This is kind of random, but it has to do with the whole red scare communism thing, and I thought it was funny, so I'll share it with you guys.
On Saturday my family went to visit my grandmother in her new apartment-type building. She grew up in Poland and was sent to a labor camp during World War II, and is a bit crazy now, but in a good way. She was talking to us about someone who visited Poland and brought back candy for her but when she ate it, she didn't like it. She said, "it was very bad, so I thought it was Communist candy." My mother and I started laughing at this and asked her what she meant by Communist candy, but she didn't really have a reason for calling it that. She didn't think there was anything wrong with making that assumption.
I was telling Tara this story, and she said that materials or goods made by communist countries were often considered sub-par, so maybe that is why my grandmother thought the bad candy was "communist." While this may be the case, I also think she has a very anti-communist bias, and the whole situation just made me see how ingrained biases can be that 60 plus years after the war, "communist" is still basically a synonym for "bad" to my grandmother. Thoughts?
-Alexa
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I'm sure Stalin didn't value sweet things very much, so it only makes sense that his candy was subpar.
ReplyDelete-Colin
Or the candy might have been red. Subconcious association, perhaps?
ReplyDelete-emily
It was brown. haha
ReplyDeleteMaybe by growing up in the anti-Communist era made Communism similar to a slang word, to be said without even thinking about what the word really means. -- tori
ReplyDeleteI think this just comes down to a subconscious association of "communism equals bad."
ReplyDelete-Bryce C.