Leaving aside the Virgen del RocÃo, this Easter the great media hit has been the chocolate figure from the Sà bat pastry shop in Sant Cugat del Vallès. It consisted of the torso of a pastry chef, wearing an apron and chef’s cap, holding a piece of cake in each hand. They had to remove it after being accused of being racist. Because? Well, because, according to the complainers, it represented an enslaved black woman. The fact that, per se, chocolate is dark must have nothing to do with it, I suppose.
Last year, at the Tate Museum in London, there was an exhibition of paintings by William Hogarth, a prestigious English painter of the 18th century. The Spectator published a chronicle in which it detailed the censorship notices that, following the woke trend, accompanied the paintings. They consider unthinkable things reprehensible.
One of the most interesting caveats has to do with chairs. Next to a self-portrait of Hogarth, who appears seated while painting a picture, it reads: “The chair is made with wood brought from the colonies, along routes that also brought enslaved people. Could the chair represent black and brown people enabling their vigorous creativity?
A few days ago, the writer and teacher Wanjiru Njoya – who seems to be fed up with so much nonsense – tweeted about this detail: “The chairs are racist. Because they are made of brown or black wood, and there are white people sitting on them shamelessly and shamelessly, to symbolize their supremacy over ‘black and brown enslaved people’. So says the Tate Museum.
Moral: if you buy a monkey made with dark chocolate next year, don’t be doubly racist and at least make sure that the chair where you sit is not made of racialized wood. At Ikea they have the Janinge model, made of white polypropylene plastic, at 49 euros per unit.
