Blatantly racist songs that have managed to pass under the prejudice-radar

I was just skitting lolpolaris btw, I've never thought of the punk swastika as anything but boneheaded offensive provocation rather than ideological statement. Pretty sure Oi! didn't site Siouxsie et al as key influences.

Anyone recall the controversy over the 'Beast Within' mix on Madonna's 12" of Justify My Love?
http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/05/arts/madonna-refutes-rabbi-s-accusation-of-anti-semitism-in-a-song-lyric.html

Same with Joy Division. They pretty much ditched all the teenage provocation stuff as soon as they ran into some real racist skinheads.

There were kids in my class in school with home made racist tattoos. The idea kind of boggles the mind now.

Siouxsie interview Uncut magazine January 2005

Pretty sure Oi! didn't site Siouxsie et al as key influences.

I'm sure this is true and of course there are degrees of racism etc. but check that line about Jew being perfectly acceptable short-hand for "skinflint" - that is fucking stupid and anti-semitic.

it's the "I don't understand why stereotypes are dangerous and offensive so what's wrong if I use them" version of racism/anti-semitism

I agree that it's not defensible on any level but I guess there is some dividing line between idiocy and malice.

the problem with practically everyone making the possibly rational/salient point that people take offense too easily towards everything these days is that they then go on to use as examples things that any reasonable person would find offensive

xp: the thing is, that dividing line is meaningless when you're the one getting hurt

A dividing line that this thread has sand-danced backwards and forwards over.

there is some dividing line between idiocy and malice

one hand washes the other, amirite

Yeah, it's an unimportant distinction, I agree, but in the end isn't what's depressing about this more that a grown-up Siouxsie still tries to defend herself and wriggle away from the implications of what she did rather than just go "I'm sorry we were fucking idiots in 1977"?

i've always felt sort of bad about not spending more getting to know the early siouxie stuff. no longer feel so bad about it, so thank you, thread.

The bollocks in those lyrics - which really was a product of some horrible racial slurs encoded so deep in English slang in the 70s that they were used thoughtlessly, I think - isn't really the sum total of what the early Banshees was about, thank fuck.

The Scream is an amazing album but yeah

I think the only saving grace musically is that a lot of this bullshit isn't in their best songs, and the ones that have it are the ones I skip

but in the end isn't what's depressing about this more that a grown-up Siouxsie still tries to defend herself and wriggle away from the implications of what she did rather than just go "I'm sorry we were fucking idiots in 1977"?

oh totally - I could forgive a little Nazi aesthetic fetishism or provocateurism as youthful nonsense or whatever but to try and weasel out of it 30 years later makes me much less forgiving

I had no idea about that interview. That's very depressing. What a fucking bell end.

This book opened my eyes to a lot of stuff.

What was Mark E Smith's defence for that line in The Classical? I'm sure this has been discussed on here before.

He's never explained it. He's just said it's definitiely not racist. Given that a lot of his lyrics are snatches of overheard coversation and stuff like that and that there's no context in the group to make them racist, I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. But, well, it's pretty unpleasant right?

i disagree with the impulse to disown the stupidity of one's youth. i feel like a lot of people get away with a lot by showing the appropriate contriteness.

well yes, they get away with growing up

shame on them

i feel like a lot of people get away with a lot by showing the appropriate contriteness.

sure - but showing contrition is preferable to not showing any imho

There's a Slits song about robbing stuff from a cornershop that leaves a lot to be desired.

well did they actually grow up or did they figure out how to take advantage of people's forgiveness?
i feel it would be more illuminating to hear what goes on in their heads rather than some defensive PR apology,
and a more genuine apology would include acknowledgement that they in many ways profited and continue
to profit from the same pattern of youthful idiocy that resulted in the offense.

I think you need to be specific with stuff like this. I don't think there needs to be a Warren Commission on David Bowie's accent in China Girl but there should be on, say Eric Clapton or Phil Anselmo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW7DFXq-cdg

I don't know, that's pretty bad

Yeah, like I said upthread, live this song has been consistently appalling. But if we don't draw a distinction between idiocy, casual racism and evangelical, politically motivated racism, then we're guilty of muddying waters that should, imo, remain crystal clear.

