rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

"I was cast as an extra, and there were maybe six or seven other people who were supposedly going to be in the video. ... I was the first one to perform in the video. It was a motel shot where the guys from the Black Keys come and give me the keys to their motel room," he said. "The director just sort of noticed me dancing and asked me, 'Can you perform?' I said, 'I can dance, anybody can dance,' so I took some moves from everybody: John Travolta from 'Saturday Night Fever' and 'Pulp Fiction,' the Carlton Banks dance from 'The Fresh Prince' and a little bit of Michael Jackson, so it was a smorgasbord of everybody in there.

"It was just a spur-of-the-moment thing," Tuggle added. "My acting teacher Mark McPherson, he has us do this thing before we start class called 'Song and Dance,' where he'll have us sing one of our favorite songs, and then while we're singing it, he'll have us do a crazy dance, or a sexy dance, and I guess it spawned from that."

I agree that this video is "suspect" but at the same time I also assume the "boy" thing is an unfortunate oversight rather than an intentional thing. a lot of young white folx don't know that connotation of "boy."

Are there racist aspects to this video too?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NXkM8PsPXs

Not even so much to the black performers or "Prince", but to the Latino get-ups some of the singers put on.

The thing that makes me uncomfortable about "Lonely Boy" is that it lingers for the entire video on that one dude. You start thinking about why he's doing this, how he knows the words, why is he in front of a motel lobby. His race is an aspect of that big picture too.

pplains, that is the first thing I thought of when I saw the black keys video.

I agree with crut

tap dance for me, peculiar John Goodman.

(a large reason why it reads as "sketchy" and not "wrong" is because it seems like an unfortunate juxtaposition rather than an intentional choice)

But the Black Keys are from Atlanta. I mean, you'd think that as southerners they would be pretty aware of the connotation.

They weren't even aware of Andrew Gold, apparently.

lol I am from Atlanta and I think I mostly learned about the "boy" thing from ILX

The 'boy' aspect is the only thing I find troublesome, really. But I do agree with crüt, it's almost certainly an oversight.

youtube page says that video was directed by Jesse Dylan.. as in son of Bob?

okay the "boy" thing didn't occur to me immediately but yeah fair point

But the Black Keys are from Atlanta.

By Atlanta do you mean Akron, OH?

Akranta

he was thinking of the Black Lips or the Black Crowes

Look, Ohio has so little going on for us right now. Don't take away our bands!

We need to put them all where we can keep track of them.

especially the boy bands.

http://i.imgur.com/6fCE1.jpg

That's dope as hell below the neck.

i see this tanning chain around in the suburbs, feels racist to me but maybe it's not?

http://media.merchantcircle.com/13506583/Logo%20Stacked%202005%20HR_full.jpeg

that's toeing some sort of line certainly

wd like to point out re: "latino get-ups" in the talking heads video that it is taken from true stories, which is set in small-town texas. most of the "latino" clothing in the video just looks like normal western wear to me (which obv has hispanic influence).

I heart that wacky "Chinese" font

here's a good article about "ethnic type" (as in fonts), including chop suey/"chinesey" fonts: http://www.printmag.com/Article/Stereo_Types

Awesome!

This week I went to a Chinese-themed bar with all Asian-ethnic employees, full of signs with that Chinesey font but with words in pinyin! So stuff like "NI HAO" and "XIE XIE", but written in chop suey. Clear did my head in.

id say the black keys thing is suspect since youre looking at a white band that plays to largely white audiences using a black man to sell their product to white people on his public dancing of which their is a long tradition of that sort of thing. the weird racial issue abt it feels obvious

i agree w/ crut about 'boy' likely not hitting them, but it does feel like his race is tied up in the 'interesting'-ness of the video i guess you could say

oh, Katie....

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2011/11/dont-worry-katie.html

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/roiphe/2011/11/the_99_percent_takes_over_brooklyn.html

(tho not racism-related, I really like Glenn Kenny's concluding story about Carly Simon's sister)

http://gawker.com/5856541/texas-legislator-tells-insurance-companies-to-stop-jewing-his-constituents

yes, yes it is

I am totally reporting that guy to the Elders of Zion. He'll be out of a job within the week.

Man he's gonna feel so gypped.

The "gypped" thing... I have no idea how it got introduced to American slang, but it's unfortunate. I don't think I've ever encountered more than three or four people who knew its source.

Now, the dude I went to college with who was kind of a shlubby middle-american type who said something about how "he jewed me out of five dollars," on the other hand, kind of got knee-jerk punched by me. It was some sort of automatic reaction I didn't even know I had. And you know what? He had NEVER REALIZED THE CONNECTION. Like he had no idea it was racist.

I think Texas dude is probably utterly clueless but he should fucking know better. Since he's in an elected position.

http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=5711841&ct=7167457

xp: I know I was saying gypped from elementary school until I reached college and made a friend of Romani ancestry who told me about it. He was pretty forgiving about it, but I did stop using it.

man I never made the gypped/gypsy connection till now. whoops.

yeah i always thought of it as 'jipped' even if i'd only really heard it spoken and not read or wrote it out

I think the majority of people in the US really have absolutely no idea, what with it being more of a notional idea. I had to correct a friend who was leading kind of a wandering lifestyle as she said something about 'being somewhat of a gypsy." I think I volunteered "nomad."

is it me or do Asian epithets seem to go by more and more these days without reprisal? just seems how a lot of people in this area have deemed it acceptable territory........

a lot of the asian-american kids I know make asian jokes to the point where I get uncomfortable

wayneandwax wayne marshall
did one of my students really write "black face menstrual shows"? #yikes #hopethatwasautocorrect
3 minutes ago

I think more Americans probably connect "gypsy" with the notion of Stevie Nicks than they would with any ethnic group.

As in the common colloquial phrase, "I really feel Stevie Nicksed on that deal"

I think more Americans probably connect "gypsy" with the notion of Stevie Nicks than they would with any ethnic group.

signs you're spending too much time on ilx

No but really, I bet there's a bunch of people think that "gypsy" is a lifestyle choice or something.

im a gypsy rasta, dont h8

Anti-Roma hatred, even among 'enlightened leftists' in Britain, is the last acceptable bigotry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkkC9cK8Hz0

top rated comment:

can't wait for the english version to come out!

lulienlaluna 1 day ago 42

Idk just listened to that for the first time, more than half of the lyrics pass me by, I can't hear what he's saying. I know nothing about his "flow" or image, if he's difficult to understand more often that youtube comment seems like an innocent pun to me?

It's the edited version so 30% of the words are missing, rendering it unintelligible. Not sure that was what the commenter was getting at though. Maybe they mean a version where the main basketball metaphor is replaced by one from netball or field hockey.