rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

mookie, I do understand and I completely agree with you. I'm genuinely sorry for making my point so badly.

re australian race relations: remember that sydney erupted against people of lebanese descent a couple of years ago. basically if you're not white anglo in australia you're regarded by scores of southern cross-tattooed thugs as unwelcome.

xp yeah

I was joking :)

canadians, however . . .

if you think that's bad, you should see how the kangaroos treat those of british descent

anyway the worst part about that sign is that it's a "chinese-japanese" restaurant. ming is not a japanese name afaik and chinese and japanese food only share very superficial similarities!!

I think that's how the restaurant sells itself tho? and I'm guessing it's owned by chinese people?

hmm

http://www.yelp.com/biz/mings-restaurant-washington

I guess by 'japanese' they just mean 'sushi'

round-eyes are easily fooled about the differences between various east asian ppls

a certain type of (american) customer would avoid such an amalgamation; another type would be all like 'this place has asian food covered amirite'

my mother still thinks greeks and italians are identical and interchangeable

also maybe I DIED and dc ilxors may disagree, but dc 'chinatown' is pretty disney-fied

chinatowns will all prob get increasingly disney-fied as chinese immigration dies down in the future

i ate here when i was on maui last weelend:

http://www.yelp.com/biz/asian-cuisine-and-sports-bar-kahului

In most US cities, Chinatowns are just relocating out of the previously cheap city centers to newly cheap suburbs, but the city still wants an area to have a Chinatown identity (good for tourism & neighborhood branding!). This leads to very questionable things like a Hooters being required to have a Chinese translation of their sign, as though that will keep the area's former spirit alive somehow.

There are a ton of Chinese/Japanese, Thai/Japanese, Korean/Japanese etc. restaurants here - in all cases it just means it's a restaurant of whatever nature plus sushi, in part because there's a very small Japanese community here but a much higher demand for crappy sushi.

The underlying issue with the sign is that while the while the use of a chop suey font is relatively benign and has a history of use in Chinatowns over the last century, it really shouldn't be held up as an example/template by a local planning body. While not the harshest stereotype in and of itself, it's often been partnered with stereotypes as a way of emphasizing a generic otherness, for example:
http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m56/greenoahu/movies/long-duck-dong-1.gif

I think all the decent "chinatowns" I've been in have had larger concentrations of non-Chinese people than Chinese people, really.

what chinatowns have you been to?

Melbourne's Chinatown is real and overwhelmingly authentic

Not very many now that I think about it?

is an authentic chinatown authentically chinese or authentically chinatownish?

Chicago's was more Chinese than I give it credit for. Montreal had a strong Vietnamese presence (lol french speaking?) x-p

iatee otm about "authentically chinatownish"

i have a friend who used to waitress for PF Chang's, and apparently during training they provide you a prepared response to customers who ask why no one who works there is asian

"if a customer asks this, make sure to tell them they're fat..."

is an authentic chinatown authentically chinese or authentically chinatownish?

Melbourne's is a lot like the older parts of HK, so authentic in that way

i always felt like the best food in philly's chinatown was vietnamese. in fact, i'm pretty sure it was.

now i want vietnamese food. i'm hungry again...

scott the best vietnamese in philly is on washington ave around 11th street, also on 6th

montreal's chinatown was really small, like one block, from what I remember of my visit there

i haven't been in philly in so long! since i moved. which is like 8 years now. which i can't believe. 9 years even! holy smokes. but the restaurant called Vietnam in chinatown was one of my favorite restaurants in the city and i never had chinese that equalled it there. and there was another good place too but i forget the name.

things have probably changed though...i can't believe it was that long ago.

i've been on ilx for 9 years. that's what that means. holy toledo. that's crazy too.

10 years in june! i checked. i should have a party. by myself.

and cry...

seattle's "international district" (chinatown) is basically pan-asian, but it's large, active and gots lots of good chinese restaurants. and people.

it'll be 10 years in August for me. and I'm only 24. :/

xpost

Chicago's "New Chinatown" (on Argyle Street) is actually mostly populated by Vietnamese and Thai people.

Regular Chinatown is on the South Side, and I think most of the Asian people there are Chinese.

I don't know why they call the one up north "Chinatown," "New" or otherwise, except maybe...racism?? (I went with the name "Little Saigon" which is another name for it.)

http://gawker.com/5880712/president-asked-to-dance-a-jig-by-random-internet-person

this will be annoying but:

" Jewish but (GOOGLE:NOPE)NOT Semitic:
AntiSemitism" a verbal(GOOGLE:NOPE) weapon to hide Zionist crimes and save Zionist reputation.(GOOGLE:NOPE)
This word "Antisemitism"(GOOGLE:NOPE) is extensively used by only the Zionist Jews. This has become a (GOOGLE:NOPE)verbal weapon to save their name and hide their war crimes."

so craftie , i am in awe.

pretty sure it's racist. pretty pretty etc

are you quoting the 'scarlet johansson is a clone' author?

I haven't heard that theory! How do I acquire another of these clones?

remember that sydney erupted against people of lebanese descent a couple of years ago.

