(Black face) plays and programs like the 1949 Brownsville High School Class play and Jaycees program were pretty common across the Rio Grande Valley." One of our seven readers
(Ed.'s Note: The notoriety gained by our city when a city commissioner was surreptitiously taped using the "N" word in mid-September 2017 by former fire chief Carlos Elizondo who released the the tape that October to stave off his termination after an audit showed he had been steering patient transfers to a private company with which he was associated has spawned a contentious discussion of the pervasiveness of racial discrimination locally.
In past posts we have shown how prevalent the disparagement of blacks in our city was even before this latest episode. But one of our readers has sent us some clippings that show that our neighbors up the expressway in San Benito were even more brazen in their exploitation of the stereotype to raise funds for disadvantaged children.
It is doubly enlightening to see that the actors in these productions depicted above were all anglos. A Bess Beddingfield, and a Bill Collins headlined the Kiwanis Club Nigger Monstrel while the Kiwanis Club in the bottom clip promises to be even better than the last year's performance which played to "a packed house."
In the production, Bill Harvey, and Adolph Thomae, Clinton Oliver, Collins and Dave Bennett are the main comics. In addition to the 10 "blacked up"Kiwanians there were numerous other numbers, the article stated. Thomae, by the way, became a Cameron County commissioner and served more than 30 years in that position.
"San Benittians" Beddingfield, Sarita Glen, and Helen Hagardorn sang single numbers and other San Benito residents are listed as participating in the show including dance numbers by Patty Ogden, Helen Morris, Jane Morris, Doris Ogden and Jimmy Chatelle. The show also features the Kiwanis Quartet singing "A Coon Town Wedding" and closed with a skit by the Mysterious Dusky Damsels."
The Brownsville controversy has also allowed some bloggers to take unjustified journalistic license to gleefully and gratuitously use the "N" word when referring to the episode of the city commissioner, thereby compounding the original insult. In fact, these bloggers have repeated the word scores of times more than the two references in the original recording.
This feigned self-righteous indignation by these social media miscreants is an unfortunate offshoot of the entire episode. It adds nothing but gleeful and smug self-satisfaction to scandalize the issue and continue to insult our fellow black citizens of the valley, and to stigmatize our city.
Why compound the racism by continually repeating the word to shock and awe blog readers? Or is the way they believe they will be provocative, daring, and find relevance for their dribble? It's time we stop this charade and try to get over this shameful past and episode. At one time, everyone did it and it was wrong. Let's get past it. Or will this also be called race baiting?)