SACRAMENTO, CA – Arrr, matey. We hates to be the ones that tells ya, but pirates ain’t the happy-go-lucky naves of yore. In fact, ya probably wouldn’t wants to bring one home to play with the kiddies.
But that’s what one California mother did, and now she’s saying “Arrrrr”.
After Ida Locket put together the pirate toy, she said one of the characters looked like an African slave with no shoes and wearing tattered clothes. The toy even came with a collar and instructions on how for attaching it to the neck.
“It`s definitely racist,” she said. “It told my son to put a slave cuff around the black character`s neck.”
The folks at Playmobil, which makes the toy, haven’t responded to her complaint.
But the Sacramento chapter of the NAACP wants the toy pulled from the shelves, calling it deplorable.
If nothing else, it could be poor judgment, but then, some folks have forgotten who, and what, pirates really were back in the day.
Real pirates were not lovable rogues. They were drunken criminals.
Even their flags were meant to invoke fear and dread, not giggles and grins.
Some pirates who plied the Atlantic were former slaves and some held slaves on their ships.
John Fox was an Englishman who spent nearly 14 years as a slave of Barbary pirates.
But, now our kids are used to seeing pirates as cute cartoon characters.
We probably can thank the National Association for the Advancement of Correct Pirates for turning people who rape, pillage, and plunder into fun guys we invite into our homes to entertain our kids.
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