TPPM Watts: (28) Siege of persuasion

[Paul Nightingale]

The Mustang story is interesting, and begs a question about the
unintended subversiveness of mass advertising. Given the different kinds
of social status involved, how does the black maid come to believe she
can drive the same car as her white employer?

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of pynchonoid
> Sent: 02 October 2004 18:12
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: Re: TPPM Watts: (28) Siege of persuasion
> 
> 
> --- Paul Nightingale <isread at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> > Well, "white values are [also] displayed without
> > let-up on [white]
> > people's TV screens": is this why so many drive
> > Mustangs?
> 
> 
> Lafayette, Louisiana was a racially segregated city
> when I spent most of my grammar school years there in
> the late 1950s and early '60s.  An oil bidness friend
> of my father's bought his wife a Mustang when they
> first came on the market - first on their block - and
> the wife made him trade it in when their black maid
> appeared at work the following driving a brand new
> Mustang, too. . Around this time,  it looked as if
> they were going to be forced to integrate the schools.
> We came to school one morning and the administration
> had divided the playground in half with a chalk line -
> boys on one side, girls on the other.  If push came to
> shove, the good white folk of Lafayette were going to
> protect their young girls from contact with the black
> boys.  The playground division lasted a few weeks,
> until the integration scare passed. Not too long after
> that our family moved out west. Not quite 20 years
> later I wound up in an inter-racial marriage that
> continues to this day.
> 
> 
> =====
> http://pynchonoid.org
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