In racist tropes, a hidden effort to undermine the empowerment of Black Americans

A Commonwealth Court judge ruled Wednesday that Pennsylvania’s school funding system is unconstitutional because it inherently disadvantages poor school districts by relying so heavily on local property taxes.

That system, which is more likely to underfund impoverished school districts, is seemingly designed to keep the rich in positions of power by maintaining an uneven playing field. The arrangement not only discriminates against poor Black and brown communities. It also victimizes the same poor white people who are so often used as foot soldiers to uphold these kinds of inequities.

However, maintaining inequality through education is about much more than pitting people against each other based on race and class. It is also about the messages we receive through pop culture and mass media. These messages are an education of sorts, and they have often been used against African Americans.

From symbols of freedom like watermelons to empowering words like woke, our attempts at self-determination have often been repackaged to advance the cause of racism.

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I thought of that reality when I saw yet another story about an organization apologizing after serving watermelon in celebration of Black History Month. It seems to happen annually, and this year was no different. This time, Aramark, the food service company, served chicken and waffles and watermelon on a school menu in a New York suburb. After the ensuing uproar, both the company and the school district issued apologies.

That made me angry. Not because they engaged in racist tropes by intimating that all Black people eat such foods. I’m angry that the watermelon — once a symbol of Black empowerment — has now become a cudgel for racists to use against us.

After the Civil War, free Black Americans who owned or occupied even a small plot of land could raise and sell watermelons as a means of establishing financial independence. As a cash crop, the fruit was a symbol of Black freedom during the Reconstruction era. Southern white racists understood that, and according to researcher William R. Black, they sometimes reacted violently.

Wallace Fowler, a Black sharecropper in Spartanburg, S.C., was killed in 1871, months after accusing a white neighbor’s son of stealing some of his watermelons. Fowler was farming land whose tenants were once white, and his ability to not only farm that land but also to take ownership of some of its fruit signified that he was equal to the poor white people around him. That was a bridge too far.

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Fowler’s white neighbor, John Thomson, allegedly donned a mask before knocking on Fowler’s door in the middle of the night. Along with another man, Thomson allegedly shot Fowler, and then burned Fowler’s body as the dying man’s granddaughter watched. Fowler’s widow later testified about the murder to a congressional committee investigating the Ku Klux Klan.

However, violence was not the only tool bigoted white people used. They also utilized propaganda to reshape narratives. While African Americans used the fruit as a means to establish independence, white Southerners created imagery, jokes, and stories to assign new meaning to the fruit. Those images made their way north, and soon there were illustrations of Black people consuming watermelons with bulging eyes, protruding lips, and unkempt hair.

The images were meant to portray Black people as childlike, lazy, and shiftless. These, after all, were people who had little to do other than sit around in groups eating a sloppy fruit. Therefore, the messaging went, they did not deserve their freedom. Perhaps they were better off as slaves.

Today, understanding the role of such history and its role in our current racial turmoil makes one “woke.” Or, at least, that’s what it used to mean, when Black people defined the term. It is a term that was meant to unite people because one does not have to be Black to be woke. White people who are cognizant of the effects of American racism are also considered woke, and they are effective allies in the fight against bigotry and hate.

The word woke has now been appropriated by those on the right, and politicians, led by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, are using the word not only to mock Black people for our awareness of racist systems. They are also using it to define white progressives as traitors. Perhaps most dangerously, DeSantis is working directly through the education system to stop Black history from being taught.

This ploy is drawn from the most corrupt corners of our history. We can fight it with a single word — truth.