rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

A: Newark

would not want to be on Facebook.com.nu this afternoon.

What kind of tea does one serve with African female genital mutilation cake? Malarial tea?

This is After getting my vagaga mutilated by the minister of culture, Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth. Before cutting me up she whispered ‘Your life will be better after this’ in my ear.'

should this go before or after apaches on my ballot?

vagaga

rama rama-ma

RE: The cake.

It looks a LOT worse as a thumbnail. In higher res, it actually looks like a really well-made sculpture. If you changed everyone in the picture to frowning it would be 1000x easier to swallow.

that's what she screamed

http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo126/theybf/June%2009/27d69cd7.jpg

Before cutting me up she whispered ‘Your life will be better after this’ in my ear.'

maybe it's funnier in swedish

i wanna make a genital mutilation hologram joke but it's not working so i'm posting this instead because i want to...

...have my cake and eat it too.

oh i see pplains was already on that trail

whenever racist cakes call, i'm already there, my friend.

No red velvet, no credibility.

Will this guy become an art star or a pariah?

I bet he's a hoot when he works behind the counter at Luby's!

"You didn't get much."
"I was going to add some peach cobbler, but the croutons started screaming at me."

I'm surprised that this thing hasn't made it to cakewrecks.com yet. Surely it must.

cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake cake

If cakes could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them up? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.

fuckin cakes, always with the screaming

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3271/3023966902_515aa0d9a9.jpg

^me itt today

And they have had a bomb threat now.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/bomb-threat-museum-sweden-caught-racist-cake-scandal-cake-depicted-naked-african-woman-featured-actress-blackface-article-1.1063075

(How's that for a URL, SEO Marketers?)

i bet this artist is thrilled

Here's some interesting background about the cake-troversy:
http://africasacountry.com/2012/04/18/swedish-cake/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr7ZLYPtiRs

Has anyone actually interviewed the artist about it?

xp hahahaha yes that's what i was thinking of!

http://www.racialicious.com/2012/04/18/voices-makode-aj-linde-and-that-cake/

The reaction of the assembled crowd, though, is perhaps more disturbing. They don’t seem to understand that this isn’t supposed to be “Ha-ha”-funny, and if observers ascribe their glee to a detached, condescending form of racism, I’d be hard-pressed to disagree. Really, who knows what they were thinking? Who the eff laughs at that?
- Tommy Christopher, Mediaite

yes I mean, who on Earth would laugh at an absurd screaming blackface cake, like how is that situation even fathomable

laughter can be a release of nervousness, based on an uncertainty how to react

Linde apparently posted Facebook responses to diff't questions about the cake; a youtube FAQ, so to say. This blog has compiled his videos:

http://www.womanist-musings.com/2012/04/artist-who-created-racist-sexist.html#more

this was his response to those asking why he chose to tackle female genital mutilation; it seems a bit more incoherent than the other responses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aO5ALkMzOKc&feature=player_embedded

http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/524703_337071523023373_135799796483881_957463_646738037_n.jpg

so nervous...

I guess the only reasonable conclusion is that she thinks blackface & female circumcision are hilarious and was unaware that the public at large would react negatively to her racist worlview

much more likely that she isn't sensitive to blackface or female circumcision at all and just thought it was fun feeding cake to a colorfully dressed cake person

That is also a very reasonable conclusion

I suppose the optimal time to capture her nervousness on camera would be during the (possibly multiple) times she initially tried to cut the cake

leo stotch

It seems to me that the cake was a trick in what was really a piece of performance art. Show a (mostly) rich, white audience a disgusting, violent racial stereotype in a context where they think it's safe to accept it, and watch them gleefully participate in a very grotesque spectacle. The cake wasn't meant to be an actual statement against FGM, it was a prop Mr. Linde used to make a very dark point. Whether it's OK for a man living in Sweden to use that iconography to make that point is an open question, but I really don't think the cake was meant to be the art on display. The artwork was the group of white people cutting up the body of an African woman and eating it and laughing, while somehow still under the impression that they were making a statement against FGM.
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would like to think that this was the case, but...

but what?

i think the minister was just showing she was happy to play along? "ah yes, ART, how subversive and delightful."

