Race- Privilege, Relations, Racism, etc.

1970s, as I recall. Early 1970s.

edited 11th Mar '14 4:34:38 PM by BonsaiForest

As an aside, was that Sun Ra the musician?

Increased diversity lowers people's ability to trust.

Asked to identify the age of a young boy that committed a felony, participants in a study routinely overestimated the age of black children far more than they did white kids.

That one has been common knowledge in academic sociologies circles for quite awhile actually.

edited 13th Mar '14 6:10:11 AM by joeyjojo

@The carjacking video:

Something parallel is being discussed in the Women's Issues thread in that the "he shouldn't have been dressed like a thug" argument is tossed all around the comments section of that video. One of the problems I have with that argument is that it deflects - and nurses - the problem with race relationship (just as i does with rape culture) rather than confronting the problem.

Instead of pondering "hey, it's really weird and wrong that the black guy was confronted by two officers when the white guy wasn't", the rationalization that pops up is "well, that is a conservative neighborhood and the white guy was dressed more nicely, and the LAPD are pricks in general" etc, etc. These are all valid arguments in and of themselves, but when perpetuated in aggregate, they cause a very real social dilemma to fester by not identify racial profiling (again, like rape) for what it is.

I think the fact the location changes between filmings was of more concern, but you make a point

Variations on a theme

So apprently some celebrity named Nick Cannon wore whiteface to promote something. My question is is that ok? I mean it's kind of a doube standard, but then blackface has more if a history than whiteface, soo

Well he can, but he loses any right to complain about blackface and be taken seriously.

Well, has whiteface been used to belittle/oppress white people in the past?

No, just no. When whiteface has the same racial history behind it, then it would be the same. Until then, no matter how distasteful you may find it, it is not even remotely in the same league.

edited 25th Mar '14 5:01:02 AM by ronin504

Is it bad my immediate thought was: "well, at least this guy looks convincing.◊" Compare him to Zvarte Piet.◊

Well ok if you want a double standard.

Imitating utter races in general should be seen as bad from previous incidents. Ie, The holocaust isn't just a lesson in why genocide against Jews is bad.

except for the red lips that actually looks like a black guy I know.

edited 25th Mar '14 5:16:28 AM by joesolo

There is nothing inherently offensive about painting your face, minus that historical context. The history of what blackface has been used for is what MAKES it offensive.

Belgian newspaper publishes doctored photo of the Obamas as apes.

The photo is here◊. Apparently it's "satire" - the pictures are meant to have been sent in by Vladimir Putin.

Satire or not that's in bad taste.

The question is: are other politicians targeted by similar satire? If other politicians are portrayed as (insulting) animals, then it's not much of a problem. If not, bloody racism (though the Obamas are light-skinned enough not to be called "black" outside of the US - more like "mixed").

Saw that story yesterday. That is so stupid- satirizing the (unproven) racism of someone by making a racist image and attributing it to them.

While granting that these are common racist attacks against the Obamas, I kind of come away wondering about the secret prejudices of whoever created the "satire".

I am not so sure if showing Obama as an ape is enough to call racism yet... I mean, how often was Bush shown as an ape, again? Wasn't a running gag?

Not to mention those are not even good shops. With Bush, people just picked the same expression. With Obama, they had to add (baldly) the ape part.

If they did it because Obama is black, then it's racism. If it's because they want to make fun of Obama as a politician, it's not. It's satire.

Associating black people with apes has a long and horrible history from how they are supposedly not as evolved as whites (a popular justification for slavery) to the popular slur "porch monkey" to slander the black man's supposed laziness, and everything in between.

the whole Africans=monkeys thing is too common for it to look innocent. while they may not mean it badly, it's gonna be taken that way.

That. Also, its important that the article is not a (debatably racist) satire of Obama- it is a satire of Vladimir Putin which satirizes him by presenting him as racist against Obama.

Which is to say it basically satirizes racism by engaging in racism.

Edit- Kind of different circumstances, but I was reminded by this story I read about a German Newspaper Cartoon satirizing Mark Zuckerberg. It looks so obviously like Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda that I at first glance I didn't even pick up the references to Facebook, but the cartoonist was very surprised that people interpreted it that way.

edited 25th Mar '14 4:37:14 PM by Hodor

I know this is... shall we say, unpopular opinion, but we can't just treat everything as "It's not racist if it's against white people". Comparing someone to ape based on color is racist, but doing it for some other reason is not.

If we are deciding how offended the target should be based on their color, well, isn't that also a form of racism? Not a full blown racism, but I hope you people understand what I mean.

you've got a point there. we do trend a bit lightly with any given race that has been discriminated against(unless they're now "white enough", ie, Italians, Poles, ect, who were regularly mistreated fairly recently).