Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Political incorrectness, political ineptness

When you live in Northeastern Ohio, there are certain markers that tell you summer is officially here.  A few include:

-- Cedar Point is open every day
-- The Indians' closing pitching has started to suck
-- Some super hero movie is being filmed downtown and now none of us can figure out how to get to work
-- The soft-serve ice cream shops are all open for business
-- We've all gracefully transitioned from the "it's too cold" bitching to the "it's too hot" bitching *

and, best of all ...

-- It's festival season again!

Ah, the church festivals ... I can't imagine summer in Ohio without them ... where we see the same Ferris wheel and tilt-a-whirl traveling from parking lot to parking lot.  These festivals, held to benefit local churches and civic groups, have it all ... pop, beer, corn dogs, games of chance and, of course, the raffles.  St. Mary Magdalene in Willowick usually holds its festival early in the summer, and the car raffle is always a big deal (they also have a cool technology raffle where you can win a TV, iPad or Nook).  This year's car raffle offers the winner a choice of $15,000 or a 3-year lease on a Chevy.  There are also lesser cash prizes, so do check it out:

http://www.smmwillowick.org/festival

The raffle is always a lot of fun, and I always enjoy sitting out in our tent on Vine Street, waving people over to buy tickets.

But, for the festival itself, I wanted to do something different this year, so I signed up to work the Chinese auction.  As I'm sure you probably know (if you're from here), Chinese auctions aren't exactly auctions.  They're really a sort of raffle, usually involving different prizes.  You buy a ticket, and you put the ticket in the container for the prize you want to win. If you really favor one prize over another, you can increase your odds by buying lots of tickets and putting them in the container for that prize (so, maybe in that sense, it does have an auction aspect).  They're a lot of fun, and lots of churches and libraries use them in their fundraisers. 

And then I made a huge mistake.

After talking my sister into purchasing a sheet of raffle tickets for the car, I stupidly told her I had signed up to work the Chinese auction.  I was proud of my volunteer spirit and wanted to share it with Barbara, as if to say, "See what a cool sister you have, aren't you impressed?"

Barbara lives in San Francisco. **

So anyway, after I told her this, I heard her sort of gasp on the other end of the phone... and then she said, "I'm sorry, what did you say?" 

I repeated my news.

"A Chinese Auction?  What the hell is that?"

I couldn't believe it ...how could she never have heard of these?  So, I explained what it was.

There was a significant pause on the other end, and then she said, "You know that's totally racist?"***

I had always prided myself on not being the racist sort.  But c'mon ... Chinese auctions have been around forever.  I told her so.

"So was slavery.  But we got rid of that, right?"

I assured her that nobody here uses the term "Chinese auction" with the slightest notion of it being politically incorrect or racist, and that we used the term because it's always been used in the most innocent light.  Who could accuse a church or a library of wanting to be racist?  It's just a name given to describe a type of strange little raffle. It can't be bad if somebody just wants to win a breakfast basket filled with pancake batter and Pop-Tarts. 

But I didn't want her to think I was a total jerk, so I countered with, "Well, I can see where that might be a bigger deal where you live, because you have a higher Chinese population.  We do have Chinese-Americans living in Willowick, but probably not as many as you do."  Of course, as I'm saying all this, it's occurring to me that I'm sounding like an even bigger jerk because this is one really sad argument if it's all I've got.  Welcome to some truly warped Willowick existentialism... sort of like the old "if a tree falls in a forest, does it make a sound if nobody can hear it?" discussion.  Only now I was reduced to arguing that the term isn't offensive if there's nobody to offend (or, if there is somebody to offend, they're not offended enough to tell us about it).  

Barbara called me on my B.S., still insisting we were all terrible.   So then I tried a different angle and said, "Well, if we don't call it a Chinese auction, people won't know what it is because there's no other way to describe it."  This, of course, sounded lame the second it left my mouth. But really, what else COULD you call it?   

Finally, out of desperation, I told her I'd Google it to find out where the term had, in fact, originated... but that got me nowhere. ****  Some scholars (or Wikipedians pretending to be scholars) suggested that the term was coined with the word "Chinese" to suggest something exotic and mysterious.  Others noted that the use of "Chinese" was meant to be derogatory; suggesting a "sneaky" sort of raffle that wasn't a real auction at all.  Either way, I'm still clueless where it came from.  I have no idea if it's all that bad.  It probably is.

So, in the end, I brilliantly ended the discussion by declaring, "I got nuthin'."

Last Saturday, I was at the beauty shop having my hair colored and I told my cosmetologist (who shall remain nameless, as I don't want to offend anyone wielding scissors) about how upset Barb was over my working a Chinese auction.

Scissors lady looked at me thoughtfully for a moment, and then said, "Oh, why ... because she thinks it's wrong for the church to use raffles to raise money?" 

What a relief ... it's not just me.

So, next Friday, I will be sitting at a table at St. Mary Magdalene selling Chinese raffle tickets ... and I truly and sincerely hope the term doesn't offend anyone. But I'm not too worried ... after all, mostly Ohioans will be attending the festival, and we understand the importance of tradition. We don't worry too much about political correctness, at least not until we have to. After all, who are we to even try? We've spent our entire lives defending the Cleveland Indians and their timeless leader, Chief Wahoo, and nobody likes a hypocrite.


*On average, I think Cleveland gets about 13.5 perfect days per year where it's not too hot, too cold, too humid, too snowy, too rainy, too cloudy or too windy.  Those days, lovely as they are, only serve to bewilder and confuse us.

**I always feel I have to mention this -- not sure why.

*** What is it about Californians?  Must they always be so conscious of their environment, not to mention political correctness and other people's feelings? Do they not understand we Midwesterners have no time for such matters? We just try to make it through winter without dying...the rest is all gravy.

****There are those who think Google is the source of all knowledge, but I believe it's also the source of all stupidity.  But, hey, at least it's convenient to find it all in one place.