I was a teenage performer in a racist Wild West show, and I loved it — then
December 14, 2015
Jerry Grillo
Once upon a time, my job description was “attack the train, terrorize the passengers, chase the pretty showgirls, fight the armed conductors, get killed” ... We were a bunch of white, suburban, teenaged boys trained as low-rent stuntmen. Wearing wigs, grease paint, and multicolored cotton jerseys, any resemblance we had to actual Native Americans was accidental or nonexistent ...
But there’s another truth to be spoken, if I’m being honest: It was so much damn fun. I thought of this caustic combination of fun, violence, and intolerance last summer when hundreds of people flooded Stone Mountain Park for a Confederate flag rally in the wake of the slaughter at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.
Hordes of fake Confederates giddily waved Civil War battle flags, banners of sanctioned bullying, bigotry, and racism. Of course, they claimed to be defending what they see as their Southern heritage, as if everything about their culture could be confined to four years of wrongheaded rebellion and bloodshed ...
Of course, these wannabe rebels are as bogus and spoiled as we were back in the 1970s. Instead of waving Confederate battle flags, we brandished rubber tomahawks and .22 rifles with blanks. But we were all involved in something profoundly insensitive to a large swath of humanity ...
http://www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/i-was-a-teenage-performer-in-a-racist-wild-west-show-and-i-loved-it-then/