rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

OH LOL WHOOPS http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/04/23/urban-outfitters-under-fire-over-holocaust-t-shirt/

Marc McMairy has used the slogan on his own line before, but the added exposure of having it sold in a huge retailer definitely raised enough eyebroes to push the controversy across a certain threshold that he was not able to handle. At the start of the backlash he doubled down and tweeted "MANIFEST DESTINY: SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST" because he's even more of an idiot than anyone suspected

I mean if you're looking to prove you're not racist you might want to refrain from coupling a belief of divinely ordained white superiority with fucking Darwinism

they really really downplayed the racist aspects of Manifest Destiny in my grade school history classes

Gawd a'mighty! SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST isn't even real Darwinism; it's from Herbert Spencer. Charles Darwin was a lot narrower and more specific in his definitions of evolutionary advantage. That's because Darwin was a real scientist, as opposed to Spencer who was a popularizer and a somewhat better-than-average hack.

The thought that someone would sell a t-shirt with a slogan used to promote and encourage genocide is just baffling. Everyone involved with the production of that is a supreme asshole.

they really really downplayed the racist aspects of everything in my grade school history classes

It reminds me of one of the speeches at the H4mmond High '96 graduation. The theme of the speech was that now that we were moving on from high school we couldn't turn back. The speaker illustrated this concept by telling the story about how Hernan Cortes, upon arriving in Mexico, instructed his crew to burn the ships, so they couldn't sail back to Europe. And he made a sort of rallying cry out of this, every few minutes punctuating a point by yelling "BURN THE SHIPS!" To be honest, I think a large part of the audience just didn't get it and was mostly put off by his yelling. But there were definitely those among us who realized the racist connotations of the conquest of the Americas. We had all come up with the guy since elementary school. He was a super-sweet guy and it was apparent that he just hadn't thought the whole thing through. But there you go.

wait how's life were you from md?

did we go to the same HS/did we already have this convo

We had this convo once!

oh damn that was almost exciting

on this very thread!

rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

looooool

anyway yr story is reminding me of henry morgan, who has one of those freakishly long and detailed wikis that i got bored of reading a week ago. captain morgan rum is named after him and their recents ads have all played him out to look like jack sparrow/koolest dude, when actually he was just a privateer who pillaged caribbean islands at the behest of the british government

Well, at least they've moved on from "got a little captain in you".

i mean it's obvious mcnairy either didn't have the ability or the inclination to think this all the way through, and given his history of provocative slogans (he's made a bunch of accessories emblazoned with "fuck off" in loopy calligraphic script) he may have even wanted to blindly court a little controversy. but this product was being sold in the Gap & heavily promoted by GQ so it became very public. on the chance that anyone would defend that he was trying to 'reclaim' manifest destiny, as someone is likely to do, they're fucking stupid because it's not his to reclaim.

anyway in light of all this i've decided to stop production on my upcoming line of LEBENSRAUM t-shirts

Was that to be a plus-size clothing line? "Finally, a pair of jeans that give me room to live".

guilty lols

the designer is not even the only one to blame; someone from either GQ or the Gap should have spotted this and shut it down before it was even made

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/A5Wo_QpCAAEf1Vz.png

this fuckn guyyyyy

is that his new t-shirt?

"sorry you were offended" is not an apology, when will people get it

lol @ "hey, are you from md?" reoccurring on racist thread.

^^ lives in glass house, btw.

I sort of love this general human sentiment of "if I communicate a message in these words or terms than everyone is going to decode something that aligns EXACTLY w/ what I encoded, which is the only [or most correct] thing to decode, and if ppl decode something else--even if they are a large majority--then they, not I, must have done something wrong in this communication process"

"and I'm really, really sorry that they decoded this erroneously"

the intersection of intentional fallacy & white privilege, basically?

loads of entitlement to say "i have the right to apply these words to my fashion without doing a lick of research outside my own childhood nostalgia and then blame everyone else for knowing what they mean"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfoQBTPY7gk

"there were plenty of fights / to win the land rights / but the west was meant to be / it was manifest destiny"

wtf

Remember this:

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/57802000/jpg/_57802534_rappaport2-1.jpg

Well now there's this

What's going on with these crazy Germans?

The establishment theaters in Germany don't let anyone onstage who didn't go to a German theater school, pretty much -- as a result, German actors are an insanely homogenous group that includes nearly no one who isn't German and from a German background.

love how the excuse in both cases is that they couldn't find an elderly black actor, like they do know young black actors but it would be just preposterous for a young actor to play an old person

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKiJMB-C-10

yeesh

I for one am shocked that Germans would do anything racist.

http://cdn.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/enhanced-buzz-wide-4311-1350915969-9-650x500.jpg
http://video.joke.co.uk//videos/Products/wide/63433.swf

also available: http://www.joke.co.uk/inflatable-king-ding-penis-costume-white~63433/

i was a little taken aback until i saw the £ instead of the $ and then it all kinda made sense.

yeah I saw the white version of that in a costume store yesterday

also, yes, forks, i'm pretty sure anything involving blackface is racist

or excuse me, snazaroo brand blackface

the snazaroo threw me

what the hell are the batteries for

there's probably a little fan that keeps the costume inflated

http://pinterest.com/source/stormfront.org/

ok not clicking that.

to preemptively defend myself its just a random assortment of mundane images not unlike http://pinterest.com/source/ilxor.com/

i dont know what's weirder, racist women scrapbooking or unaware third parties repinning stuff not knowing where it eventually leads to.

kind of think it's google image search adds, which is one behavior you'd expect on pinterest, not everyone is just cultivating stuff from sites they know

the ilxor one is hilariously half the redhead thread (we had one, right?) and the vintage smash one