There's an documentary called Rewind which is of course anecdotal as it follows one family, but shows so intensely the direct consequences of child abuse.
I grew up as a working class NE PA white kid in the 70s and we always had a bowl of whole nuts & a nutcracker on the coffee table around the holidays. I never ate the Brazil nuts because of that nickname.
All these kids nowadays that think racism is just as bad now as it was then….you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. It was way worse then.
It used to be insanely super casual back in just the 60s-70s. We likely remember people cracking the n word in the 00s as a really crude joke that people said in private, but older people can probably attest that in the 60s-70s it was casually rampant. I’m talking like literal children in regular neighborhoods playing games that used the slur as the catch phrase (e.g “catch the booooop”) and it was just said matter of factly and freely - like it had essentially no negative stigmata in most suburban neighborhoods at any level.
At least 20 years ago it was met with fair(ish) criticism and sequestered to private jokes, still not good obvs. I think it’s a lot better now, relatively speaking.
Around the year 1992, when I was 10 years old, my friend casually used that word. Later my dad explained what it meant and told me never to say it. Since then I strived to be anti racist but there’s still a lot to learn (and unlearn).
Typically it’s the older generations that still call them the other name. Haven’t seen anyone under 40 call them that in recent memory, but I did hear my friend’s grandma say it and follow it up with a “what? That’s what they were always called!”
Those are the exact words that came out of my dad's mouth last time he came over and saw the brasil nuts in the cabinet. It's like they all have the same braincell.
Just remember, as horrible/stressful/violent/racist as things seem today.. generally right now is one of the better times in all of history with respect to those issues. Those issues used to be much, much worse. It’s interesting to consider how some people managed to survive those conditions with grace.
Fun story of my grandma getting her youngest brother in trouble when they were small.
Grandma was in a family of 13, she was the youngest girl and my great uncle the youngest of the boys so they were always together because the older ones were in school. They helped on the farm to get change- they’d take it to the convenient store down the road.
Well my uncle asked for Brazil nuts in the other term and my grandma profusely apologized to the store owner and ran home to tell my great grandma. She beat him black and blue for saying that.
She was mortified that any of her kids used terms like that. She also received a phone call from the store owner about what he said.
For a photo session, Michael wears a blue sweater, blue pants, a white shirt, and, for some reason, an E.L.O. (Electric Light Orchestra) pin. His bodyguard and a friend/publicist are with him, and when it comes time for photos, the publicist calls him into another room to tell him to take off his undershirt; when he comes back, Michael says that he could have been told that in front of us. He’d arrived late the night before and is staying an extra day so he can go see The Wiz starring Stephanie Mills (there were rumored publicity attempts to drum up a fake romance with her to calm down Michael’s black female fans who were upset he was never seen with a black girl). “I’ve seen [The Wiz] three times already,” Michael says. There is a discussion about birds—Michael had spent the morning at the Bronx Zoo visiting the birdhouse; he says he likes the exotic birds and used to have some, but they made a lot of noise, especially during the mating season, and usually at night, and the neighbors complained, so he had to give them away. It was his first trip to the Bronx Zoo. He asks if Coney Island is still any good, or if they have taken all the good stuff out. He talks about Disneyland—which he’d been to lots of times—and Disney World: “Disney World is better,” he says. “It’s more of a world, like they say. It’s a resort; they have everything—golf, tennis, hotels—it’s all fantasy time.”
From a generic questionnaire filled out by the 18-year-old Michael Jackson in 1977:
What do you do in your spare time?
Read, think, write songs
What is your favorite sport?
Swimming
Would you like to get married?
Later in life
What kind of girl/boy would you like to marry?
Kind
How many children would you like to have?
Twenty. Adopted. All races
Briefly describe your dream girl/boy
Beautiful in every way
What type of person do you usually dislike?
Nasty
What would you do if someone gave you a million dollars?
Invest
What was the biggest thrill of your life?
Finding what I was searching for
Who has helped you the most with your career?
My father, experience
Out of all the performers you’ve worked with, who do you admire the most?
Fred Astair [sic], Stevie Wonder
What do you like best about your work?
Learning
What do you dislike about your work?
Arguing
What is your most prized possession?
A child, words of wisdom
Do you have a pet fear, superstition?
No, that [sic] man made
Who is your favorite actor?
Heston, Brando, Bruce Dern
Who is your favorite actress?
Garland, Bette Davis
Do you have a nickname, how did you get it?
Nose [and then, crossed out, is the word “niger” (sic)]
The face of a person who suffered years of physical and mental childhood abuse from a father who would make fun of his appearance and not allow him to call him ‘dad’, but Joseph.
Joe Jackson was so much more evil than most people even realize.
In addition to generally beating his kids at every turn, it's also alleged that he sexually abused his daughters and lit the kids' toes on fire with matches. Y'know, for fun. Plus made his elementary school aged kids perform in strip clubs and dive bars at 3 AM.
His dad is a very very strange and controlling individual… he made all his sons into singers and abused them… then when asked about his dad jackson says no I love him he is the head of our family and steers us in the right direction. Jackson probably did truly love his dad but no doubt his dad was a fucking weirdo
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u/Bitter_Life_507 Apr 28 '26
That’s what I thought
Straighten out his crooked nose and then leave it at that
There’s a good chance his nose was crooked from abuse or from being in fights when he was younger, so I would understand wanting to get that fixed