I’m on assignment at the African Heritage Festival at the Aquarium of the Pacific and about to wrap things up and call it a day. Walking toward the exit I catch something out of the corner of my eye that causes me to hesitate before instinct kicks in and I start snapping photos.

One of the exhibits at the Aquarium this weekend is Forgotten Images, a traveling museum featuring some of our country’s greatest racist hits.

Television and radio are represented with memorabilia (Amos and Andy, The Little Rascals) as well as advertising (Sambos Restaurant, Aunt Jemima) toys (blackface make-up kits) and children’s books (The Ten Little Niggers, Little Pickaninnies).

Also represented are relics from the days of slavery. Items such as branding irons, hobbling devices meant to discourage runaways and slave collars…such as the one I’m witnessing a mother force upon her daughter’s little neck while bluntly telling her in a loud, clear voice, “You would have been a slave!”

Perhaps to assuage her restrained toddler’s increased anxiety she adds comfortingly, “Oh, but not any more, honey! That was in the old days!”

The mother is blonde, pretty and appears to be in her early 40s. Her daughter looks to be around 4 years old and shows glimpses of how her mother must have looked as a young girl. I approach them and ask her daughter’s name to accompany any photographs that might be printed in the newspaper. “Ava” the mother replies. “She’s bi-racial.”

This unbidden comment and her alarming method of instructing her daughter about her heritage reminds me of a hilarious Norm McDonald routine about an overly enthusiastic parent who goes above and beyond being proud of his gay son when relating his boy’s love of male genitalia to a co-worker.

After David McLucas, curator of Forgotten Images, is finished explaining a two-way doll (features two different colored heads on either end to enable master’s children and slave children to share the toy and avoid the confusion that apparently arises from playing with the wrong colored doll) Ava’s mother takes it from his hands and kneels before her daughter to offer her own brusque synopsis. “They would have killed your mommy for this!” she says, really driving the lesson home by inserting the commingling of Ava’s mother and father into the equation.

I cringed when she said this, but Ava, having been through it all before, I suppose, simply whined about wanting to go see the sharks.

That little Ava should turn out to be very tough wouldn’t surprise me at all. Not after witnessing just a few of the hard truths that permeate the lessons of her mother’s teaching. And so, I also wouldn’t be at all surprised if one day soon simply watching the aquatic killers wouldn’t be enough for her and that she would also want to swim with them. In which case, my money is always on Ava.

Tags: black history month, racism, road to hell paved with good intentions, slavery