this article kind of schooled me on the similarities between Black Friday and the Hunger Games.
Indeed, that was uncomfortable but entirely unsurprising reading. Simply the line "Thanksgiving promotions are about necessities that are marked down." is somewhat chilling in and of itself.
I'd somehow gotten it into my head that, in the decades since I was in elementary school, most places had picked up a clue and stopped doing that. Apparently not.
Dear gods, I had no idea that sort of nonsense didn't end 25-30 years ago. I haven't asked either of my two partners (who are both somewhat younger than me) about whether they had those sorts of activities in their schools. Mine most definitely did, but Northern VA schools in the early 70s had more than their share of serious problems with all manner of racial and gender attitudes. I'm hoping that all that is over now, and strongly suspect it is in more progressive states, but fear that in the scarier parts of the US, construction paper "Indian headdresses" are still being made.
Those sort of activities always remind me of a (admittedly vastly less noxious) story a woman in the Wiccan coven I was in when I lived in LA mentioned. One year when Halloween was coming up her young son's teacher asked everyone to draw picture's of witches. Her son drew a picture of her in her white robe and pentacle. Once he'd explained to the teacher why he's drawn what he had, the teacher recovered nicely and immediately asked everyone to draw pictures of jack-o'-lanterns instead.
no subject
Indeed, that was uncomfortable but entirely unsurprising reading. Simply the line "Thanksgiving promotions are about necessities that are marked down." is somewhat chilling in and of itself.
I'd somehow gotten it into my head that, in the decades since I was in elementary school, most places had picked up a clue and stopped doing that. Apparently not.
Dear gods, I had no idea that sort of nonsense didn't end 25-30 years ago. I haven't asked either of my two partners (who are both somewhat younger than me) about whether they had those sorts of activities in their schools. Mine most definitely did, but Northern VA schools in the early 70s had more than their share of serious problems with all manner of racial and gender attitudes. I'm hoping that all that is over now, and strongly suspect it is in more progressive states, but fear that in the scarier parts of the US, construction paper "Indian headdresses" are still being made.
Those sort of activities always remind me of a (admittedly vastly less noxious) story a woman in the Wiccan coven I was in when I lived in LA mentioned. One year when Halloween was coming up her young son's teacher asked everyone to draw picture's of witches. Her son drew a picture of her in her white robe and pentacle. Once he'd explained to the teacher why he's drawn what he had, the teacher recovered nicely and immediately asked everyone to draw pictures of jack-o'-lanterns instead.