While Master Of None may exist in what can seem like a romanticised, alternate-reality version of New York, that racist cookie jar is extremely real. For those who don't remember, in one of my favourite episodes from the season 2 (besides, of course, "Thanksgiving") Dev finds himself on one date after another thanks to the likes of Tinder — or whatever colour-corrected, hipster dating app he uses. He ends up in bed with one woman named Christine who has a cookie jar full of condoms in the shape of a Black woman wearing a dress, apron, and bonnet. He pauses, but eventually pushes the jar from his mind so he and Christine can get down to brass tacks. Afterwards, however, he confronts her about it.
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“You can’t use that shade of black to depict African-American people!” he says, pointing out that if he's the most brown person to ever be in her apartment and he's offended, then maybe she should reconsider.
“You think I’m racist now, but you still had sex with me?” she fires back.
An-y-way, all this is to say: That cookie jar isn't just a prop. It's unfortunately super common and currently for sale all over eBay, Etsy, Ruby Lane, and others, according to Slate. They range from £12 all the way to the hundreds, but all are basically the same. The woman is round, painted an offensive shade of black, and has a wide smile painted onto her face as she puts her hands on her hips or holds out a tray.
These jars and figures can end up being worth so much money because they're technically considered antiques, leftover from a racist era when these kinds of depictions were considered humorous, or at the very least okay — which, of course, they're not. Their origins make it that much weirder that one could end up holding condoms in the Brooklyn apartment of a white woman, so if you find yourself on the listing of one of these objects, or stumble across it at a vintage fair, take Dev's advice and leave it the hell alone.
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