rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

Is Eddie Murphy as the old Jewish man in Coming to America offensive? Because that's one of my favorite screen characters of all time in spite of the yiddish caricature.

Are you guys making the argument that because you liked Speedy Gonzales, it's not still an awful racist stereotype and caricature?

obviously I'm not trying to say what is or isn't offensive, but that the character isn't pure negative stereotype (he was always the quickest/smartest/most cunning of the bunch) and that going from that to "accepting the forced breakup of Mexican families" is a pretty massive stretch

hah, fair point

Does anyone feel like the whole joke of speedy gonzales is that he is fast/smart &c *unlike other Mexicans*?

I have never ever gotten that impression.

me neither

the joke is that he's hyperactively fast

I have never ever gotten that impression.

I have had that impression in the past

i'm hispanic and i'm not crazy about speedy gonzales, primarily b/c it because it was used by white kids i grew up with as nicknames/slurs for hispanic people

i hate the band name "speedy ortiz", too, especially since none of the members are hispanic

re: gonzales, i generally operate on the notion that stereotyping marginalized groups of people in cartoon form isn't a good practice. i understand though that some latinos are okay w/ speedy.

If nothing else he gave us a great joke on Futurama: "That guy makes Speedy Gonzales look like Regular Gonzales!"

I thought Speedy Gonzales was cool when I was a kid, and I didn't really know much about Mexican stereotypes or know many Mexican people. If someone had told me they were Mexican when I was age 7, I don't know that it would have really registered for me that "that's what Speedy Gonzalez is" tbh. Not trying to pull some "I don't see color" bs, I just think my kid brain didn't really process Speedy Gonzalez as anything other than a cool cartoon mouse.

the sombrero and thick accent didn't tip you off eh

xp to hurting -- i get it that as a 7 year old you might not know that speedy gonzales = mexican. but the character is obviously coded as such and at some point speedy is going to enter kids' consciousness as a mexican stereotype. it wasn't 7 year old white kids calling hispanic people "speedy gonzales" when i was growing up, it was white teenagers clearly aware of speedy's mexican tropes who grew up watching looney tunes.

right though white teenagers are gonna be shitty no matter what, as a Jew I got a ton of the Eric Cartman stuff growing up. though had South Park never existed I'm sure it just would've been something else.

there's always something

Kinda on-topic - I walked into my son's preschool classroom recently and did a doubletake at one of their art projects.

http://i.imgur.com/DNqoLtc.jpg

ladybugs?

Ladybugs.

http://i.imgur.com/ZeScVFZ.jpg

Ladybugs

idgi

me neither

on first glance they look a little like pickaninnies

https://www.google.com/search?q=pickaninny&client=firefox-a&hs=hGy&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&tbm=isch&imgil=VZiXq68eRFwocM%253A%253Bhttps%253A%252F%252Fencrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com%252Fimages%253Fq%253Dtbn%253AANd9GcRjB3x4fYBGQXHqgToKKFoDx_XsCGGCq1yZqjWoMZWS4_5UfWsPgg%253B200%253B160%253Bt9nUouhiNsG82M%253Bhttp%25253A%25252F%25252Fen.wikipedia.org%25252Fwiki%25252FPickaninny&source=iu&usg=__ZsiM5OF1Crdwx9QnLA5_mMOjFdQ%3D&sa=X&ei=6mByU9ipJqqd8gHfp4CIAQ&ved=0CDwQ9QEwAQ#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=VZiXq68eRFwocM%253A%3Bt9nUouhiNsG82M%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fupload.wikimedia.org%252Fwikipedia%252Fcommons%252Fthumb%252F5%252F55%252FPicaninny_Freeze.jpg%252F200px-Picaninny_Freeze.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fen.wikipedia.org%252Fwiki%252FPickaninny%3B200%3B160

That's what my first glance told me.

Especially when you first flip the lights on in an empty classroom.

Still don't see it. I see ladybugs.

I just see bugs, I don't see gender.

I guess maybe pplains is the REAL racist here.

...or we are

i figured out that they were ladybugs, but at first i saw BLACK HEARTS which was obv. awesome of kids and teacher both

http://i.imgur.com/yMhheyr.gif

I saw what DJP described, dark faces with red bandannas.

And I am completely racist, thought we'd been over that.

Racist toward LADYBUGS.

Has this been brought up yet? http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342/recall-that-ice-cream-truck-song-we-have-unpleasant-news-for-youThis

yea, not sure if it was this thread or the other race thread floating about site new answers

That song title

o_O

I just saw lady bugs. I thought the deal was "LADY" bugs named Henry...like no man bugs, ever? I was actually at the kitchen sink this evening, washing dishes trying to figure out what the deal was and so had to return here and there it is....

That song title

o_O

― a strange man (mh), Tuesday, May 13, 2014 4:23 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think it's a little beyond o_O

I won't belabor the point (too late), but this is what I thought I saw at first.

http://i.imgur.com/FkBePHKl.gif

i don't understand why that NPR article is circulating like grumpy cat in 2014 when there was literally a top 10 song with that melody on the billboard singles chart 8 years ago

It's almost like a hip-hop song isn't sufficient enough grounds to talk about something, but it is when the predominately white NPR gives it some shine, hmmmmm

lol I thought about "Chain Hang Low" too

social justice clickbait didn't really exist in 2006 the way it does in 2014 tho

cf justin bieber having more twitter followers than kurt cobain ever did

is theodore r johnson 'predominantly' really white whiney? how many eighths are we talking?

That song title

o_O

― a strange man (mh), Tuesday, May 13, 2014 4:23 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think it's a little beyond o_O

I listened to it yesterday and feel kind of terrible that it's been stuck in my head off and on today

is theodore r johnson 'predominantly' really white whiney? how many eighths are we talking?

― balls, Wednesday, May 14, 2014 5:01 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's why i called out the source, not the author

And not even the source because, NPR is totally great for running it!

I'm mainly confused why everyone is picking up on it and reblogging it when there was a legitimate cultural artifact that people were making the exact same points about eight years ago

8 years ago is a longtime on the internet whieny

because no one was that emotionally invested in it then and people have a pop culture memory of less than eight years?

probably the people invested in it then and npr listeners aren't that overlapping, either

it's almost like hip-hop hasn't really been relevant in the larger culture for nearly a decade now

or that the means thru which ppl share stuff on the internet are different than they were eight years ago