rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

A bird by its plumage, rather. Wouldn't want this to get too self-reflexive.

Crispy duckling?

I need a ruling on this one:

https://i.imgur.com/INoxIHk.jpg

First time I heard this "play on words" was 30 years ago from one of my dad's friends. It was the punchline to a racist joke about a black man who dropped his wheel of cheese down the side of the hill, whereupon my dad's friend picked it up and carried it home.

I haven't heard that joke told again since 1989.

BUT I have heard plenty of well-meaning folks make the same pun since then. It's always made me a little uncomfortable, since I remember hearing that joke, but also because it's a "play on words" revolving around a supposed African American dialect. However, I see the pun made so often, I'm starting to wonder if this is just me. Kinda like how I grew up thinking the word "fart" was a profanity, but now you just about hear it said in Disney movies.

When I was a child, everyone who told me this joke used a Mexican boy as the character who dropped the cheese. 🤔

(IOW, it's not just you)

Having never heard the joke in spoken form, it took me a while to figure it out. But I did. It's racist.

I saw an ad for Subway yesterday where the slogan was iirc "NACHO AVERAGE SANDWICH" and am kind of amazed that a whole marketing team and whoever else thought that works as a collection of words you see for a few seconds at a time in the street

puns don't really work that way

I don't get the 'speed zone' thing

A pun on Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson

especially since a 'speed zone' invariably denotes a lower speed limit and that is exactly what the ad is supposed to be promoting.

I'm hungry for a big plate of notyo's

hmm... this one's iffy.

When I was a child, everyone who told me this joke used a Mexican boy as the character who dropped the cheese. 🤔

See the irony here for me is that the joke's never been about Hispanics.

Machismo = excessive manliness

Machismo = excessive cheesiness

Nachismo, gah

Nachismo = excessive racialness

btw, don't do this to nachos you guys.

personally i wouldna chose to

You know what I'm taco about.

i guess the question here is can a bad pun overcome its historically racialized context once that context becomes, uh, highly attenuated

Somebody's response to an advert for an upcoming Africa day being 'when is Ireland Day' & not liking being told March 17th.
Going on to say it's a religious day when I thought it was a widespread commercial event across most of the globe.

ireland is my favorite continent

(xp) Celebrating a Welshman, of course.

I think I first heard the nacho/not-your thing on Seinfeld when Elaine said it. I didn't think of it as a dialect joke.

yeah I’ve never heard it framed as a dialect thing. it was always just a regular old pun.

There is a restaurant in Baltimore called Nacho Mamas. I had never heard the joke.

is the idiom (?) of ‘not wanting to be thrown in the briar patch’ racist?

how long has the circle/OK hand gesture been a white power thing? i had not heard of it before the kavanaugh hearings

It’s stupid as hell. I use that emoji when I wanna use it bc they don’t own it.

https://medium.com/s/story/does-the-ok-sign-actually-signify-white-power-or-what-6cf3309df985

the reason they do it is to make libs look like morons

I seem to recall an article months back arguing that point

To quote that article I linked to, re: Zina Bash:

Instead of acknowledging her *actual* politics—working for possibly the most overtly racist administration since Americans literally owned other Americans—leftists, liberals, and centrists got caught up in a circle jerk about whether a hand sign that members of the far right have been using to troll us since at least 2015 has any significance.

libs are perfectly capable of making themselves look like morons, stfu white power dipshits

Pareene had a great piece the other day about how the youths immediately recognize this shit for what it is because unlike respectable adult media they're not busy dousing everything in gallons of smarm. it's almost always very clear when people are doing shit like this to demonstrate solidarity with racists.

it sucks because there's also the age-old "circle game" which we did when we were kids and now you got conservative media screaming "oh now the circle game is RACIST?? I told you they were nuts!!"

^yeah

https://i.imgur.com/af7LWpb.jpg

I mean, it's a pacifier.

https://i.imgur.com/3FB3fA4.jpg

But...

http://www.startribune.com/iowa-home-with-confederate-nazi-displays-gets-vandalized/566243672/

Only person that's supposed to judge me is the Lord." Yeah, no, I can judge you too, and I judge you to be a racist moron.

Stark said he had already sold the painting of a flag with a swastika. He said he displayed it in his front yard because the buyer dared him to do it.

Art can be powerful, but we strongly disagree with the use of monkeys as images in the fight against racism and were surprised by the total lack of consultation. @SerieA_EN pic.twitter.com/M7wFjhsfj2

— AC Milan (@acmilan) December 17, 2019

Yet another facepalm moment of fighting racism in Italy.

I do not understand what is happening there as my first reaction to the picture was "is this a Planet of the Apes throwback" and not anything to do with fighting racism

The Italian football association thought it wise to use a monkey image in different kit colors to send out the message that they are against racism aimed at black players (which is rife in Italian football and way, way out of control recently, w/ bananas thrown on the pitch, monkey sounds chanted at players etc).

At my most lenient I understand it as an odd twist on the "doesn't matter if you're black or white or purple etc" argument. But using monkeys to send out the message you don't want black players to be compared to monkeys? Because monkeys can, apparently, be all colours? Idk man...

Okay, omglolwtfsob

every part of this story is upsetting

A Black Man Had The Cops Called On Him At A Bank While Trying To Deposit A Racial Discrimination Settlement Check https://t.co/E2hJ5erDMk via @juliareinstein

— julia reinstein 🚡 (@juliareinstein) January 23, 2020

I think we can safely say "yes, that is racist" here.

yeah i think i'm okay with that tbh