First thing's first: KEEP. THIS. SHIT. CIVIL. If you can't talk about race without resorting to childish insults and rude generalizations or getting angry at people who don't see it your way, leave the thread.
With that said, I bring you to what can hopefully be the general thread about race.
First, a few starter questions.
- How, if at all, do you feel your race affects your everyday life?
- Do you believe that white people (or whatever the majority race in your area is) receive privileges simply because of the color of their skin. How much?
- Do you believe minorities are discriminated against for the same reason? How much?
- Do you believe that assimilation of cultures is better than people trying to keep their own?
- Affirmative Action. Yea, Nay? Why or why not?
Also, a personal question from me.
- Why (in my experience, not trying to generalize) do white people often try to insist that they aren't white? I can't count the number of times I've heard "I'm not white, I'm 1/4th English, 1/4th German, 1/4th Scandinavian 1/8th Cherokee, and 1/8th Russian," as though 4 of 5 of those things aren't considered "white" by the masses. Is it because you have pride for your ancestry, or an attempt to try and differentiate yourself from all those "other" white people? Or something else altogether?
edited 30th May '11 9:16:04 PM by Wulf
so i made a new avatar
RE: Cultural imperialism: All he's saying is people from other cultures darkening their skin for cosplay purposes is gonna remind people from the US of blackface, which will cause people to get upset, no matter what the cosplayer's intention is. Whether you think their anger is justified or not, that's just a fact. Call him condescending all you want, but when he says "that's just how it is", it's because that's just how it friggin' is.
If you wanna explain to every single person that got upset over the whole thing that Korea doesn't have the same racial baggage that America does and there was no way she could've known it would offend people, go right ahead.
edited 18th Jan '17 8:55:01 AM by PhysicalStamina
To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."
In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.
When rightwingers get upset because of their logical fallacies and wierd associations, nobody is defending their emotions. But when our side does it, fallacies are excused simply for existing.
Hypocrisy, it makes life easy.
Shop Owner
I am telling you that there are cultural costumes in my country that include skin darkening. So fuck your standards.
Could you provide some detail?
edited 18th Jan '17 9:03:32 AM by Hodor2
so i made a new avatar
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Fine, whatever, but if you post it online and Americans see it some of them are gonna be mad and there's really nothing you can do about it.
I'm not excusing anything, I'm literally just saying facts.
I mean, you can disagree with people getting upset, but you can't disagree that they'll get upset.
edited 18th Jan '17 9:10:40 AM by PhysicalStamina
To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."
Shop Owner
The congo dances uses darkening pigments on the face, It's an afro-antillian descendant cultural practice. So most practicioners are black, but sometimes people of lighter skin participate in the practice, so could be mistaken for black face.
A video with a Little Dirty Devil and a Congo.
EDIT: Afro-colonial.
edited 18th Jan '17 10:35:45 AM by vandro
United Earth
That's on them, isn't it?
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
I am genuinely curious in learning about those customs/costumes, but I'll admit upfront is that one reason I'm curious is that I tend to think that the "American standards/cultural imperialism" argument is specious because some (if not necessarily all) "skin darkening costumes" involve racist caricaturing that if not necessarily equivalent to the Anglo-American minstrel show, is definitely in the same family.
Like my go to example would be Zwarte Piet. Nowadays the figure/costume is defended on the basis that the skin is darkened to indicate a Spaniard and/or someone who gets dirty from crawling down a chimney, but that doesn't explain the big red lips and historic use of nonstandard Jive Turkey antics (nor why if he's sooty from the chimney his clothes aren't dirty).
Edit-
Hmm. That's a tough call. I was thinking going in that what you were alluding was a Carnival tradition of white people dressing as caricatured Africans, but since the tradition is actually an African one, it's not as obviously offensive as I had assumed.
edited 18th Jan '17 9:15:57 AM by Hodor2
Shop Owner
I understand the issue with Black Pete, and I am all for the Soot Pete reimagening. But not all blackfaced costumes are minstrel parallels.
Why would you assume I was defending such a carnival practice, we have queens on floats parading around their respective towns, not racist demonstrations.
edited 18th Jan '17 9:17:41 AM by vandro
so i made a new avatar
Well, yeah, but getting angry at people getting angry because of things they don't understand just seems like a waste of energy to me.
edited 18th Jan '17 9:15:33 AM by PhysicalStamina
To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."
United Earth
Yes. The correct response is to keep calm and let them eat cake.
Shop Owner
The Dirty Little Devil(Diablico Sucio in the original spanish) is a stand-in for the European oppressor and that's why they have castañuelas, the congo represents the african slave who will be free.
I can try to change the culture so as not to make such displays be considered offensive, I can fail, most likely will fail. But I will try.
edited 18th Jan '17 9:37:59 AM by vandro
The law in the night
Guess who was deemed too small to be a threat?
The Economist: Germany’s supreme court decides not to ban the neo-Nazi party
The National Democratic Party is truly nasty, but not strong enough to be able to fulfill its goals
YES, Germany’s National Democratic Party (NPD) is “related to National Socialism”, the country’s supreme court in Karlsruhe said on January 17th. And yes, its aims are to undermine Germany’s constitution and ultimately to establish an ethnically pure German Volk. And yet, the red-robed judges opined, there is no sign that the NPD could come close to fulfilling its goals. The party, it ruled, will therefore not be banned.
