This is the creepiest kid's ride I have ever seen, yet is is still very popularly used. I couldn't pinpoint what it was that freaked me out about it until my brother pointed out that it looks awfully similar to black face -- especially the golliwog caricature. I'm curious to know the history of this ride. Everything in our day-to-day lives was designed by a human at some point. It is possible that the similarity is accidental but you can never really know. People make things and people insert their beliefs into the things they make. This space where culture, sociology and design intersect is of great interest to me.

The website for the Jim Crow Museum of Rascist Memorabillia is quite interesting and packed with information. This is one of the things I truly appreciate about the internet; access to free information. I just found my day side-tracked a bit by this piece on the stereotype of "The Tragic Mulatto". Portrayals of mixed race people is particularly interesting to me since I am a product of several generations of "race-mixing". My brother and I have endlessly discussed our views and personal feelings about being "neither this nor that" and we both agree that for us it has been anything but tragic. People will always identify you by how you look, but only you know how you feel and who you are. Perception is deception. Unfortunately it took me until my teens to start to see it, and until my mid twenties to understand what being of multi-ethnicities meant to me personally without the crap and burden of other people's perceptions of my identity weighing on me.