Greeting Card Line Pulled From Racks After Protest

A La Mesa card shop took several greeting cards off its shelves Tuesday after more than 25 San Diego State University students picketed the store to protest the cards, which they described as racially and sexually offensive.

Dick and Suzie Collier, who own Suzie’s Hallmark on Lake Murray Boulevard, said they did not believe the cards, which show a large black woman in a variety of outfits and roles that students described as “demeaning to women and blacks,” were offensive.

“We wouldn’t have bought them if we thought they were,” Dick Collier said. “They seemed funny.” Collier said the cards were probably not in good taste, but he did not believe they were racist.

One shows a large black woman and a slim white woman posing as prostitutes. “I would have gotten you a surprise for your birthday,” the card reads, “but, I was afraid I’d get the size and color wrong.”

Billi Gordon, the black model, and the Colliers called the protest “censorship by intimidation.”

“No one is sacred when it comes to comedy,” Gordon said in a telephone interview Tuesday. “That’s the beauty of America. . . . You have the right to express yourself. I find Eddie Murphy’s attitudes toward women and homosexuals very offensive, but I would never go so far as to say he shouldn’t be allowed to perform.”

Suzie Collier said the cards were removed, not to satisfy the students’ demands but because their protest was distracting to customers and to neighboring stores.

The students, who demonstrated Monday and Tuesday, plan to protest at other San Diego stores that carry the cards, including Graffiti in Horton Plaza, unless it also agrees to pull the cards.

“We decided Monday and Tuesday would be the best days to protest (at Suzie’s Hallmark) because it was the day before Valentine’s Day and it would hit the store the hardest. We wanted to tell them we wouldn’t put up with this,” said SDSU student Kim Harris, one of several students who helped organize the event.

Teresa Meyd, floor manager at Graffiti, said the store had not received any complaints about the cards. Meyd could not comment on whether or not the cards would be removed, and a store manager could not be reached.

“The point is to get them off the shelf and to raise awareness of the existence of greeting cards which are demeaning to women and blacks,” Harris said.

Students got involved Friday after Theodore Kornweibel, an Afro-American studies professor at SDSU, brought to class a few cards purchased from Suzie’s Hallmark, Harris said. One showed model Billi Gordon imitating Prissy, the squeaky-voiced, tearful young slave in the movie “Gone With the Wind.”

The students then organized their protest and are now compiling a list of other retailers who sell the cards. Signatures are being gathered to petition the publisher, West Graphics Inc. of San Francisco, to discontinue Gordon’s line. Harris said SDSU students were also contacting friends at other California State University and University of California campuses to see if the offensive cards were being sold elsewhere.

Randy West, president of West Graphics, said the company had no plans to discontinue Gordon’s cards, which he said have sold very well.

“We have a number of stores which sell only black merchandise and are geared for blacks. They stock our cards and do not have a problem with them,” he said. “We’re not attacking anybody and we’re not trying to create a victim.”

Gordon voiced personal objection to the student’s demonstration.

“They’re protesting my . . . spoof on the ‘Gone With the Wind’ character. I find that offensive because my grandmother was a scrub woman like that,” she said. “I don’t feel ashamed at having come from slaves. . . . I think it’s a proud part of my heritage because it’s something we overcame.”

SDSU sophomore La Shon Walker said Gordon was “making a mockery of her own heritage and that’s . . . sad.”

Veronica Bernay Griffin, another SDSU sophomore, said the Prissy character was an example of the fact that greeting cards often fail to depict blacks in a positive light.

Kornweibel said of Gordon: “If she can feel that unaffected by the stereotype, that’s OK for her. But there are millions of black women who labor under that cruel stereotype.”

Joel Comford, of El Capitan High School in Lakeside, said black history should not be presented in a “supposedly humorous” way. Comford, 17, attended the protest after hearing about it from a friend at SDSU.

The students were well-dressed and followed picketing guidelines because “we didn’t want to be known as rowdy college students out for no reason,” Harris said. “We wanted to let people know we were serious.”

Three or four bystanders joined the picket line Monday, Harris said. A middle-aged man and his two children who joined the protest Tuesday declined to comment or give his name.