Remember that a small bunch of young racist thug dicks who are actively territorial about individual WAVES IN THE OCEAN in a small area of Sydney that is so against the outside world that many of them literally don’t even go into the city... erupted against a deliberate group of ppl of Lebanese descent making a demonstrative incursion onto “their territory”

a certain type of (american) customer would avoid such an amalgamation; another type would be all like 'this place has asian food covered amirite'

Saw a suburban restaurant on the weekend called “SEAT – Your Housetaurant” with “outh east sian and hai” spelled out from the vertical acronym in tiny letters

a deliberate group of ppl of Lebanese descent making a demonstrative incursion

should know their place amirite?

scott (or dayo), did you ever go to the Burmese place in Philly? it's really good.

[xpost to contenderizer]

I am 100% in favour of public demonstration whether ad hoc or organised, dickhole, hence using that approving adjective to describe the actions of people looking to start a fight, just saying that not even wilfully isolationist aggrobogans from Cronulla were fomented by A1an J0n3s to drive an hour forty to my mother's suburb, which has THE HIGHEST PER-CAPITA LEBANESE-IMMIGRANT-AND-DESCENDED POPULATION IN THE STATE, if not the country, and smash up all their light-up Santas and reindeers, and there were no "eruptions" any further out of the Shire than fucken Punchbowl, so perhaps AA's entirely-well-meant line might have been expressed slightly over-broadly

you're right sic, I didn't mean to smear 4.5m people by describing the actions of one (1) very small bag of dicks, will be more careful in future

also if I've missed a further point please dickhole me at will

irl lol @ "dickhole"

an approving adjective, iirc

also if I've missed a further point please dickhole me at will

nah I knew what you meant. but while Australia has many layers of complex problems with racism, I do think the physical foofooraw had a lot more to do with young male pack-bonding to overcome insecurity, and both surfie and Shire culture, than it did with endemic racist attitudes (on either side - the "Aussie sluts" putdowns reported to have been dropped by the rejected suitors are the only on-site citation of r-bombs pre-11/12, and if true, they're self-evidently auto-cancelling in context <cf "Gangsta Gangsta" stanza 2, by Prof. O'Shea Jackson, 1988 {Priority}>, even without being coupled with "virgin," as they were.)

TLDR:

in the txt-msg organisation of the potential-fighting, the same racial language is used on both sides evenly as plain descriptors, not as weighted abuse – cf. "Every fucking aussie. Go to Cronulla Beach Sunday for some Leb and wog bashing Aussie Pride ok" vs "All lebo I wog brothers. Sunday midday. Must be at North Cronulla Park. (...) fight each Aussie. Yulleh. Lets get hectic and turn gods country into wogs country. Habib will be cookin victory kebabs after. Tell all your cousins"

It’s not until J0n3s gets involved that the leb vs skip element becomes really racially tinted beyond Our Team and Your Team. Whether the above were genuine, created by the “other side”, or sent as fakes to generate outrage, it’s on the level of Soccer Fans X organising to have a fight with Soccer Fans Y because they’re young, bored, frustrated and Having A Grand Old Biff will be fun and strengthen their own sense of belonging to something.

The rhetoric gets specifically and wilfully amplified by J0n3s, and notably among ppl who aren’t physically nearby, nor in any way likely to get involved*. “Middle Eastern grubs.” Cutting off an older lady caller who tries to dampen his racism with "Let's not get too carried away, Berta. We don't have Anglo-Saxon kids out there raping women in western Sydney." And repeatedly reading out one of the texts calling for “Aussies” to gather at the park in North Cronulla.

*Although of course it's then the wider media reportage of Jones' pulpit-pounding throughout the week that may have spread the ire to tourists, or given locals a rhetoric to seize.

waaaaay TLDR:

(Even the police report is very scrupulous about noting that apart from strutting and braggadocio, the Lebanese roosters on the beach throughout the year, up until the lifeguard push‘n’shove on the 4th, caused no other major problems; and super-super-tellingly for an objective official document, observes that the 5000-strong crowd gathering on the 11th “consist[ed] mainly of young Caucasian males draped in Australian flags and wearing beach attire”, and notes TEN MINUTES LATER a briefing of officers on “Recent intelligence concerning 'Bra Boys.’" (The first TWELVE incidents of violence recorded, across the following SIX HOURS, are all of crowds assaulting 1, 2 or 3 men, sometimes noted being of “Middle Eastern” appearance – it’s not until 4.20 that there’s a one-person-against-crowd incident (with no race alluded to)... and that’s one young man throwing a beer bottle at police, who arrest him while a crowd of 500 jeer and spit on the cops, who charge him with “possess drug” and ask the local bottle-os to close voluntarily. That the whole thing is so largely a fomentation of AM radio is underlined by the first actual group of “Middle Eastern” dudes to turn up in the area, instead of going “yeah orright” when cops or State Rail go “carn fellas it’s not worth it, go home and have a beer eh”, are at the hospital in KOGARAH almost EIGHT HOURS after the Jones-advertised gathering, in response to reports about the blokes injured earlier in the day.)

aaaaanyway, no frogbo, gonna stop reading this 104pp PDF and go to the pub

summary – j0n3s is a vile disingenuous bigoted cunt (on that we can all agree)

am laughing at dickhole as a verb too! xp