rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

Thought we should have a thread that's a catch-all for any and all conversations that start like this, since we seem to have like five or six threads for it.

I'll go first:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPBbMbKSZrQ

I dunno if its racist but its certainly unlistenable crap

Oh dude, I always wonder about this one: "White Girl" by X. what the fuck is up with that? Has John Doe ever addressed it?

also, this thread is not just for songs, but commercials, movies, tv shows, jpegs, assorted anything.

Oh word, noticed this is on I Love Everything.

yeah I mean where the fuck is I Love Racism already

Oh dude, I always wonder about this one: "White Girl" by X. what the fuck is up with that? Has John Doe ever addressed it?

what do you think is racist about this song...?

Why's he talking about white girls?

for reference:

She's blonde,
She's blonde,
Comes along the sidewalk.

She's Blonde,
Leave a trail of blue and black,
Up to you fighting back.

She's Blonde,
Steel chains,
A noose of charms on our necks.

I find out nothing when we talk and sit,
Blue heart passion and watch the set.

Easy to fall, when part of your skull starts to break away,
Cheaters walk, down the block behind this evil street.

She's a white girl well I'm living with a white girl,
She's a white girl well I'm living with a white girl-

Nineteen,
Nineteen.. losing her man to an old girl.

Nineteen,
Drain every beer left over at home,
and listen to ghosts in the other room.

I Can't!
Why not? You're alone inside his keeping.

Oh I'll replace your drunk old man,
Sit in the parking lot and hold your hand.

Easy to fall, when part of your skull starts to break away...
Drugged and in love out at a club pulling me outside.

She's a white girl, well I'm living with a white girl,
She's a white girl, well I'm living with a white girl-

Easy to fall, when part of your skull starts to break away...
drugged and in love out at a club pulling me outside.

She's a white girl well I'm living with a white girl,
She's a white girl well I'm living with a white girl

having just finished re-reading We Got the Neutron Bomb my guess is this song is about the young lady that Exene moved out to California with, who was by all accounts something of a bitch who would pull white-supremacist provacateur type stuff to get a rise out of people.

blanking on her name at the moment.

Not racist. Someone else could make the argument for exploitative, but it's a stretch to say that the Kings of Leon have any hatred or intolerance toward black people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aENX1Sf3fgQ

Now apologize for making me watch a Kings of Leon video for two minutes.

Yeah, I guess exploitative and colonialist (is that the right word?) more than captial-R RACIST, but still like; who does a video treatment that;'s like "OK, you're hugging black kids for four minutes"

i think it's hard to call a music video 'exploitative' -- what are they exploiting these kids for? no one watches music videos. they have no impact, unless you're lady gaga

colonialist maybe, but remember that KOL are the most popular band in europe

racist, clearly not

would've preferred video featuring band being murdered by black kids

http://altreport.hipsterrunoff.com/2010/09/kings-of-leon-hires-choir-of-black-children-to-make-their-new-mp3-sound-more-soulful.html

It reminded me of a generic John Cougar Mellencamp video. Had they been white kids, it would've looked like 70% of the videos on CMT.

Still waiting for an apology.

Yeah, I guess exploitative and colonialist (is that the right word?) more than captial-R RACIST, but still like; who does a video treatment that;'s like "OK, you're hugging black kids for four minutes"

obv the answer is "the dude who directed the new Kings of Leon video, whose name somehow has not yet made it to the bits of the Internet you can hit within 5 minutes of using Google"

(that more than anything else is making me lol, like whoever this was basically went "I'll do this for you and it will be awesome! I don't want any credit tho" *waits for shitstorm*)

carles is slippin -- passion pit already did the "hire a choir of underprivileged minority youths" thing

he's not even listed on the mtv site, which is usually v good about putting directors up in there

gonna lol if it was Hype Williams

the video and song are both unmentionably terrible w/ stupid and retrograde notions about race but i don't think they are simply ~racist~

Sophie Muller directed it.

