Racism Part two

[foreveryoung]

38 minutes ago, Rolta said:

Most of this you've made up for yourself but it's winding you up, which says a lot.

Whether Golliwogs are banned or not, the world has grown up and moved on. They're cringeworthy and only seem to be defended by people who says things like, 'You might as well ban bananas, that way people won't get offended if someone throws them'. The controversy doesn't surround the word 'wog'—though that's not a good look either—but that they're dolls based on a story based on dolls based on black minstrel shows performed by 100% racist white people in black face that stereotyped black people as slow, dim witted, lazy and so on.

You've already talked about Irish people not minding Irish jokes, but if you go to Ireland and talk to actual Irish people with the equivalent old-fashioned perspective you're defending in your various posts, you see how many friends you make and alternatively how many people think you're just revealing yourself as someone who's not really very interested in the world outside your own thoughts, and you see how many of them want to spend much time with you. I'm sure you're a nice guy more generally, but there's a reason why this stuff is embarrassing now, and it's not because of some collective madness and people getting offended—it's because it's dumb racist shit from the past and most people these days are OK with moving on from that.

 

This ain't racist though aye? 2 black people dressed up as girls, portrayed as dumb blondes.

 

[tomav84]

13 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

This ain't racist though aye? 2 black people dressed up as girls, portrayed as dumb blondes.

 

you're comparing white chicks to minstrel shows? really? OK...

[Seat68]

My father had a servant when he worked in Qatar in the 90s. He referred to the person and continues to call people of the same race, "jinglies". He has always been a massive racist, as is my mother and brother. None of them believe they are. 

[LondonLax]

20 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

This ain't racist though aye? 2 black people dressed up as girls, portrayed as dumb blondes.

 

I sometimes wonder about people who bring up stuff like this so I would love it if you could indulge me with a few questions?

Do you yourself feel that this is offensive to you?

If you don’t, do you then feel you are somehow better/‘less sensitive’ than someone who is offended by a ‘black face’ minstrel parody?

Do you sometimes wonder why many people find ‘blackface’ offensive but don’t really care about black people painting their face white?

What conclusions do you yourself come to for explaining why that phenomenon exists?

[LondonLax]

2 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

My father had a servant when he worked in Qatar in the 90s. He referred to the person and continues to call people of the same race, "jinglies". He has always been a massive racist, as is my mother and brother. None of them believe they are. 

My brother lived in UAE for a while and when I was out there visiting him one of the things that struck me was how many of the European expats would treat the South Asian taxi drivers or Philippine cleaners like shit. There was a pretty clear social hierarchy out there and it seemed like people just fell into a cultural pattern that they likely wouldn’t do ‘back home’.

[foreveryoung]

1 hour ago, tomav84 said:

you're comparing white chicks to minstrel shows? really? OK...

Not really, I'm just wondering why this is not offensive, no one seems to answer that? There are many who do find it offensive, I guess like black people find blackface offensive.

Me, I don't really care, like I don't care about black face.

[Rolta]

29 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

Not really, I'm just wondering why this is not offensive, no one seems to answer that? There are many who do find it offensive, I guess like black people find blackface offensive.

Me, I don't really care, like I don't care about black face.

Your low effort at thinking around this topic is really saying something, no offence.

You shouldn't need people on villatalk to tell you the differences between minstrel shows and your point about white chicks. 

Edited October 8, 2022 by Rolta

[tomav84]

1 minute ago, foreveryoung said:

Not really, I'm just wondering why this is not offensive, no one seems to answer that? There are many who do find it offensive, I guess like black people find blackface offensive.

Me, I don't really care, like I don't care about black face.

minstrel shows depict black people as being stupid and lazy, as a collective

white chicks had 2 detectives change their appearance to look like 2 particular individuals in order to go undercover, and were not aiming it at an entire race. coupled with the fact that they spend much of the film just acting as themselves, rather than white females in general and trying to enforce some kind of stereotype...which of course you already know as you've also seen the film and not just posted a photo and assumed it must be just as offensive as a minstrel show?

it really should not need explaining how one is offensive and the other is not.

the only ones that find white chicks offensive, are charming fellows such as the below. who aren't actually offended anyway, they're just racist

 

 

[Marka Ragnos]

2 hours ago, LondonLax said:

I sometimes wonder about people who bring up stuff like this so I would love it if you could indulge me with a few questions?

Do you yourself feel that this is offensive to you?

If you don’t, do you then feel you are somehow better/‘less sensitive’ than someone who is offended by a ‘black face’ minstrel parody?

Do you sometimes wonder why many people find ‘blackface’ offensive but don’t really care about black people painting their face white?

What conclusions do you yourself come to for explaining why that phenomenon exists?

In my humble, the quick answer is context — esp., historical but also economic and cultural. “Offense” often grows out of a long-standing real and/or perceived sense of inequality, otherwise it’s meaningless. I don’t think that’s so hard to grasp. An historically powerful majority poking fun at an historically disempowered minority of any sort causes offense, and the reverse doesn’t because it’s an inherently different action with far different implications. That’s my dim-witted perspective at least. I think it’s all explained better in The Sneetches. 

Edited October 8, 2022 by Marka Ragnos

[bickster]

46 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

There are many who do find it offensive

More exhibits for the Idiot Zoo, where can I find these many?

[Marka Ragnos]

19 minutes ago, Rolta said:

Your low effort at thinking around this topic is really saying something, no offence.