I just spent ages looking for the video where he does the "slitty eyes"; I can't find it but my mate has it somewhere. It's appalling, made somehow worse by the fact that I think it was at a show in Japan.

do I really need to repeat "that line doesn't matter when you are the one getting hurt"

Except for that part at 3:24, that's a pretty awesome version.

Slick Rick - Indian Girl

I found this painfully bad.

Why is it racist to do a Chinese accent? Nobody thinks it's racist to do a British accent...

dunno have the Chinese ever colonized Great Britain and forced drugs on their general populace, degraded them as subhuman, etc.

It's a bit exaggerated for comedic purposes.

Except for that part at 3:24, that's a pretty awesome version.

Yeah, I was gonna say, I've never been a huge fan of China Girl, and I don't know if they've autotuned everything or what, but the sound on that is pretty blazing. Bowie's Asian mimicry sounded like Cookie Kwan on The Simpsons.

I agree that it's a really great rendition of the song, although learning that it was written in the middle of the 70s explains A LOT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_V9-Rd6HPk

^ nm, apparently did not pass under the prejudice radar

lmao @ the wikipedia synopsis of the remixes:

Swizz Beatz: "Habibi"
Translation: "My Love (Masculine Form)"
What they rhymed the phrase with: "While she feedin' me linguine"

Not racist SONGS, but def some casual insensitivity in "Chinky eyes" lines like Mos Def in Ms. Fat Booty, Lil Wayne's "My eyes so low I look like I'm from Hong Kong", ad infititum

the Bowie accent in that live video is so out of place and stupid that i'm surprised no one told him to, uh, just croon the part

He's an actor. A cracked actor.

Sorry to derail: Bowie video description says "HQ Vid & Excel sound." Luddite that I am, I'm not sure what Excel sound means, but googling leads me mainly to Bowie videos. I'm watching him do "Stay" from that same 2002 Paris show and it's kicking my ass.

Carry on...

the Bowie accent in that live video is so out of place and stupid that i'm surprised no one told him to, uh, just croon the part

― mc souleye (brownie), Friday, November 19, 2010 7:55 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

he did on the album, I seem to recall.

really? I don't remember the orignal song. the live version is so screechy and ridic

"do I really need to repeat "that line doesn't matter when you are the one getting hurt""

If you can't tell the difference between seeing David Bowie doing a daft but offensive accent 25 years ago on a you tube clip and a neo-Nazi group playing in your area, for example, then you're the one who needs to nice up his thinking.

What you're talking about is comparing various levels of intent, which would be totally fine if all forms of racism were equal in their effect.

No one on this thread has said that Bowie is cool for being casually racist, so why don't you take that stick out of your ass and read what's being said.

bowie doesn't do that silly chinese accent on the studio version, no. without the accent there's nothing really racist that i can spot, unless talking about inter-racial relationships is racist. besides isn't the "china girl" a metaphor for heroin?

I didn't know that 2002 was 25 years ago

wow, the future is a total dumbass

what I am objecting to is the bullshit rationalization of "oh he/she is just being ignorant and doesn't mean any harm" that is rampant on this thread and happens a lot on this board (and in life, really)

if you're completely unwilling to listen to someone who HAS been targeted directly and incidentally by racial bullshit and can point out that the line you are so desperate to preserve is some horseshit that the privileged always pull, fuck off

someone mentioned eric clapton...this is so much worse than anything in this thread:

Originally conceived as a one-off concert with a message against racism, Rock Against Racism was founded in 1976 by Red Saunders, Roger Huddle and others. According to Huddle, "it remained just an idea until August 1976" when Eric Clapton made a drunken declaration of support for former Conservative minister Enoch Powell (known for his anti-immigration Rivers of Blood speech) at a concert in Birmingham.[2] Clapton told the crowd that England had "become overcrowded" and that they should vote for Powell to stop Britain from becoming "a black colony." Clapton told the audience that Britain should "get the foreigners out, get the wogs out, get the coons out" and then repeatedly shouted the National Front slogan "Keep Britain White."[3][4]

dunno have the Chinese ever colonized Great Britain and forced drugs on their general populace, degraded them as subhuman, etc.

― you can sub out "bipartisan solutions" for "some of my dick" (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, November 19, 2010 2:21 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

So by this great reasoning it's racist to do an Irish accent.

seriously, you don't get the racism in bowie's old school stereotypical chinky accent? are you that tone def to history?