OK, how about this?

http://gawker.com/5643372/this-weeks-new-yorker-cartoon-caption-contest-winner-pretty-racist

more offensive for not being funny

http://www.bitterwallet.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/zBOSA-500x375.jpg

that was a fake

but it was racist because someone realized that they could spell "nigger" by a video game and they set up a soccer video game and took a photo of it and sent it all over the internet

so yes, racist

this isn't a thread for lol racism, fyi. keep that shit to "encyclopedia of racist products" or, like, 4chan

strictly concern trolling in here.

I figured it was some soccer thing. Wouldn't have been surprised if it had been real.

take it to i love footy

love the gawker update where they act like they understood the joke from the beginning

barf

http://i55.tinypic.com/25oxf7k.png

maybe LJ is right about ilx being the smartest message board

http://hipsterhitler.com/

gawker isnt a message board

ilx is my favorite blog

MIXMASTER
RACE

EASTSIDE
WESTSIDE
GENOCIDE

is anti-semitism racist or not, because this guy at the bar I frequent is convinced that Birth Of A Nation was produced by Jews & that the Jews control the media etc etc

I know it sucks either way just wanted 2 know ur opinions

Of course anti-semitism is racism. It's just that racism against Jews has acquired a term of its own, probably because discriminating them has been so prominent historically.

Where it gets tricky is when anti-Israel or anti-Zionist statements are equated with anti-semitism; of course some anti-Israel/anti-Zionist people are also anti-semitists/racists, but many of them aren't. But your case is pretty obviously racist because the target is Jews as a whole, not Israeli politics or anything.

are the finns a race?

Ca. 300 Finnish Jews fought in the War alongside the German Army[3][4]. The field synagogue operated by the Finnish army was probably a unique phenomenon in Europe.

Guess they didn't have Google then either.

take it to i love footy

― p.m.s.b. (pre-mall smoke bomb) (zorn_bond.mp3),

jesus way to zing an entire bord of innocents wtf

Subtle "Americans don't like soocer and aren't racist" undertones there

yeah really i'm getting some prety bad vibes offa this zorn character. bet he's norwegian/icelandic thor worshipper

zorn smash

is this chorus racist?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4s6H4ku6ZY&ob=av3n

?

http://dasracist.net/

and if you really think about it, it isn't immigrants who are responsible, it's .............
.............
........
....
capitalism

haha, i don't think most people that are into invasive plants are like that, though. one of the greatest guys i've ever met, kind of my mentor if i ever had one, at my old job, was an ecologist who spent his weekends leading small groups in expeditions to teach people to identify and remove invasive plants. he'd talk about that stuff all the time, and now that he's retired, he's stepped up his plant whacking game even more.

anyway, i would guess that anyone that has intense rage about a plant or immigrants would also rage about many other things which also don't deserve it at all, so better to unfollow/unfriend

i get that they are nice people but .. i remember hearing a bit about the tamarisk debate when i lived in moab. and i just never found the old guard side of it convincing at all. you hear all sorts of arguments about all the bad stuff that tamarisk does but ultimately it really is a magic eye kind of situation isn't it? you can sure raise a lot of bad things about what the act of removing tamarisk does to an ecosystem.

there is a lot of projection and dare i say religious substitution and maybe some gene selecting ideology and not a lot of clear thinking involved with these people ime. but yes they are nice.

I swear I have never seen “invasive species” associated with human immigration or whatever. Most of this stuff comes over via shipping and our glorious international trade. So this whole “trying to combat invasive species is racism” train of thought is just weird to me.

