Recently a customer in a department store managed to get a tee shirt removed from the shelves. It proves that one person can change the world, but sometimes they might not have to.
A retailer called Primark in Great Britain was carrying a shirt featuring an iconic image from the AMC television series “The Walking Dead.” The shirt showed a barbed wire wrapped baseball bat wielded by the antagonistic Negan, played in the series by Jeffrey Dean Morgan; he calls his weapon Lucille. Before he plays Bamm-Bamm with Lucille on the head of a person he doesn’t like, he invokes the old nursery rhyme, “eeny, meeny, miny mo.” It sends shivers down viewers’ (and the good characters’) spines. A customer at the Primark store found it racist because his recollection of the rhyme has the next line referring to catching black persons by the toe, using the dreaded “n” word.
I never heard that one.
Various friends have said they always heard the second line as, “Catch a tiger by the toe,” or piggy. Only one person said they had heard the “n” word used for that rhyme growing up. I’m confused.
Logically, trying to nab somebody on the run by the toe would be a startingly nimble feat (no pun intended), and the rhyme goes on to advise that “If he hollers, let him go,” so no matter what you’d be catching–a tiger, a piggy, or a quick-moving person of any type–it’s strictly catch and release.
Let’s face it: in a crowd of 100, at least one will find something offensive. If the other 99 are not even raising an eyebrow, maybe the problem is with the one. Anyway, the store pulled the shirts, so the next “Walking Dead” shirt will probably undergo a rigorous test of wording and cultural impact before hitting the shelves.
I have never watched the show, and in my life experiences I have seen and come to know discrimination of all kinds (I have been a victim myself), but at least I won’t be one of the customers who has to worry about a message on my tee shirt. I don’t wear them.
But maybe if we all holler, maybe the one with the issue will just let it go.
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