Mahogany

Ok, so I've been doing some card shopping lately for various events and have noticed a new collection in the greeting card section. I don't actually know how new it is. I just know I hadn't seen it before about 2 months ago. It's called Mahogany and it's a Hallmark collection of cards. The collection targets African-Americans and features images geared toward that population.

For a while now, I've considered myself or at least strived to be, as Bart Campolo puts it, a white person who "gets it" for people of color--someone who is still willing to admit and point out the racism that still exists in America; someone who doesn't say the stupid things that get us nowhere in terms of reconciliation and the righting of wrongs like "some of my best friends are black;" someone who is interested in African-American culture without "trying to be black;" someone who doesn't try to be "color blind" because that's a stupid notion. Race is real and we need to be aware of similarities and differences between us, not blind to them.

So I have to admit that I'm disappointed with myself for my lack of sensitivity to people of color in such a simple area as greeting cards. I, as a white person, have never had to look through rows and rows of cards and see no images of anyone that resembles me. Ok, so I don't really look like those oiled up muscle bound guys on the front of some cards, but I'm the same skin tone as he is, if that's the only similarity between us. Before seeing this Mahogany collection, I never found it offensive that all of the handdrawn cartoon cards look something like this one. For white people in America, we can walk through our daily lives and not think about race. For people of color, something as inane as buying a birthday card can hardly NOT be about race.

So here's the thing, though. I'm not sure The Mahogany Collection is the answer. To Hallmark's credit, they came up with a decent sounding name for the collection. They didn't call it "The Back of the Bus" collection and they place the cards in and among all of the others, but I can't help but think that it might be a better step if we didn't have segregation in the card section.

It's kind of like that phenomenon in sports where people feel the need to say, "Donovan McNabb, the black quarterback" or "Tony Dungy is one of the best African-American coaches we have." Finally, there is some sensitivity where people have just started to refer to these guys by their names, but it still carries on for some like Fisher DeBerry and Joe Pa.

Wouldn't it be better if Hallmark didn't feel the need to point it out so blatantly? It's funny they never seemed to point it out while they've only had cards depicting white people for the last 100 years. 40 years after MLK, decades after Jim Crow, nearly a century and a half after the emancipation proclamation, couldn't they just start to make cards with images of people from various races and sprinkle them in among the other cards and not tag them as Mahogany? I don't know if it's marketing or if they think they're doing something right, but by euphemizing race you're not subtracting it. What would people say if the little card tabs in the store said, "Cards for black people?"

I chose the birthday card at the top because of its subtlety. I would buy that card for any woman I know who was "born to flourish and to dance beneath the sun." I don't really need someone to tell me whether the image is appropriate for my purposes or not. On the other hand, the Forster Family Christmas card probably won't look like this one. Give the consumer some credit to decide which cards do and do not make sense.

So good for Hallmark that they've seen the error of their ways, but hopefully this collection will fade into the rainbow of the card section instead of sticking out. And by the way, I noticed there is not Asian collection, no Latino collection, no Pacific Islander collection. I shudder to think of the names they might come up with for all of those collections.