The point of trying to keep non-native species at bay is to try to preserve biodiversity and endangered native species that get frequently crowded out of the ecosystem.

anyway, i would guess that anyone that has intense rage about a plant or immigrants would also rage about many other things which also don't deserve it at all, so better to unfollow/unfriend

― the world's undisputed #1 fan of 'Spud Infinity' (Karl Malone), Wednesday, March 9, 2022 4:19 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh these people aren't my friends lol they're just rando followers of national parks who pushed back very emotionally after i posted a note about xenophobic overtones along with this article https://e360.yale.edu/features/native-species-or-invasive-the-distinction-blurs-as-the-world-warms

xp haha, i don't know, i'll just agree to disagree on that, sorry. whacking invasive plants is the kind of family-friendly, normal activity that you can do with children to teach them about ecology

I swear I have never seen “invasive species” associated with human immigration or whatever. Most of this stuff comes over via shipping and our glorious international trade. So this whole “trying to combat invasive species is racism” train of thought is just weird to me.

same

like, if i were teaching 3rd grade or whatever, i think it would be good to take them on a short field trip to learn about invasive plants

I mean the emerald ash borer kills ash trees. We already lost american chestnuts and elms. I’d like to not have another eastern us tree species go bye bye.

well i have some bad news for you

Still a bit confused about whether we're talking about rhetorical framing (which is what the nib article I posted is about) or the actual effects of plants on ecosystems.

why not both?

i'm just postin tbh, drinking some coffee :)

Fascists will seize on anything, and there is evidence that eco fascists are performing exactly the kind of nudge nudge wink wink stuff that map is talking about. It isn’t to say that biodiversity isn’t important, of course it is, but like anything in this cursed world, beware of your fellow travelers who might agree with you on this one issue.

we need a thread about trees. trees are cool

Sometimes I feel like a character in Meredith Monk’s “Memory Game”:

I remember… elm trees
I remember… when it snowed in the DC area

So glad to have spent time confirming map wasn’t imagining things :)

Fascists will seize on anything, and there is evidence that eco fascists are performing exactly the kind of nudge nudge wink wink stuff that map is talking about. It isn’t to say that biodiversity isn’t important, of course it is, but like anything in this cursed world, beware of your fellow travelers who might agree with you on this one issue.

― mardheamac (gyac), Wednesday, March 9, 2022 4:42 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm a huge fan of biodiversity. i don't actually think weedwhacking is terrible. if we could really fight species loss by *ahem* losing species i would advocate for it, but i have my doubts.

that being said, people who are really into protecting wilderness have a vibe, and that vibe is friendly to extreme stances that emphasize purity.

So says California’s civil rights agency in a lawsuit filed against the electric-vehicle maker in Alameda County Superior Court on Thursday on behalf of thousands of Black workers after a decade of complaints and a 32-month investigation.

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Friday, February 11, 2022 6:24 PM (three weeks ago)

omg ... i feel like there's something here that speaks to the focus of the vocal activists against racism and white supremacy here in Alameda County, which is very vocal and active around these issues. I don't mean this in a negative way. But, considering we had major protests in the past couple months about public school closures (due to budget issues and population shifts) that were centered around race and racism, including teachers on hunger strike ... the fact that there weren't major protests and callouts about this is noteworthy. Maybe it's because the plants are out in the suburbs idk. Again, not wanting to be a "whataboutist" just that I actually wasn't aware of it, and Alameda County activists are very good at letting people know about racist shit going on locally.

* saying "Alameda County" as a way to concisely include Oakland and Berkeley people

kudzu discourse in the south has absolutely had racist overtones (or just tones) to it

Yeah, sorry, there being fascist over or undertones to some rhetoric in the environmental movement doesn't mean that invasive species don't exist and aren't totally destructive to native biodiversity.

To me it just seems like a real baby and bathwater moment.

"Oh these fascists are using the language of ecology to spread racist tropes? Might as well not care about the principles of ecology "

To me it just seems like a real baby and bathwater moment.

"Oh these fascists are using the language of ecology to spread racist tropes? Might as well not care about the principles of ecology "

I wasn't addressing anything you, just adding my pov? Why do you take everything I write as a personal assault on you? Calm down.