You shouldn't need people on villatalk to tell you the differences between minstrel shows and your point about white chicks. 

With all due respect etc, I actually think places like Villa Talk are great places for giving people a chance to work out their legitimate feelings of grievance, assuming they’re being honest of course and not just being dicks or whatever. 

[Rolta]

1 hour ago, Marka Ragnos said:

With all due respect etc, I actually think places like Villa Talk are great places for giving people a chance to work out their legitimate feelings of grievance, assuming they’re being honest of course and not just being dicks or whatever. 

I was leaning on the 'shouldn't need' bit (because there's a whole lot of places to start answering the question, Why is White Chicks ok etc etc) but you did put things nicely above. 

Edited October 8, 2022 by Rolta

[Stevo985]

9 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

Not really, I'm just wondering why this is not offensive, no one seems to answer that? There are many who do find it offensive, I guess like black people find blackface offensive.

Me, I don't really care, like I don't care about black face.

Everyone with two brain cells to rub together answers that every time someone brings it up.

[Panto_Villan]

15 hours ago, Marka Ragnos said:

In my humble, the quick answer is context — esp., historical but also economic and cultural. “Offense” often grows out of a long-standing real and/or perceived sense of inequality, otherwise it’s meaningless. I don’t think that’s so hard to grasp. An historically powerful majority poking fun at an historically disempowered minority of any sort causes offense, and the reverse doesn’t because it’s an inherently different action with far different implications. That’s my dim-witted perspective at least. I think it’s all explained better in The Sneetches. 

This is the often quoted reason for it, yes - the power imbalance. It’s true to some extent, but gets used as a free pass too often imo. A black person saying all white people are scum is a racist, just as a white person saying all black people are scum is too.

This is how it works in other parts of our life. Let’s take the example of a rich footballer and someone who works in Tesco, and imagine what happens if each robs the other.

There’d be far more of an outcry if a footballer was found robbing the houses of poor people than the other way round (the motivation is less understandable), but there’d be no debate that both cases were still criminal actions and were wrong.

Anyone who claims racism follows special rules because of (insert name of postmodernist theory here) is just trying to advance their political agenda or personal interests under the guise of false morality, imo.

Edited October 9, 2022 by Panto_Villan

[StefanAVFC]

Mad how white chicks always comes up as a response to blackface being bad. 
 

People have literally one example to use. Shows the power imbalance perfectly. 

[desensitized43]

20 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Mad how white chicks always comes up as a response to blackface being bad. 
 

People have literally one example to use. Shows the power imbalance perfectly. 

There’s also two possible outcomes to bringing it into the conversation. Either

1. Both examples are racist and we should all refrain from wearing make up to appear as another race because after all two wrongs definitely don’t make a right. Or

2. Neither example is racist and presumably it’s fine to go around blacking up in this way.

 

I’d be interested to know which camp OP falls into.

 

Edited October 9, 2022 by desensitized43

[foreveryoung]

1 hour ago, desensitized43 said:

There’s also two possible outcomes to bringing it into the conversation. Either

1. Both examples are racist and we should all refrain from wearing make up to appear as another race because after all two wrongs definitely don’t make a right. Or

2. Neither example is racist and presumably it’s fine to go around blacking up in this way.

 

I’d be interested to know which camp OP falls into.

 

Unfortunately one is racist because it involves black people, the other is just a joke. I realise the white chicks theme has been explained, but the explanation is just not good enough?

So you could make the equivalent film with white people dressing up as black people and it would be rascist????

As I said I'm not offended either way, maybe cause I'm not easily offended like some, but one can't be fine and one absolutely aberrant.

[Xela]

All being said, I don't think they would make a film like White Chicks today. 

[blandy]

7 hours ago, StefanAVFC said:

Mad how white chicks always comes up as a response to blackface being bad. 

I'd never heard of it or seen it til this thread. I assume it was made a while ago and gather that it was a small part of a film, rather than being the whole theme of the film?  Whatever, I wonder whether it would be done in today's world and suspect not, not so much because "it's offensive to white people", but because anyone thinking of doing it would likely ponder that the reverse situation is no longer deemed acceptable. Culture is constantly changing and it's often led by creative industries. New aspects are opened up for consideration, such as race, gender, national stereotypes and identity, disability, religion and so on. But equally old taboos are no longer held to be so. Stuff that is now commonplace would have been absolutely beyond the pale 40 years ago, or whatever. It's not a one way street all this change. And some people might regret or resent aspects of the changes in either direction (as we've seen in this thread). It can be really hard for people to understand stuff that doesn't fit easily with their life experiences or outlook. Like for example, someone might hypothetically ask "why, when there is so much explicit violence, sex/nudity, bad language in film, music videos, TV and computer games, are we worried about whether it's offensive to think someone born with a penis can/can't be a woman? or whether a white actor can play a role that was an Asian role in the original story,  but it's fine for Dr Who to be a woman or James Bond to be played by a black actor...". There's no simple answer to that kind of question and the modern way of kind of thinking of, or calling that hypothetical person a bigot or a racist doesn't so much help as also demonstrate that perhaps we don't have an answer ourselves if we respond with cries of "racist and bigot" and thus the gap widens.

[Follyfoot]

25 minutes ago, Xela said:

All being said, I don't think they would make a film like White Chicks today. 

Thank God for that. More than anything else it was shite