This landmark verdict ends a decades-long saga of failed efforts to declare Germany’s neo-Nazi party illegal. A previous attempt to outlaw the NPD foundered in 2003 because government-paid informants were among the witnesses, tainting the evidence. The latest push began in 2013, when the federal legislature’s upper chamber, representing Germany’s 16 states, brought a new case. But the standard of proof for banning political parties, mandated by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, is high. In societies that value free speech and association, it is not enough to prove even the worst motivation; a party must also have a “real potential” to make good on evil designs.
It was predictable that Germany, with its Nazi past and unique sensitivity to extremist politics, would serve as the test case for Strasbourg’s standard. Post-war Germany has banned only two parties, both in the 1950s, when Weimar and Hitler were still fresh in the judges’ memories. One was a far-right party, the other the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). In the latter case, the court banned the KPD even though it saw no actual threat that it would undermine West German democracy. This verdict reverses that precedent.
The reasoning behind the decision is sound. The NPD’s membership has withered to about 5,200 (as of 2015). Its share of the vote in the most recent national election was a mere 1.3%. It lost its last remaining seats in a regional parliament, in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, last year. As of today it has only a single elected representative—and he is in the European Parliament. The plaintiffs, and many experts on radicalism, argued that the NPD nonetheless remained dangerous. Its share of the vote is higher in eastern Germany than it is nationally. In some places—such as Jamel, a town in Mecklenburg—it plays a large local role. This presence, as well as connections to mobs that threaten violence against migrants, creates “an atmosphere of fear”, the lawyers argued. Jamel is an exception, the judges countered. More than seven decades after Hitler, German democracy and civic society are mature and robust enough to contain this pathogen.
That assessment is correct, and thus a historical landmark, for it posits an official end to Germany’s special and unique status within Europe in the treatment of right-wing radicalism. Yet this verdict is also no reason to relax. As became clear in last year’s election in Mecklenburg, one reason why the NPD has been atrophying is that some of its supporters have switched to the less toxic but still far-right Alternative for Germany (Af D) party, which was founded in 2013. The Af D is xenophobic enough to satisfy many former NPD voters, and far more popular: it is currently polling at 13% nationally. As in other European countries, racists and bigots will continue to find their bullhorns.
@Vandro- Well, I thought you were going for an "only Americans are racist" argument.
But also, it's definitely a thing at Carnival, mummers parades and the like for people to dress up in fearsome and/or grotesque costumes as part of the temporary "rebellion" against social norms, and that sometimes includes caricatures of other countries/races.
See for instance the description of Venetian Carnival in Lord Byron's Beppo: "And there are dresses, splendid but fantastical,/ Masks of all times and nations, Turks and Jews,/ And Harlequins and Clowns, with feats gymnastical,/ Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos; All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical,"
And knowing that Latin American Carnivals include cross-dressing by people who are not necessarily friendly to the LGBTQ spectrum, I don't think it's that off-base to assume there might be some racist caricaturing going on.
Shop Owner
You tried to hand me rope to hang myself, it looks like, and I don't like that. Please don't do that.
Speaking of crossdressing, we tend to do it. But most famous carnival crossdressers, at least in Las Tablas, the region of my family's origin, are usually gay men with outrageous drag performances and stereotypical affectations. There is this black guy, "La Ñata" (The flat-nosed (female) [one]), who is usually seen on the Musical band's float dragging tractor sporting costumes.
EDIT: Sorry the congo isn't afro-antillian, it's afro-colonial. (the former are english speakers with english surames descended from the antilles, the latter have spanish names and descend from slaves and cimarrones)
edited 18th Jan '17 10:34:44 AM by vandro
A procrastination in of itself
I'm still waiting for the day when Americans get upset about Sweep due to seeing racial issues where there aren't any. Sweeps is a traditional English festival around Dickensian England, so it normally includes people dressed chimney sweeps with fake soot on their faces. To an a American it might well look like poorly done Blackface.
edited 18th Jan '17 3:24:08 PM by Silasw
"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran
United Earth
Do they, uh, step in time?
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
so i made a new avatar
Unless they decide to stream the festival worldwide you're gonna be waiting for a while.
To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."
United Earth
No songs about chimneys?
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
The law in the night
And yet Trumpets deny any connection between racism and Trump.
Inter arma enim silent leges
so i made a new avatar
Usually they deny racism is even a thing at all.
To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."
No really, everyone else are racist to them or each other, instead the only moment trumpet is racist is when he want too, no more no less.
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
Ok, I most said two things here:
Unlike many other cases this korean girl do have the presuncion of ignorance because her country have a very diferent story and I get were Vandro is coming since it look like "WE as country did a lot of bad thing, therefore YOU should stop of doing that because is bad" it come as weird US standar applying to all situations.
Now that being said here, there is a issue about the costume one is cosplaying is how unique to the chararter it is, if a white person try to cosplay finn in is stormtropper them he will just look like a stormtroper because there is nothing "unique" to that costume compare to finn as rebel, so in this case having her the whole Sombra costume is just enough
"My Name is Bolt, Bolt Crank and I dont care if you believe or not"