As is quite reasonable to anyone familiar with Caribbean history, the Garifuna are offended at the treatment of native people of the Caribbean in "Pirates of the Caribbean--Dead Man's Chest". Disney executives are not disturbed, they say the insult was not directed at the Garifuna, the images are merely stock stereotypes that are just jokes. But these are familiar stereotypes, familiar jokes.

Here is an explanation by Dr. David Pilgrim, Professor of Sociology Ferris State University

During slavery the dominant caricatures of Blacks -- Mammy, Coon, Tom, and picaninny -- portrayed them as childlike, ignorant, docile, groveling, and, in general, harmless. These portrayals were pragmatic and instrumental. Proponents of slavery created and promoted Black images that justified slavery and soothed White consciences. If slaves were childlike, for example, then a paternalistic institution where masters acted as quasi-parents to their slaves was humane, even morally right. More importantly, slaves were rarely depicted as brutes because that portrayal might have become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

During the Radical Reconstruction period (1867-1877), many White writers argued that without slavery -- which supposedly suppressed their animalistic tendencies -- Blacks were reverting to criminal savagery. The belief that the newly-emancipated Blacks were a "black peril" continued into the early 1900s. Writers like the novelist Thomas Nelson Page lamented that the slavery-era "good old darkies" had been replaced by the "new issue" (Blacks born after slavery) whom he described as "lazy, thriftless, intemperate, insolent, dishonest, and without the most rudimentary elements of morality." Page, who helped popularize the images of cheerful and devoted Mammies and Sambos in his early books, became one of the first writers to introduce a literary Black brute. You can find more text and even more disturbing graphics at www.ferris.edu.

Disney's stereotype is simply a recreation of the stereotypes of the 1930s, of the early Disney cartoons, stereotypes that some of us hoped had vanished by the year 2000, if not decades before. But Disney doesn't even se that there is a problem.

.Which puts Disney back even farther--to the turn of the century before last.

You can compare these antique stereotypes with Disney's on

Apple does a pretty big spread, showing that they are buying into the racist stereotypes in a big way. I was a little dissapointed with that, because everything I have done was done on a Mac, but I guess that money is more important than humanity, even at Apple.

As it happens, the insulting racist stereotypes are particularly irritating to the Garifuna because they are specifically aimed at them. The "savages" that Disney portrayed were somewhat more melanin-rich than mainland Native Americans, showing that they were particularly intended to represent the Garifuna, an ethnic group concentrated on St. Vincent and Domenica, who were descended from the Native American Caribs and people from Africa. There is some dispute about whether the original Garifuna were descended from explorers from Mali in the 1300s or escaped slaves later, or, more likely both, but by the time they were subjected to genocide by the British they seemed to be mostly "Black Caribs". Disney executives imply that they are just generic black savages, but since the Pirates are supposed to be in the Caribbean we can assume that the natives are too. So Disney has specifically intended that the "black beast" stereotype described by Dr. Pilgrim be applied to the Garifuna.

This is not a matter of simple ignorance, as one might assume. The original "Pirates of the Caribbean" was filmed in large part in Saint Vincent. In fact the abandoned sets are something of a tourist attraction. ( If you click here you can see some pictures.) During that period of filming and the time spent in 2005 on St. Vincent and Domenica, the Disney people were informed of Vincentian history, and of the noble but doomed war the Garifuna fought for independence from the British. Disney was not interested. They said that the stereotypes of black people provided the most humorous scenes in the film, and they weren't about to give them up. So the use of racist stereotypes specifically directed at the Garifuna was a deliberate artistic decision.

And, as knowledgeable people will tell you, was a horrendous error. The Spaniards claimed the Caribs were cannibals because the Pope had said that while one should be kind to natives in general, it was all right to enslave cannibals. The British claimed that the Garifuna (or, as they called them, "Black Caribs") were all escaped slaves. The French had more contact with the Caribs because they encouraged them to resist British encroachment. According to a translation by Professor Peter Hulme of the University of Essex, the Marquis de Lambertye wrote in his "History of the Caribs: A Savage Nation Living on the Windward Islands of America and Part of the Mainland".