I want to know who got the first piece of cake

his statements do not indicate that he intended the piece as a "gotcha" stunt aimed at making liljeroth and the rest of the audience look bad, or that his use of FGM as a subject was as cynical as leo suggests

that to llb

I want to know who got the first piece of cake

And how high did they jump when they heard that scream.

I suppose the optimal time to capture her nervousness on camera would be during the (possibly multiple) times she initially tried to cut the cake

She should've been more like

http://vidgolos.com/images/3_364354634645634_2.jpg

the minister of culture got the first piece

Liljeroth, in a statement, said she understands why people felt offended and scandalized by the images widely circulated in the Swedish media. The Guardian reports she admitted that the cake installation was rather provocative and bizarre but that she was invited to speak about artistic freedom and the right to offend. She said: "I was invited to speak at World Art Day about the freedom of art and its right to provoke. And then they wanted me to cut into the cake. I don't review art, but I can very well understand that this whole situation was misunderstood." According to Liljeroth, the confusion stemmed from the artist himself. She said: "He claims that it challenges a romanticized and exoticized view from the West about something that is really about violence and racism." She added that the idea behind the exhibition was that "Art needs to be provocative."

idk contenderizer I think jaymc's link is v interesting and is worth reading

It’s Sunday, April 15th, and at Moderna Museet the swedish Artists Organisation is organising a celebration of World Art Day, as well as celebrating its own 75th birthday. Invited to speak is Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth, the culture minister, who – it’s worth noting – is reviled by large parts of the art world for her culture-sceptic stance and for previously condemning provocative art in what many see as a kind of censorship. Here’s her chance at patching things up.
A number of artists have been asked to create birthday cakes for the celebration. At some point, Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth gets asked if she would go ahead and cut the first piece of cake, standard politician fare she thinks, and she agrees. Then she’s told that the cake will be about the limits of provocative art, which is a subject she now carefully treads around, and about female genital mutilation.
The cake is wheeled out and uncovered. The crowd stares, tittering nervously. The culture minister is placed at the crotch end, and starts cutting into the cake – when suddenly the head starts screaming in pain. It’s the artist, Makode Linde, whose own painted head is placed as the head of the cake. The crowd’s tittering erupts in nervous laughter; the uncomfortable humour of the situation, the classic Swedish fear of conflict, triggered by the surprise sound and movement. Lena Adelsohn-Liljeroth tries to play along as best she can in what she sees as a “bizarre” situation, reciprocating the laughter.
And on the other side of the cake, placed in the narrow space in front of a glass wall, stands one of the minister’s fiercest critics, visual artist and provocateur Marianne Lindberg De Geer, camera at the ready. And she snaps pictures of the whole series of events, as the minister is egged into doing more outrageous things, performing for the crowd.
It’s of course no coincidence. The whole thing was carefully planned, a “mousetrap” as one Swedish artist puts it. And based on how much traction the picture of the event has garnered, it was a very efficient mousetrap indeed.
Who’s Makode Linde, who staged the whole event? He is a visual artist, and as such has continuously asked uncomfortable questions about race, racial stereotyping and his own position as a black man in a condescending elite art world. The golliwog figure is a consistent image in his artwork, being placed on everyday objects, on paintings grinning nervously at the king, gawking in horror from children’s faces, at times undergoing almost formalist destruction. But just as importantly: he’s a club promoter and a DJ, one of Sweden’s most successful, who knows exactly how to manipulate crowds and their emotions.
And I’m left wondering – whatever the artist himself says – if the intended artwork here is not the cake, nor the performance, but the picture. Because what Makode Linde and Marianne Lindberg De Geer have produced is a picture which is incredibly powerfully laden with symbolism of colonial exploitation.

(that's from jaymc's link; sorry I shouldve cleaned that c+p up a little)