Always a good look, telling a woman to calm down.

xp
sorry, I may have muddied things even further. I wasn't even talking about the environmental movement, just kudzu discourse in general (the "green plague" the "thug plant"). I do not think the concept of invasive species is inherently racist

map, not sure if you can read this but it may interest you: https://www.jstor.org/stable/26225593

interesting.

i don't know to what extent this is really present in ecologic discourse but i think any time there's a framing of it in terms of "original = good" and "corrupted = bad" it's a weak point. it doesn't mean that some plants aren't too far on the extreme of hogging resources to be desired in a particular environment. but in general i think people should move away from trying to "preserve" and "restore" and acknowledge that stewarding biological diversity is an act of creation that includes human input in important ways.

i'm not trying to criticize or start a beef or anything, but i'll just note that "stewarding biological diversity is an act of creation that includes human input in important ways" sounds like a slogan for an oil company

i agree, of course, that humans are part of the environment and that the sum of what we do and don't do has an enormous effect on the rest of it

but in general i think people should move away from trying to "preserve" and "restore" and acknowledge that stewarding biological diversity is an act of creation that includes human input in important ways.

And so is fomenting destruction of biodiversity, map. "Just leaving nature be" is sometimes a laudable position when talking about certain environmental issues. For example, I'm pretty firmly against off-shore wind farms, because of the amount of destruction they do to already threatened aquatic habitats. But simply allowing threatening plant species or pests to destroy important parts of North America's biodiversity because some fascist assholes use it as a cover for their fascism is a non-starter for me.

ok

If the spotted lanternfly makes its way down to my county this summer, I'm picking up one of these fuckers and going to war.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0475/2107/1253/products/BASGuns-OrangeCrush-1689.jpg?v=1634858446

i guess i'll just give an example to illustrate what i'm trying to get at. outside of boulder utah there is a small stream that runs off boulder mountain and eventually descends into the rock of the colorado plateau. right before it does, it passes through an area that used to be a cattle ranch. now it is half-ranch and half-rustic tourist resort. the ranch part still does single-crop alfalfa farming, but below that, the resort has modified the water flow in a few ways to create a very beautiful sanctuary for birds, bees, and plants. there are still areas of overgrazed and parched brush here and there, and afaik they do minimal planting or weeding to the grounds beyond a garden with a few crops, but the water motification has transformed the area into a place that is undoubtedly more biodiverse than it was as a cattle ranch, and possibly more biodiverse than it was as a single stream surrounded by pinion/juniper.

i think ecology discourse could use a little less of the american virgin / whore thing and take a more sober, clear-eyed view of the values that we want to instill in the gardens that surround us, possibly including one called "balance."

I'd simply say that the pinion/juniper and stream from pre-ranching days was garden enough, but your point is taken.

What the rest of us are getting worked up about, obviously, is that there are any number of pests (both insect and plant) that are actively killing parts of native forest. There are hardly any Ash trees left near where I live, and every warm season there are swarms of the spotted lanternfly, which are absolutely disastrous for many plants and the animals that depend upon them. So many trees have died in the years since it first got to metro Philly.

peace, man, one way to fight the lanternfly is to PLANT MILKWEED. The lanternfly loves it and is attracted to it, but milkweed sap immobilizes and kills the lanternfly :-)

Sweet! Will do

I would consider an "invasive" species to be any introduced plant, insect, crustacean, fungus, animal or other organism whose proliferation significantly degrades the food chain of an entire ecosystem, leading to large increases in mortality in all parts of that ecosystem. And, yes, I recognize that under that definition European colonization across the globe has been by far the most destructive instance of such invasion.

^ ^ ^ Yep

yalta.jpg

wait, table and Aimless may have never beefed

No, we have.

I swear I have never seen “invasive species” associated with human immigration or whatever.

So is this where we talk about the racist buzzwording about the "Africanized" killer bee invasion?

this seems relevant, I found this article very thought-provoking, ATTN table and map and Elvis

https://thenaturalfarmer.org/article/rethinking-the-invasive-species-paradigm/

that looks really informative, thanks.

wait, table and Aimless may have never beefed

― imago, Wednesday, March 9, 2022 2:26 PM (four hours ago)

lol what? it's rare to see them agree on anything remotely political!

okok, my initial instincts otm lol

thanks for the article post sleeve

thanks sleeve.

xp imago, i can say you were OTM 490 if that helps?