rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

(P.S. I do just want to point out that, although the overall culture is kinda gross and there's definitely still a lot of pervasive creepy backwardness, there are also a ton of forward-thinking and liberal-minded peeps in Indiana, and pockets of the state are actually verrrrrry slooooooowly and utterly shockingly trending leftward. Just feel the need to defend cuz I'm sorta abruptly back there now and probably will be for a little while and wanna acknowledge that there are some good eggs here fightin' the good fight. And that said, you can certainly feel free to continue generalizing about the state because the generalizations are mostly otm.)

btw this feels like an appropo moment to point out that my dad is from batesville

he grew up working for the casket company and my grandpa made tombstones

lol

Yeaaaaah, that seems kinda fitting for Indiana. A good deal more than half of the population in my mom's town is 50 or older.

suitably gothic imo

i mean tbh i always read heston's brownface as welles just highlighting (oof) the pulpy artifice of the entire project. granted i was mad lifted the first time i saw it.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, March 15, 2012 9:40 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, this. that's exactly how i take it, and i've only ever seen the movie straight (a tragedy that i intend to rectify as soon as possible).

Indiana wasn't all bad. I really enjoyed our weekend trips hunting for records and Bloomington was a great place, nice vibes and great food. Even in small towns we found friendly people, Vincennes, Jasper, even Evansville, and Indianapolis had shops with nice people. But when the people were unfriendly it was icy cold. The most shocking thing was an old farmer recommending Tera go work on a chicken farm with the other Mexicans.

Big Hoos, otm...

Deric, when I speak of the racism I felt in Indiana, it was what I experienced in Evansville, Petersburg and Washington. New Harmony was great, Terra Haute, Indianapolis and Bloomington, Vincennes were all places I enjoyed. Unfortunately, we spent Monday-Friday in the Petersburg area and had only the weekend to venture out and hang in other places.

I must say though, it was hard not to notice all the cemeteries traveling from town to town.

Snippet of overheard conversation among coworkers (Bloomington townies) about a decade ago:

-I didn't hear you say something bad about the KKK, did I?
-Nah, not me, man.

Needless to say, I was outta that job like a fucking flash. The further you get from the student-y parts of town, the creepier it gets.

You take the good, you take the bad. You take 'em both and there you have the facts of racial tolerance in Indiana, the facts of racial tolerance in Indiana.

there you have the facts of racial tolerance in Indiana, the facts of racial tolerance in Indiana.

is this a song

oh i get it

While I gave Nacho Libre a chance, I was a different person.

^ nomination for favorite sentence on ILX this year

Wow!

I grew up with my mother and grandmother watching a lot of novelas, and something that parodies those same beats (with Will Ferrell, no less!) has the potential to make me laugh pretty hard. But are other people's laughs going to come from the same places? Or will they come from pure derision?

Thinking about this some more, like--I might laugh at a parody of a novela because I recognize it as mocking the familiar (to me) silly tropes of a novela. I think Will Ferrell (or whoever) might argue that those silly tropes are kinda universally recognized as silly; that "worth laughing at" is "worth laughing at" no matter whose culture it originates from. And I guess the counterargument to that is something about power relations--that there's an ethical weight to the history of power relations between two groups, and the history of whites holding power over Mexicans means that their laughter at Mexican culture always has that weight behind it?

I don't know if this is totally the wrong thread for this, obviously I'm kinda thinking out loud and figuring this out as I go. These are complicated issues for me personally, but I'm trying to work through them to come out the other side with some kind of more widely applicable analysis.

Ha! I was though...

haha

also where is max or cr?m to puncture all my illusions of cultural ownership and authenticity

Several layers of complications. Then there is what it means to me vs how it is perceived. How often I have thrown out and ignored how it is perceived only to have that be the main focus later on...

Right??

This is all very important to me, since I'm having a daughter soon and though I don't know what she will look like yet, she will be biracial. I fear the day when either kids make fun of her for speaking spanish and having pale skin or blue eyes and having my last name or having darker skin with my last name and speaking english well. I am hopeful that this won't be a problem for my daughter, but I remember how cruel other kids can be.

this is a pretty good writeup of Casa:

http://www.salon.com/2012/03/16/pick_of_the_week_will_ferrells_incredibly_strange_mexican_adventure/singleton/

..and of course I say that as someone who hasn't seen it speaking to other people who haven't seen it.

Making fun of stereotypes can be hilarious and sort of a relief, but when there's the chance it reinforces those stereotypes it becomes scary to me.

i definitely plan to see the movie fwiw

Me too

Big Hoos, ever discussed whether Cri-Cri's songs were racist or not? I have actually had that discussion on a board once.

the only amusing thing I've seen in any of the Casa trailers was Nick Offerman asking Will Ferrell if he spoke English and Ferrell responding in Spanish "No sir, I do not speak any English." Which was dumb.

He doesn't say "English" he says "American" -- v different!

ah right; I only saw it once

I just saw a guy wearing a t-shirt that said "Did I really just ask A MEXICAN for directions?!"

http://busblog.tonypierce.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/icecreamtruckdancerssj1.jpg

somehow i knew the "re-nig" sticker would already be here but i checked anyway...

i mean tbh i always read heston's brownface as welles just highlighting (oof) the pulpy artifice of the entire project. granted i was mad lifted the first time i saw it.

i feel for obese-americans slighted by Welles' wearing of fatface in that movie

something about the fact will ferrell and the directors being the only prominent non Hispanics in the cast/crew (and the involvement of many well known Latinos) would suggest at least superficially that the movie is not out and out racist. I think it looks like it has potential at least

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/g.OsYOoqqxp3wgdxSGI4.Q--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NTt3PTYzMA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en/blogs/thesideshow/bumpersticker.jpg

oh what the FUCK

somehow i knew the "re-nig" sticker would already be here but i checked anyway...

― Wesley Crusher: Teenage F#ck Machine (forksclovetofu), Friday, March 16, 2012 2:23 PM (6 hours ago)

somehow i knew the "re-nig" sticker would already be here but i checked anyway...

alas I did not lol

seriously WHAT THE FUCK

it's a delightful play on the word "renege" do u c

goes well with "my other car is also an asshole"

I can't see much besides red at the moment

brb, angrily posting on Facebook

I'd feel pretty okay about the owner of that car getting eaten by wolves.

About 85,600 results (0.19 seconds)

21 "news" articles about racist picture on Facebook

https://news.google.com/news/more?q=%22don't+re-nig%22&hl=en&prmd=imvnsu&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&ix=seb&ion=1&biw=2088&bih=1264&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dP0EGG-qrF6fEVMH-H_lGRDANyE6M&ei=4KVjT62QCYr50gGbgam1Cg&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQqgIwAA

courtesy of Stumpy's Stickers

whose server has crashed, apparently

Bumper stickers have long been a common way for drivers to show opposition or support for political candidates. -- The Daily Beast

8,560 comments on HuffPo on picture someone posted to Facebook

"powered by zen cart"

I don't really think that sticker belongs in this thread. The only possible way you could doubt the racist intent behind it is if you were blind. But even then, blind people's other senses are supposed to compensate for their lack of sight, so I'm sure some of them would pick up on the virulence with their racehate-dar.