rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

otm

http://www.timeout.com/chicago/music/downtown-sound-omar-souleyman

Though a firm favourite of more leftfield festivals and audiences, Omar Souleyman (not to be confused with Detroit legend Omar S) is really as accessible as hummus. The Syrian singer never fails to galvanise a crowd, channelling Middle Eastern music through a techno-informed prism, and is helped out as always by his master keyboardist Rizan Said by his side.

Omar Souleyman: smooth, creamy, available in 8 and 16 ounce containers in your grocer's produce section

what ppl do on paddy's day is nothing to me as an irishman

http://thatsthejoke.net/thatsthejoke.jpg

http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/3174503/chickens.gif

suggest ban nation

micks I can waive

*applause*

it's a type of it, yeah. but is it racist

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

― marcos, Tuesday, May 13, 2014 12:36 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

many xp. i cant wait to explain to my daughter who speedy etc. also airport dude at ORD brought out a mexican joke for no reason yesterday.

"Great White Shark"

unsure

Awesome Hispanic Whale

curvy colombian crustacean

@lawblob
Why is there no great white shark week?

Every week is great white shark week.

http://www.vice.com/read/austin-was-built-to-be-segregated

haha

Follow Luke Winkie on Twitter.

only 90s ilxkidz will get this

I just saw a blackpeoplemeet.com commercial, figured there had to be a whitepeoplemeet parody, and OH NOES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwl2y-1SJ2c

Was in a 4th of July parade yesterday. The group beyond us was the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Their bagpipe player played a rendition of Hava Negila. Didn't know what to make of that.

Rolling Stone just had an article about Texas and the gun nuts who live there. One of the Jewish participants of a gun rally drops Judah Benjamin's name and I guess stands back to give the New York reporter plenty of space to beg forgiveness.

Is 'people of ethnicity' an actual term? I am in the UK and someone has used this in talking about 'diversity awareness' training and it sounds like a dressed-up version of 'those ethnics'.

Yeah that's terrible. It's like saying you're only "a race" if you're not white, as if whiteness is the default/neutral from which all else diverges.

A fb friend of mine who is black who I talk about music with a lot got a little insulted that I posted a led zeppelin song on his feed (I knew he didn't generally like them and I was curious to see if he would like The Wanton Song in light of other stuff he likes) -- he said he finds them "almost racist." I hadn't really thought of them that way before in spite of everything I know about their stealing from blues artists etc. etc., yet it sort of seemed obvious why someone could feel that way once he said it -- there's definitely something minstrely about their antics. Then again, that probably applies to like half of rock music up to a certain point in time.

xp Right? My o/h was really taken aback by it but the rest of the email is all about how they've undergone training and built a bespoke training package for staff etc so I wondered if I'd missed something.

There is a fair chance that they have mixed up the terms 'people of colour' and 'minority ethnicity' in their heads , I'd have thought.

Someone should maybe point that out to them and see if they respond.

I would not expect a coherent response but really want him to do so...

there's definitely something minstrely about their antics.

Robert Plant using the term "spook music" in a tv interview a few years ago didn't help.

well now I am humming that to the tune of "Antmusic" and fuck everything forever

Is 'people of ethnicity' an actual term? I am in the UK and someone has used this in talking about 'diversity awareness' training and it sounds like a dressed-up version of 'those ethnics'.

― kinder, Tuesday, 8 July 2014 22:29 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah that's terrible. It's like saying you're only "a race" if you're not white, as if whiteness is the default/neutral from which all else diverges.

― Orson Wellies (in orbit), Tuesday, 8 July 2014 22:46 (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"people of colour" sounds like this to me too actually

It's like a it's like someone started to say "coloured people" and then caught themselves & lamely tried to save it

It's like a

The term "people of color" always makes me want to start using the term "colorless people."

i bet

I don't see color, ability or gender. I just see translucent bubbles floating toward me on the sidewalk.

People are much easier to pop when you look at them like that.

one of the most prominent anti-systemic racism/sj orgs in pdx is called the coalition of communities of color, and they use the term "people of color" a lot in their work... ie: "there's an 80% unemployment rate amongst people of color", etc.

initially i reacted very similarly to the posters itt when i heard the way the org used the term, but ime they are pretty damn progressive both in ethos and in the way they redefine census categories to reach more nuanced definitions of race and ethnicity (particularly wrt slavic or middle eastern or african communities, which are difficult to study using normal census categories). clearly they are supported by funds/foundations so it's difficult to say who exactly chose to use the term or who self-identifies as such, but it does seem to be embraced by all sorts of folks involved in this type of work - i'm not sure if that's necessarily a valid defense of the term, but i'm certainly more than willing to defer to others with considerably more expertise

this term has been in use since the mid-90s

I first encountered it in college, ethnic studies depts etc

Some comic from around that time - or maybe it was a Bill Hicks routine or something - featuring the wacky "So yes, I'm working with persons of color" ... "You mean.... colored people then." "NO! THAT'S NOT WHAT I SAID!", etc.

It was edgy. Extreme and out there, dudes.

Daily Telegraph blogger and commentator Toby Young wrote: "In his defence, Hansen could cite the fact that America's foremost civil rights group is the NAACP which stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. If it's acceptable for the NAACP to use the word "coloured", why isn't it acceptable for him?"[28]

Hansen issued an apology the following day, saying "'I unreservedly apologise for any offence caused – this was never my intention and I deeply regret the use of the word."[29][30]

xps used way before the mid-90s, no?

oh yeah, People of Color (POC) is a widely used term. I haven't heard "People of Ethnicity" before, but I imagine its an expansion to cover white people from other countries.

good ol Fanon

Influenced by radical theorists like Frantz Fanon, racial justice activists in the U.S. began to use the term people of color in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Daily Telegraph blogger and commentator Toby Young wrote: "In his defence, Hansen could cite the fact that America's foremost civil rights group is the NAACP which stands for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. If it's acceptable for the NAACP to use the word "coloured", why isn't it acceptable for him?"[28]

Hansen issued an apology the following day, saying "'I unreservedly apologise for any offence caused – this was never my intention and I deeply regret the use of the word."[29][30]

Hansen correctly assuming that if Toby Young is on your side you must be behaving like a cunt.

I am aware this term is a thing btw, and it still sounds weird and hedgy to me

Wonder if it's a uk/us divide - iirc lex is not too happy w the term either

I don't have thoughts re "people/person of color" because I feel like it's none of my business to affirm or object--I'll do what I'm told. The term is widely used among progressive, anti-racist, anti-oppression movement people and groups. Which doesn't mean I think it shouldn't still be scrutinized, but afaict it's not seen as problematic by any/most.

Porting that construction over to ethnicity seems like a thuddishly poor choice though--as if no one has "ethnicity" except ppl who aren't mainstream white America, whatever that means and whoever gets to define that, which is so constructed and so much used to exclude whoever is "bad" in popular right-wing myth right now that it's meaningless.

For the American market, I mean, obv.

-as if no one has "ethnicity" except ppl who aren't mainstream white America,

It was someone in the UK using "people of ethnicity"