Race- Privilege, Relations, Racism, etc.

Ethnocentrism is also a fair enough term if the prejudice stems more from the culture than the mere borders as Xenophobia would imply

And sectarianism might work?

Bigotry, discrimination, or hatred arising from attaching importance to perceived differences between subdivisions within a group, such as between different denominations of a religion, class, regional or factions of a political movement.

Edit-Sounds like I'm promoting sectarianism or something, telling yous it might work.

edited 6th Jul '14 3:56:46 PM by QueenPanic

Erasure and whitewashing in YA book covers:

Silhouetting doesn't seem racist imo, it's just a style of art to pull attention and I've seen that on books with white protagonists as well. I agree with most the rest of that, though

Silhouetting isn't racist by itself, but if it's done to much a higher degree to POC than white people than that's a problem.

This is pretty great sketch about the state of racism in professional sports:

From an artistic standpoint, you have chiaroscuro, a style that depends on contrasting light and dark, and not out of racism but because of ease of clarity, light-skinned subjects just work better. I think one of the best (modern) example of this is Elizabeth in Bio Shock Infinite. For the same reason, the stark contrast of silhouette works exceptionally well for symbolism in relation to race as it relates to people of color (this has a strong amount of reclamation in book covers featuring stark black faces, sometimes exaggerated with text in light color over and/or around said face; Chinua Achebe's iconic Things Fall Apart comes to mind). Although in the world of film and video games, this may overlap more with Color Coded For Your Convenience and in reference to Po C, also Unfortunate Implications nearly as often.

Criticising someone's height should be socially unacceptable, says John Bercow, British House of Commons Speaker.

edited 8th Jul '14 4:22:51 AM by Greenmantle

Slow week in the British Parliament?

Not really - turns out there was a Parliamentary pedophile ring operating through the 1980s.

Bercow's just blowing off steam because he's a midget.

He's the same height I am. Hardly a midget.

Ironically, it's because of similar experiences that I think his argument is correct, if his methods are stupid. Height harassment shouldn't be any more acceptable than any other form of harassment or bigotry, but unless we're talking about putting all short people in ghettos or denying them the right to marry, comparing it to other social justice issues is just flat out ignorant and insulting.

Actually, I see his point, to a certain extent. There is definitely discrimination against people suffering with dwarfism and other related conditions, that does occasionally cross over with other types of prejudice because of it being an actual disability. That's ableism, and is definitely on the same level as racism and homophobia and sexism.

But he's not abnormally short or disabled because of his height. He's just not as tall as the average male. By a few inches.

It's rude to make fun of his height, but unless it heads into ableism, it's not quite on the same level as racism and homophobia. By using himself as an example, he's making the whole argument look ridiculous, and hurting people who are suffering real height discrimination.

Baltimore study shows poor whites have clear benefit over poor blacks. For the tldr crowd, it appears that despite the same levels of poverty and lack of education, whites have stronger family ties and are more likely to have steady cohabitation/marriage than blacks, resulting in half the unemployment and twice the income for the same set of job skills and education. Not said in the article is anything on drug policy and law enforcement, aside from noting that whites with criminal records are overwhelmingly still able to find jobs compared to blacks. (I also take some issue with their definition of "poor" given that the whites in their study make as much money as I do.)

That doesn't surprise me. Having the right connections is often much more important than having money.

I've heard that before. I think it's also because you don't really have a lot of black families that have been wealthy for generations and thus are able to secure connections and the like for their kids. Most extremely wealthy black people today are Rags to Riches stories. I also remember the study where they sent out fake resumes and white people with criminal records got more interviews than black people without criminal records.

edited 14th Jul '14 9:22:41 AM by wuggles

Study - Hard Times Can Make People More Racist.

I have a little scenario I would like you people's opinions on.

Assume that there is a Minority character, this character is generally strong, kind and intelligent, and is, in general, looked upon favorably and respected by his in-universe peers.

But.

This character also happens to be a foreigner who is not very good with the native language and, as such, he sometimes intimidates people who he tries to talk with, and does not comes across as all that smart. (You will, in general, have an easier time telling that about him with his inner monologues and/or when he switchs to his home language)

Would you guys consider this character problematic or not? Why?

Saint, you basically just described Heavy Weapons Guy XD

Depends on what you mean by "problematic"

edited 14th Jul '14 10:19:45 AM by Aszur

Eh, I don't really see the issue with it. It'd be a bit eyebrow-raising if the character was genuinely as stupid as he seemed to be to the other characters, but a character who causes culture clash simply by virtue of him being from a different culture doesn't really strike me as racist since the exact same thing happens commonly in real life.

Racism in media generally stems from other races being portrayed unrealistically and in an unflattering fashion.

Of course, I'm a white guy who's spent his entire life in his home country, so I could just be talking out of my ass.

edited 14th Jul '14 10:24:34 AM by Zennistrad

It depends. Is he the only minority character? If so then yeah I would find it kind of problematic, or at the very least cliche.

"Promotes racist and/or xenophobic assumptions and stereotypes about a particular group."

edited 14th Jul '14 10:26:08 AM by SaintDeltora

I agree with wuggles in that if he is the only Minority character he seems to be a lot more like a Token character or a cliche character placed there to appease a certain audience, or serve a quota.

What if he is the only representative of one particular group, but he also represented other groups of which other characters are also part of?

Depending on the groups involved, it could still be called tokenism.

I don't mind him being the only one so long as there was a good reason. Making him the solo voice could be a way to bring up issues of racism and xenophobia and cultural baggage.

I do highly recommend having both his internal dialogue and how others are seeing it. The frustration or any other feelings that come from this can be important to giving a message.

There are a few books I know that do this well, Grendal, Londonstani, Fight Club, and The Reluctant Fundamentalist.