Description
Racially Charged Merchant Trade Card Union Pacific Tea Co.
Featuring an exaggerated caricature of an Asian promoting ‘Union Pacific Tea Co.’ captioned ‘Melican Man he mus dlink tea an den he get so fat like me’. Double sided card colour caricature on face, advertising copy on back. Lockport N.Y.
Trade cards were promotional advertisements of the 19th century. They were trade stimulators created as collectable cards for trading and scrapbooking, utilizing bright vivid colours and often stereotypically racist images. Unfortunately many trade cards were derogatory, caricatured depictions of race, ethnicity, national identity, class, and gender, highlighting the anxiety and bigotry within white, Anglo society. And in these cases particularly, the popular trade cards not only reflected but also perpetuated insidious stereotypes. Even though these trade cards were exaggerated depictions, they also exhibited a sense of truth to the kind of treatment that these targeted groups endured.
