We go through this every time a Sauvage-LeJeune comes up on eBay. There was I believe a US company that made "Savage" firearms or related products. Their logo was an Native American in profile in full ceremonial headdress. Not inherently a demeaning image, but the connection of Native Americans with the word Savage is now politically incorrect. One should member that the word "savage" or "sauvage" in French was used in romanticizing non-European cultures as closer to nature and more honest and genuine. The philosophers of the Enlightenment, many of them French, were fond of talking about the "Noble Savage", uncontaminated by Western civilation.
That said, the cruder circles of European, and European-American, society certainly used "savage" as a term of abuse. And after the French lost their North American empire to Britain, or sold it to the United States, most of the remaining French Empire was in Africa, so the non-European "sauvages" they were most familiar with were Africans. In the 50's when the eBay bike was made, the popular media still spoke routinely of "Darkest Africa" and Americans' image of the continent was largely gained from Tarzan movies and the like.
So while this Sauvage-LeJeune logo is certainly ojectionable by today's standards, it is the product of its time, when few potential buyers would have been offended by it.
Regards,
Jerry Moos
Big Spring, Texas, USA
> From: donald gillies <gillies@ece.ubc.ca>
\r?\n> Subject: [CR] Racist (not Racing) Bikes
\r?\n> To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
\r?\n> Date: Thursday, November 19, 2009, 5:41 PM
\r?\n> "Lejeune Sauvage" bicycle frame :
\r?\n>
\r?\n> http://sceno.nexenservices.com/
\r?\n>
\r?\n> http://ebay.com/
\r?\n>
\r?\n> I hear you can ride it no-handed while reading "Little
\r?\n> Black Sambo" in
\r?\n> short-story form (which BTW is a racist story banned from
\r?\n> my later
\r?\n> editions of my favorite childhood book collection, "The
\r?\n> Book House".)
\r?\n>
\r?\n> - Don Gillies
\r?\n> San Diego, CA, USA
\r?\n>
\r?\n> P.S. transmittal of this message condones neither the book
\r?\n> nor the
\r?\n> bike.