Rolling 2016 Thread on Race

is there an app that sends grenades to the author's house for this shit

Uh, maybe some of you should go back and read the article. I think the author is a bit incredulous about this mountain of "black privilege" everyone thinks they see.

And would they hear a white leader step forward at a crowded news conference to announce: "It's time to talk about reparations"?

I mean, there's the author's answer to "Why isn't there a NAAWP?"

^^^it's a click-bait headline

Are European Americans going to be an identity group like other groups?

Throughout most of the 20th Century Americans of various European backgrounds existed in ethnic enclaves. The next town over from where I live still has stuff like a Polish credit union (not to mention a whole street where all the stores have signs in Polish); there's a huge Portuguese community in Newark still, I think; there's Little Italy in NYC, though it's shrinking; the kitsch Irishness of Boston and St. Patrick's Day; before World War II there was an organization called the German-American Bund...this kind of stuff is currently seen as mostly a relic, for old people, but it could quite easily make a comeback if it's seen as necessary. Hell, I think it probably should. The contemporary pop-cultural understanding of "white culture" is ridiculous, basically synonymous with lameness when it's not just accused of stealing everything good about itself from black people; white ethnic groups should counter that message. Not in a hostile/oppositional way, but as a reminder of what they've brought to the table. "White" isn't a monolith any more than "black" or "Latin" is.

yeah I may have overstated my closing speed, I skimmed and saw the names of usual suspects and was disgusted

http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/3275/bundesliga/2016/03/31/21877722/german-team-black-up-to-protest-racist-attack

at least, unlike the 2008 Spanish basketball team picture when they were making slanty-eyes in honor of Beijing*, this has a followable chain of logic to it that allows you to see why someone would think this was a good idea

* I still can't believe this happened btw

Germans.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/criticism-of-new-racism-film-journalist-goes-undercover-to-discover-life-as-a-black-man-in-germany-a-656569.html

http://i.imgur.com/u5OknzC.jpg

The use of blackface to fight racism is quite common in Northern Europe. There was a Danish artist who had a happening called 'With Other Eyes', where people could get make up on so that they would look like some other race, and could therefore experience what that is like. The artist got the idea when he forgot to remove his makeup after a play, where he apparently performed in blackface himself (I have no idea what play that would be in 2014, but it's a weird detail) It happened in Denmark a couple of times without anybody giving a fuck, but then it got moved to Malmø, and all hell broke lose.

To the artist's sorta credit, he kinda seemed to get it, when he went to a community discussion about it, and told that he wanted white people to learn what racism felt like, and a black guy stood up and said 'then why don't you have them ask me?'

http://i.imgur.com/IaHAbmX.jpg

"No one speaks and everyone stares at me because I appear as Negro."

"I am fighting ze good fight."

"zat's Jazz"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igYL5w0ZVc8

how many ppl were staring and treating him like a weirdo because he's obviously in blackface and not a black dude

probably all of them

"I wanted to experience what it was like to be black, so I painted myself like a southeast Asian and put on a loud shirt"

"Ugh! What the fuck is wrong with you?"

* leans into camera, whispering * "Obviously, another racist."

nb: I realize that "black" means different things in different countries and that it could encompass southeast Asian in Germany and a few of the people looking at dude aghast in the photo gallery could be from Sri Lanka

I also want to point out how HILARIOUS the makeup application photos in the gallery are

The men don't know, but the little girl understands...

http://i.imgur.com/u5OknzC.jpg

I have been giggling at that specific picture for about 15 minutes

help

http://i.imgur.com/H5TC3jk.jpg

"I go to ze markets, and yet, ze people have no time to speak with black man."

http://i.imgur.com/jKtegqt.jpg

omg I should not be laughing this hard

The use of blackface to fight racism is quite common in Northern Europe.

racism must really be on the ropes in northern europe sounds like

"See, I em forced to stend in ze field allein." (xxxp)

that wig is really something

can someone please make the field one into a gif where he slowly pops out of the flowers

Surely if he'd done the slightest bit of research on the subject he'd know it is not acceptable? So it's not just dodgy in racial terms it's also bad journalism. (I realising saying a guy in blackface is 'dodgy in racial terms' is an understatement, but I do believe he had good intentions about this, and Germany is not America and does not have the same cultural history wrt blackface and blahblahblah... but STILL, he should have known.)

On the other hand, I genuinely love that shirt.

can someone please make the field one into a gif where he slowly pops out of the flowers

^^^

I remember my parents having a copy of "Black Like Me" in the house when I was growing up, why are white people into this idea

http://images3.cinema.de/imedia/6138/4396138,SSIPVzZ80UWjfKuloZv2KYcCS9VQpeUHCtfgwnIZ7Jdh_f+TjbZV41hWsbub+Kmqj92KlnytUMFuYdVnwD7_Wg==.jpg

"Now I stend on hill overlooking der stadt. Much sedness lives in mein herz. I am not being accepted as ein black man by das people."

You realize this story is from 2009? I'm sure a lot has changed since then...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWHbDTyPaeQ

white people love this idea because they really don't believe black people

"it can't just be the color of your skin, it's got to be something else!"
*puts on blackface*

"whoa wtf people treat me like garbage"

or the well-intentioned (lol) researcher is like.. "how do I make people believe racism is real. they only listen to white people! hmmm"

i'm not sure that's it. i think it's more like the disneyland oppression experience. ime when this happens it is something white liberals do to get an intimate experience of what it's like to be at the receiving end of bigotry. at least iirc that's what the context of 'black like me' was - an expose on what it's /really/ like to be black in america. xp

feel like there's maybe some crossover with this phenomenon: http://forward.com/opinion/216428/europe-s-undercover-yarmulke-journalists/ which at least makes a little more sense since once you're wearing a yarmulke it's not like it's obv that you're jewfacing just by looking at the paint on yr skin.

people only trust first-person accounts from others they see as peers

well, not even then, I have some friends-of-friends who seriously used the phrase "jewed me down on the price" in front of our shared jewish friends, not even noticing that is not a phrase to use, ever, and probably just see it as an expression

imo white ppl fetishize minority oppression. that's prob at the root of "black privilege" - that they get the authenticity of being discriminated against while white ppl just get to control the hegemony.

Germany is not America and does not have the same cultural history wrt blackface...

No Stephen Foster banjo-playing vaudevillians in 1930s Berlin, I'll give the Germans that one.

I wonder if the "Die Soul Mann" starring Z. Thomas Howell was popular in Deautschland?

http://www.tampabay.com/resources/images/blogs-photo/rendered/2015/06/soul-man-1-1_8col.jpg

jawohl!

http://www.inpapasbasement.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Soul_Man_C_Thomas_Howell1.jpg

god I just remembered something: in the 1845 German children's book "Der Struwwelpeter" one of the stories is "Die Geschichte von den schwarzen Buben" (the story of the black boys), described thusly by Wikipedia - "Saint Nicholas catches three boys teasing a dark-skinned boy. To teach them a lesson, he dips the three boys in black ink."

Germany is not America and does not have the same cultural history wrt blackface...

This is always trotted out as a defense for Euro-Blackface, but it's a bit like saying Americans can dress up as Holocaust victims because we have a different history wrt that

Did anyone actually read my post?

just saying that I've heard that defense in a bunch of previous instances of Euro-Blackface

And, due to a recent head injury, you're unable to determine when it's not being used as such a defense?

you are reading things that I did not write