputedly the tenth most segregated city in the nation; his great, great grandfather operated a station on the Underground Railroad. He can be reached at djamison@dowlingaaron.com
This story was originally published December 27, 2019 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Racial reconciliation and the deeper meaning of ‘Dumbo’."