Mary Engelbreit, Beloved Illustrator, Rich White Liberal Race Baiter & Politically Correct Thought Censor

I love Mary Engelbreit's art. An annual ritual for me: going to a bookstore the day after Christmas, the very day they go on sale, and purchasing a new Mary Engelbreit desk calendar. I've been doing that for the better part of the past twenty years. 

I love her art so much I keep the desk calendars. I still have years' worth of Mary Engelbreit desk calendars. 

Mary Engelbreit is a very rich white lady. She draws the world of very rich white ladies. It's a world that I have entered only in order to accompany my mother as she cleaned houses, and to clean houses myself.

Mary Engelbreit draws big fat Victorian homes with wrap around porches, apple-cheeked children caressed by adoring grandparents in homespun and denim overalls, endless beaches, productive orchards, star strewn skies, roses with no thorns. Her world. 

I enter her world, the world I wish I lived in, through my imagination. I gaze at her pretty, pastel creations every day when I look at my desk calendar. No matter that I live in a slum. I have a Mary Engelbreit desk calendar. 

I was surprised to see, on Mary's facebook page, which I did follow (before she kicked me off), the above illustrations. 

These illustrations pimp toxic falsehoods: 

* That in every case where a police officer kills a black person, that happened because America is a white supremacist nation, and the police officer killed the black person out of nothing but white supremacist animus

* That the only response to America's white supremacy is Ferguson-style rioting

* That Ferguson-style rioting does black people any good at all. 

* That Mike Brown was an innocent child who had raised his hands and said, "Hands up; don't shoot" before being murdered by a white supremacist 

* That white people don't care about black people. 

I think that these memes are false and toxic. 

I attempted to tell Mary Engelbreit as much on her Facebook page. 

I posted the message, below. 

In response, Mary Engelbreit took away my ability to post and "like" on her Facebook page. 

Here's what I wrote:

Mary do blue lives matter to you at all? Do the destroyed lives of the small businessmen and women matter to you at all?

Mary, I live in Paterson, NJ, a majority-minority, high-crime city.

Mary, three men have been murdered *directly in front of my apartment* in the past four years.

Has anyone ever been killed in front of your front door, Mary?

I've been questioned by police about one of these murders. The man was stabbed to death mere feet away from me while I slept.

Have you ever been questioned by police about a murder, Mary?

All the dead are minority men. All the killers are minority men.

Ever think about the children murdered every weekend in Chicago, Mary?

The attitude you are promoting, the Al Sharpton "Blame whitey and take no responsibility and do not ever address those who commit crimes and resist arrest" attitude, the attitude of "If anyone questions our belligerence that person is a RACIST!" -- that white liberal attitude is responsible for the rotting of millions of lives of black children in Paterson, Newark, Camden, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit.

Do you care, Mary? Do you live in a majority-minority city, Mary?


I've been buying your products loyally since I first encountered them. Now I will give these purchases a second thought. I know that won't have any impact at all on your bottom line, but when white liberals like you champion race baiting instead of responsibility, you have a toxic effect on innocents like me and my decent, hard working, law abiding black neighbors.