rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

Is it Ok for white people to call 50 Cent "Fiddy"

ok folx i have one i'm genuinely on the fence about

there's a queer-friendly event/club night that happens here occasionally called "Grown and Sexy". it's mostly a DJ thing but i guess there's other stuff like queer burlesque and maybe bands, idk

http://www.citypages.com/2011-12-28/calendar/grown-and-sexy-new-year-s-eve/
http://www.citypages.com/slideshow/grown-and-sexy-37131923/

anyway, i've always understood that term to be in reference to black-oriented events pitched at an older audience. dress codes, no rap, that kind of thing.

so... appropriation? or not? Is This Racist?

/but still a bit chewy/

I've only had them a few times but isn't that, well, basically plantains?

Well I mean they were sliced super-thin and could have been fried til crispy but they weren't, idk all the plantains I've had have been large plantain chunks like tostones and not house-made plantain chips.

a browner shade of jeff

i don't think usage of "grown and sexy" is racist

yeah

idk it just seemed... rude to me.

like if some indie bicycle bacon bring-your-dog event was called "off the chain" or something. yes, haha.

brown n sexy

I haven't shaved for a long time and someone called me chocolate jesus (I have v long hair), it made me p uncomfortable for whatever reason, but I was able to say "more like, chocolate lazy"

i assume chocolate jesus would be hollow inside

props to SD's abdul ref btw

reach out and eat me.

cool thx 4 that

it'll be playing in my fuckin head all day now

this doesn't scan as racist to me

besides isn't like half of reggae african cultural tourism anyway?

props to SD's abdul ref btw

wait, me? What?

he means my display name

like if some indie bicycle bacon bring-your-dog event was called "off the chain" or something

this doesn't raise any alarms for me, tbh. dumb, but not something i'd consider having concerned words over.

yeah goole you might be overthinking that one a bit, unless it was packaged in like gothic script and "urban" stylings. basic ppl say 'off the chain' now, calling an imaginary (but v v possible esp in mpls) event maybe racist is a little hand-wringy.

if anything such an event would be ageist because no one my age thinks anything is off anything else unless it's a hook

off tm

^^^ ageist

i think she was making an 'on the money' joke

By "my age" do you mean your distinguished colleagues of my approximate years, or tiny tiny babies?

Remember I am very old.

idiom is cyclical, the decrepit are almost always the mothers of youthful invention, i look forward to the day when my brood gathers about my knee all babbling "cool beans!"

nb i have never uttered the phrase 'cool beans' and may god strike me down the day that happens

I caught myself using "hella" yesterday.

lol at Laurel being "very old"

I think I have blouses that are older than most of the women on ILX.

who among us does not say off the chain?????

i don't think i've ever heard anyone say that phrase unironically

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEO805O76qM

To be safe, I never utter anything unironically

This week's neo-fascist bloopers summer special:

Plan B in Skrewdriver t-shirt blunder, oops that's embarrassing:
http://thequietus.com/articles/09423-plan-b-apology-for-skrewdriver-t-shirt-misunderstanding

Opera singer withdraws from Bayreuth festival due to having a swastika tattooed on his chest wtf:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/22/russian-singer-quits-bayreuth-festival

So that opera singer changes his chest tat from this:

http://static.blogo.it/soundsblog/nikitin_evgeny-400x300-432x324.jpg

...to this:

http://bilder.bild.de/fotos-skaliert/nikitin-27562424-mbqf-25247682/2,h=493.bild.jpg

What I haven't seen commented on is the fact that he still plainly has the Algis rune on his chest, hello:
http://www.adl.org/hate_symbols/neo_nazi_life_rune.asp

I was gonna say!

nazis stole all the best symbols : (

a white rapper actually wearing a white-power T-shirt in public is like a Paris song coming to life

The shirt's image is from a photograph in one of those SKINHEAD CULTURE straight-ups books (not Nick Knight's SKINHEAD but similar) - it's not a Skr3wdriver tee. Subject is standing in front of a wall with the band's name graffiti-scrawled upon it.

Still, an avoidable shitstorm because that's not immediately obvious and it appears nobody involved knew the reference, anyway: I probably would've asked the stylist to change shirts to have a few looks for the shoot... and then winnow out the offensive shirt when choosing the images for the feature. Dumb, dumb Shortlist fashion department. Dumb, dumb Plan B - when musicians dress for a shoot, it's important for them to remember that an exchange of views about wardrobe choices with everyone who sees an image in a magazine is impossible.

I kind of can't get over the fact that dude calls himself Plan B tbh

it's because he is taken orally after unprotected sex

iirc this book is about race war: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_B_(novel)

odds of a skinhead being a chester himes fan probably pretty low tho

This just in: Plan B is not a skinhead, not wearing a white power t-shirt.

xp no just a coincidence

The Yevgeny Nikitin is a little more complex. I work in opera; one of the singers in the current Bayreuth production of Holländer is a good friend of mine (I have not discussed this incident with him -- they are in full-on "save the production" mode with another singer), and other friends of mine have worked with him. When a gay person of color who I know to be an intense anti-fascist tells me "Yevgeny is no Nazi", I believe it. The tattoos were a dumb-ass youthful decision that he does not want to remove -- he covered the Swastika and keeps the rune (which was also widely reported in the German press) because it has more contemporary non-Nazi meaning.

What's insane about this is that it's the Bild newspaper -- the Daily Mail of Germany -- that started this story, and that he left after intense pressure from the Wagner family and Foundation. I have heard from good insider sources that several family members remain, erm, true believers, and I know that other folks in the Wagner Foundation are big ol' Nazis. Saw a concertante performance of a Wagner opera in honor of a board member recently (outside of Germany, it must be said); in the audience was a young man wearing an outfit based on a stylized SS uniform, and he was not wearing it ironically and he was greeted warmly by the guest of honor. The Wagner scene in German-speaking Europe has some pretty fucking creepy elements that get most obvious in Switzerland.

That is really interesting; I figured there had to be a lot more to the story because I find it really hard to imagine that a dude covered in racist tattoos would be able to get a lot of contemporary opera work

(although I am not finding the more contemporary non-Nazi meaning for that rune very easily)

Oh, new age and pagan types use the rune. More than those types use the swastika, too.

One reason he gets gigs is that he's pretty good;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOrdhb6z9us
he also has excellent stage presence, which is (unfortunately) more important in the German-speaking opera world.

yeah he is good, I'll be over here silently hating on him