"... until now no traveller has written in detail about the manners of the Savages who have ruled over the Windward islands and who still live on some of them, although they are now mostly dispersed along the Orinoco, the Amazon, and other mainland rivers in an attempt to avoid the tyranny of the Spaniards and pious monkish cruelties."

"These people - the gentlest in all the New World - enjoyed in peace and quiet this archipelago, which stretches from the 10th degree of latitude north to the 22nd. They lived here in abundance: frugality was the source of their happiness. Content with little, ambition - that tyrant of the Europeans - still had no ministry in the Antilles. Fishing, hunting, and relaxation were the equal parts of the gentle and independent life they led."

The Caribs and Garifuna were normally gentle and hospitable, but they were intensely independent and could be fierce in the defense of their homes. Alexandre Moreau de Jonnes was a French spy withe the Caribs during the second Carib War (that the British call "The Brigands War") and wrote a description of that experience. I have posted it on the internet at 1795.karleklund.net .

With the military forces that the British had to remove from North America after the American Revolution, and with the help of mercenary German Mountain Troops, the British defeated the Garifuna and their French allies. The Garifuna were put in concentration camps on two tiny islands off the coast of Saint Vincent and later transported the half that hadn't died to the island of Roatan, off Honduras, in hopes that they would die there.

This much of the story Disney learned, so they assumed the Garifuna were extinct and no descendants would be around to complain. In this they were wrong. There are tens of thousands of Garifuna in the diaspora of Caribbean peoples in England, Canada and the United States and significant populations in Honduras, Belize, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

There are certainly enough descendants for Disney and Apple to apologise to.

If you wish to offer your support to the Garifuna, you can write to Cheryl Noralez at the Garifuna American Heritage Foundation in Long Beach, CA.[cnoralez@garifunaheritagefoundation.org].

Curiously, Johnny Depp was involved in another racist movie as described by Jonathan McIntosh

The most recent film adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is shaping up to be one of the highest grossing summer blockbusters of 2005. This is the third re-incarnation of Roald Dahl's controversial story over the past four decades. As such, it is instructive, to examine it's transformation in relation to issues of racism and colonialism.

In 1964, Roald Dahl published his original book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. In it he describes the Oompa-Loompas as dark-skinned "pygmies" from the heart of Africa. These indigenous people are brought back to the Western world from the jungles by the European chocolatier, Willy Wonka, with the intention of making them slaves in his factory, being paid only in cacao beans.

Dahl's portrait of the Oompa-Loompas, includes the centuries old Western notion of indigenous populations as being exotic, simple and miserable. They are portrayed as unable to survive without the white Western world's helping hand. Willy Wonka lulls his audience into quietly accepting this familiar and violent idea. In the process, Wonka becomes exalted as a white messiah to be revered and worshiped by the (literally) lesser brown people for having lead them out of darkness and into enlightenment and happiness. Throughout history, this false sense of altruism has closely accompanied racism. ...

Now, in 2005, Warner Brothers has released another version of the feature film, this time directed by Tim Burton and starring famed actor Johnny Depp. The new adaptation brings back the racism and colonialism that the 1971 film and the 1973 revised book attempted to downplay. In this most recent incarnation we follow Willy Wonka, sporting the classic attire of the colonial explorer complete with safari hat, as he travels on screen to a distant tropical jungle called "Loompaland". He is, we are told, in search of "exotic" flavors for a new line of sweets. While depicted as silly and adventurous, the right of the Western entrepreneur to take whatever "flavor" plant or animal he desires from developing countries is never questioned. It is just the kind of theft western pharmaceuticals and agro-corporations have been engaged in throughout the developing world over the centuries.

So evidently, while racism and colonialism were out of fashion for a while in the 1970s, they are back in style again. I suppose part of the reason is that people from the middle-east aren't as pale as WASPs, so having some skin coloration is suspicious. We'll see how long it takes for very pale cosmetics come back and people stay out of the sun.

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