rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

what, against white people?

I was trying to indicate that Nhex needs a chinese typewriter.

I'm guessing by the classroom full of maps you're an elementary school teacher...which, frankly, makes this video completely awesome. Now do the Roger Rabbit!!

I'm going to start demanding performances from youtube contributors. I love it. "Now make your cat fall off a table! I'll check back in next week."

http://youtu.be/gl2AO-7Vlzk

I don't feel good about this video. At the very least it's insensitive/exoticizing?

oof, yeah, that's a little off.

i don't see it

It's at least partly because all the really "bad" things are happening to non-white women. Which u could argue there are reasons for (more stable/less corrupt societies, more prosperous countries, greater social equality) but those reasons themselves are based in racism/colonialism so that's not neutral ground.

I am conflicted about that video

I agree that terrible things are happening to women out there and that something should be done to stop it

It is a little off-putting for all of the terrible things happening to women to be broken up so neatly into different ethnic groups, and particularly off-putting for the white woman's sexual harassment to be in the form of a dude touching her hair but the black women were either getting full-on raped or having their clitori removed by other black women

I didn't get the dancing at all, or perhaps more accurately I think I got the dancing but the execution was blindingly facile and poorly integrated with the intentionally provocative and upsetting portion of the film; I got more of a sense of triumph and overcoming adversity when the women cast off the victimhood imposed upon them by the scenarios than I did from the celebratory dancing, which honestly came across like a bunch of ppl having a party going "yahoo! we made it and are awesome; pull yourself up by your bootstraps out of your terrible situation and we will acknowledge you as awesome too", or to put it another way the dancing-as-celebrating-the-power-of-women metaphor would have worked much better if more effort had been made to connect the dancing women to the terrible scenarios, showing them helping the victimized women and inviting them into their circle

Actually, and this may just be me, that lack of direct connection between the happy powerful dancing sisterhood and the isolated women changing their situations single-handedly struck me as so lacking in basic empathy that it made me angry

yeah what immediately jumped out at me was that it was posited as west v. nonwest

But then again why isn't the white woman getting almost-raped in an alley and some non-white woman working in a professional office job getting harassed by a colleague? Uh, women have office jobs in Asia and Africa too. It has a kind of gross "savages" subtext.

xxp Oh thank you it's not just me.

not only that, but the framing of white vs nonwhite western women's issues got me to the point where I spent more time wondering if the battered woman was supposed to be Hispanic than I did recoiling from her situation

I kind of felt like the implied connection was that the praying/meditating women were sending strength to the ones being hurt in some kind of "sisters united" metaphysical way but maybe I love Buffy too much.

Oh shit, sorry, I searched for the new racism thread but it didn't come up and this one did.

Isn't the domestic abuse victim at ~0:26 white/western?

these kinds of exhortations always make me feel conflicted because on the one hand I do believe in values that I feel should be universal, but otoh advocating hard for these values can, if not done carefully, impinge on the cultural sovereignty of the people you're trying to help and should, if possible, happen or involve their own agency? otherwise it's a lil' too much White Saviour Bringing Culture and Salvation

In Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, V-Day commits ongoing support to build movements and anti-violence networks. Working with local organizations, V-Day provided hard-won funding that helped open the first shelters for women in Egypt and Iraq; sponsored annual workshops and three national campaigns in Afghanistan; convened the "Confronting Violence" conference of South Asian women leaders; and donated satellite-phones to Afghan women to keep lines of communication open and action plans moving forward. V-Day was instrumental in the founding of Karama, a program working in Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon that works to build upon and strengthen efforts to end violence against women by bringing together local women's organizations and other civil society groups in collaboration, analysis and advocacy at national, regional and international levels.

I would really like to like them, it just seems like an oddly oblivious video for an organization like this one.

"yahoo! we made it and are awesome; pull yourself up by your bootstraps out of your terrible situation and we will acknowledge you as awesome too"

yeah this is how it came across to me too.

i'm with crut dayo and orbit here; seems pretty tasteless and tone deaf

there's already been a response apparently with the offset of https://twitter.com/POCRising
that video is by eve ensler, eh?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRhkrHxSf6I

is this racist or just 100% terrible

is this creepy?

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Beautiful-Interracial-Pregnancy/244114675611286

ugh no doubt it's creepy in a fetishy way

guessing somewhere in this thread's eight billion posts is an example of "interracial couples = racism is over omg u brave souls"

Did you seriously just have to ask if that was creepy? Do you have eyes? Can they read words?

It appears to be just a bunch of selfies. This would be less creepy if it were a pr0n website.

there's a sentence I never expected to read

but true!

but is fetishizing race in that way racist? i think it is, because it hypostatizes racial difference and also objectifies people as sexual "types."

it's gross. enough for me.

fair enough. i think it's also racist though.

this thread had some discussion of that topic: Best Arguments for Miscegenation: The Biracial Hotties Thread

Just the thread title cracks me up a little.

Arguments Against: "I'm racist," "I have antiquated views on things," "Child will have more boxes to tick on survey forms"

Arguments in Favor: THEY'RE HOTTIES.

sexy blonde impregnated with superior black seed.

jesus.

yeah the profile picture of that page is kinda... troubling...

there's some weird, creepy racial cuckold fantasy stuff in the comments too

racist, but also a sex thing

racism: it makes some ppl horny

http://imgur.com/gallery/1IoM5AK

uhh

http://imgur.com/gallery/Qd95kbP

that link ^ was in the comments, no idea of its veracity

well one of those two links looks more like a shoop

Here's how I saw it this morning:

http://i.imgur.com/0MMzzLQ.gif

whatever happened to Summer Glau...

A friend of mine who teaches kindergarten in Texas recently attended a mandatory teaching seminar hosted by the school. After one of the workshops all the teachers were given complimentary dolls.

uhoh

Texas