» Racist grandparents

Interesting sheet music.
There are a few stories about my Grandmother and minor racist moments, for starters her and my Grandfather moved to South Africa for a while in the late fifties where they had a House boy and a Garden boy - pretty common place back then but I found it hard to get my young liberal mind around.

The first case of her mild racist outbursts was shopping in a local department store for my first ever secondary school uniform. Whilst my underdeveloped body was put in and out of multiple ill fitting blazers (the final one we purchased I never did grow into) she felt the need to talk about her own school uniform quite loudly to the Saturday girl who was helping my frustrated mother try and find clothes to fit her undersized child.

"I remember purchasing my first uniform..." She reminisced, the shop assistant feigned interest in the best way she could not quite expecting my grandmother to continue on with "It was Nigger Brown" I well never forget the look on that poor girl's face as she tried to work out what to say. Turns out that the name of the uniform was actually 'Nigger Brown'

Along with this I remember her insisting we watch Songs of Praise every Sunday and tutting at any black singer in the choir. She also told my dad repeatedly that "The African is inherently lazy."

The best thing though was when we had to clear out her home after Alzheimer's took hold. My parents had blocked out an entire weekend to clear out her house and work out what was worth keeping and in my dad's opinion there was only two things that were truly worth keeping - whilst digging through a pile of old sheet music by the piano he found some rather dubious looking music titled Ten Little Nigger Tunes and hidden underneath was "Twelve More Little Nigger Tunes."

And Blazing Saddles was right, it has The Camptown Races in it.
(Tue 1st Nov 2011, 22:33, More)