rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

I don't know how to break this to everybody, but Eli manning is a white man

I'm flabbergasted by this article tbh

can't wait for the guy writing about how stunned he is that Ira Glass is a Jew

In related news, Kelsey Grammer is also a white man.

Madeleine Albright isn't British

i am not even sure if this is racist (first time i have ever said that on this thread) as much as dumb as balls.

poor balls

Sasha Frere-Jones' penis is erect because he's blind.

holy shit lol

tbh I always default to thinking of Sasha as a guy's name, and I always pictured SFJ as a kind of Safran-Foer dude, which as it turns out was kind of in the right ballpark... black woman!? wtf. That has to have been a trolly article having a dig at his writing, right?

Many Americans first exposure to the name Sasha was through Supermodel of the World, which may be where all the confusion stems from.

Granted, most Americans don't read Russian literature and therefore don't know it's a unisex diminutive for Alexander/Alexandra (or Natasha, if your name is Sasha Obama).

When I was growing up I only knew two Sashas: one was a boy at my school and the other was my friend's cat. My default is to think cat before male or female.

I would probably be more forgiving towards SFJ's writing if he was a cat, that would be adorable.

Would pay hard cash to see an all-white funk band fronted by a cat

Just as long as it wasn't frigging Jameowquai

how would you know the cat was white?

Granted, most Americans don't read Russian literature and therefore don't know it's a unisex diminutive for Alexander/Alexandra (or Natasha, if your name is Sasha Obama).

― ella fingerblast hurls forever (suzy), Thursday, October 25, 2012 8:17 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's true, although i think in russian it's more commonly a boy's name? i think it's a great name for a dude.

Male and female Sashas in my college class; guys' names pronounced Sash-a (as in window), women's names pronounced Saaaah-sha.

why were they screaming, were you throwing them out of windows?

sash-a sounds more like a britishism than anything

a friend just gave his car a 'typical black female name', i don't know what to think of it.

"Michelle"?

Michelle wouldn't be a problem in a french speaking province.
It's Mo'Nique. They insist on the apostrophe and use the accent. I was fine with it until I realised it wasn't a particular hommage to Mo'Nique.

if the naming has more to do with racial caricature than francophone africa than yes, def racist imho

the "I was fine with it until" sentence is killing me. good work.

I get annoyed by people who name their cars, but that's more for the irrational thread than this one.

Great racist car names corner: in the distant 1980s, a relative's brown Mercedes-Benz 240D, which did 0-60 in about 18 seconds and was named Steppin Fetchit. Took me about a decade to figure out that that was extremely uncool.

Care to explain so we don't all have to wait a decade? I have no idea what that name means.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepin_Fetchit ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepin_Fetchit

I hope they had personalized plates and frequently broke down in mixed neighborhoods.

STPNFCHT

I get annoyed by people who name their cars, but that's more for the irrational thread than this one.

If that's irrational, then I don't want to be rational.

Here is some Stepin Fetchit. His work has to be seen to be believed; I also think it's worth knowing that this was mainstream Hollywood once up a time, and he became a very rich man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10OFvL75Ww0

According to Wikipedia, he was the first black millionaire; he also eventually declared bankruptcy with a net worth of less than $200 dollars

wikipedia incorrect there, i know ernest hogan was a millionaire well before that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hogan

The Fetchit wiki says first black actor, while Hogan appears to be a song-and-dance entertainer. Maybe they're differentiating that way.

surprised we're not talking about Palin's "shuck and jive" comment ITT

Everyone knows that was racist

yeah, no question.

Sarah Palin makes me feel ill. She is a creepy, evil person.

I don't know that Sarah Palin necessarily had a racist intent with that! I just think that she is:
a. clueless
b. doesn't understand that racism isn't about intent, it's about effect and perception
c. doesn't get the idea of institutional racism giving her words greater weight and context

but, upon judging her reaction:
so this "well, it wasn't racist when.." crap that she's being totally clueless on just leads me to the fact she'll never, ever get b&c so is probably personally racist

i don't think you need racist 'intent' to actually be racist. like you can be a lot of things despite your intent. 'intent' is an awful big compliment in itself to give to certain people, because sometimes it seems like they don't have intentions at all so much as passing spasms of neural activity that appear purposeful from a distance.

racism isn't about intent, it's about effect and perception

for all intents (heh) and purposes, her stance is that she doesn't need to watch her language or apologize, so she's pretty much in the "I can say whatever I want" camp

I don't think Sarah Palin is clueless. She does this calculated dog-whistle shit all the time, only this time it's well within human hearing range.

Probably. I kind of feel that sometimes it's a self-reinforcing thing where every time someone is rebuked for saying something racist that they think is just how normal people speak, they make a point to firm up their language to include more of that shit. Not so much dog whistling as just being an asshole in the attempt to get other assholes to join your side.

"I'm not an asshole, I just use old-fashioned folksy language my community uses, just like they used it 50 years ago to oppress black people."

I’ve been known to use the phrase most often when chastising my daughter Piper to stop procrastinating and do her homework. As she is part Yup’ik Eskimo, I’m not sure if this term would be deemed offensive when it’s directed at her or if it would be considered benign ... Just to be careful, from now on I’ll avoid using it with Piper, and I would appreciate it if the media refrained from using words and phrases like igloo, Eskimo Pie, and “when hell freezes over,” as they might be considered offensive by my extended Alaska Native family.