Rolling 2017 Thread on Race

Reading through this article, it's completely disingenuous. It holds up Coates' critique, which criticizes the rush that a bunch of white centrists, liberals, and progressives made to absolve some segment of Trump voters from racism and recommendations to downplay critique of racial issues in favor of more discussion of economic issues, as if it has no intersectional component to it and then presents as a solution the logical endpoint of the arguments Coates has been making from the get-go.

http://www.twincities.com/2017/11/29/only-i94-protester-to-go-to-trial-found-guilty-of-public-nuisance/

When Jeffrey Berger stood beside hundreds of other protesters and blocked traffic for hours on Interstate 94 following the 2016 police shooting of Philando Castile, he says he knew he was putting himself at risk for arrest or even injury.

But he doesn’t believe his actions to be criminal, he told jury members hearing his case in Ramsey County District Court this week.

“I believe it is necessary for white-skin people to take risks with their own bodies to help heal the effects of white supremacy,” Berger said.

god, what a load of bullshit. good for berger.

why did he get singled out in particular?

he's the only one who didn't take a plea deal

whyyyyyyy do i read comments on articles like that

also, iirc the local organizers used a strategy of deliberately putting forward the white allies who could weather the legal trouble relatively ok for arrest purposes

A good friend of mine who is currently living in The Netherlands posted a picture of her kids with Sinterklas and Zwarte Piet (in full-on blackface) on Facebook with the caption “You never know who you’ll run into at the Saturday market!” She is a liberal American married to a Frenchman. Several common friends of ours who are also liberals, also American, tagged her picture with likes and loves. A couple of people I don’t know questioned the blackface; all of the names I recognize are white people going “oh how precious!” aside from one common friend who liked the link I posted to the current controversy around Zwarte Piet.

There are times when I feel really, really over white people.

A woman whose profile picture is literally text that says “END IT: SHINE A LIGHT ON SLAVERY” just wrote “I don't know the history, so I am not offended. I see two men in costume being sweet to your adorable children.”

She means *white* slavery tho, maybe check your own assumptions

I’m sorry, DJP

Sorry bad quip (although the 1st part is prob true), these ppl suck obv xp

It is true that who you run into at Saturday market is an mostly unknowable thing

i was going to say the same thing, about "white" slavery and about being sorry how many oblivious fuckheads are still roaming the earth

My friend wrote “this was meant to just be a picture of the kids but I see that this is also insensitive” and I’m like “your sisters are half-Asian and your dad lives in Thailand plus you are from the US and travel everywhere, wtf were you thinking”

Her husband, who is French, basically wrote “the one time we have a story about a black man who is sweet towards kids; love you Piet” and even though he could easily kick my ass I would like to try to set him on fire 🔥

wtf at the husband's comment

jesus

who is French

btw he is a police officer who works for the United Nations

I left some context out of his comment, which was this in full:

“For one time there is a story with a black man cool, generous that everybody love. Promise if one day some people come from Mars I will change the color of my Christmas tree. I hope my children will never judge a person because of the color of his skin. Love you Piet. ❤️”

So my paraphrase was a little unfair but only a little.

Barf

calling a story with a black man cool, generous as next forks dn btw

because of the tree being insensitive to green martians???

That's how I took it, as a ridiculous ref to "oversensitivity"

what the christ

My Dutch friends hate the Zwarte Piet thing and actively campaign against it, was discussing this yesterday with a friend who lives in The Netherlands and was surprised to find that his entire otherwise liberal circle of friends think it's just a bit of harmless fun.

It’s the holiday season!

Literally 11 months out of the year, I think to myself “I would love to live in Amsterdam someday” and then in December I’m like “… oh right, I keep forgetting about that”

“I don't know the history, so I am not offended."
“I don't know the history, so I am not offended."
“I don't know the history, so I am not offended."
“I don't know the history, so I am not offended."
“I don't know the history, so I am not offended."

Laughs uproariously at joke about Chinese laundry - "Oh? You mean there's some history with that?"

I mean, God bless for not knowing about Christmas traditions of the European flat country, but being an American witnessing someone in blackface should "ring some bells," as they say during the holidays.

'but it's not black it's zwarte'

Addendum: A Dutch(-American) woman showed up to complain about the NatGeo article I linked, likening it to a man writing about problems within the feminist movement since it was written by an American. She also wrote a giant post comparing Zwarte Piet to the Easter Bunny and blathering about the importance of tradition. At least one of my white "friends" liked her comment.

Facebook is clearly a great invention

Haven’t regretted deleting it for a single second.

As part of her comments, she referenced the author of the NatGeo piece as "a literal Becky", appropriating from a black person to complain about black people objecting to something they perceive to be racist.

This article, I assume?

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/12/black-pete-christmas-zwarte-piet-dutch/

Holy fucking shit that woman is a stupid troll

Also this could go in the black, white, purple thread:

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/29/world/europe/zwarte-piet-netherlands-united-nations.html

The Dutch are already reinventing the way they portray the controversial character, said Lodewijk Asscher, minister for social affairs and employment. “At the school of my own children, the Petes last year were orange,” he said.

yup, yup, and yup

I might give her viewpoint more credence if we weren't talking about the country whose colonial adventures gave us apartheid.

a man writing about problems within the feminist movement

i am going to meditate on that and try and figure out how it maps onto brave dutch piet-lovers

don’t forget the Easter bunny

Here was the comment that was a direct response to that NatGeo article:

I wish they would assign these stories to journalists who actually live in, come from, or have a connection to the culture they are writing about, rather than a literal Becky who lives in Washington D.C. and grew up in the U.S. I teach a travel writing class and am frequently telling my students to be very careful about writing critically about cultures to which they don't belong from a subjective and presumptuously American-supremacist perspective. It's very American to take the position of authority about all other cultures. I think this issue could be much better covered by writers who have a connection to the culture. This, to me, reads like a man writing about the problem within the feminist movement today, or a white person writing about the problems in the black community. Wrong messenger entirely. Americans feel entitled to insert themselves in the conversation when it is not their cultural history and thus not really appropriate for them to act as anything but neutral observers. And they don't need to infantalize or chastise the Dutch people. The Dutch are sophisticated and intellectual and completely able to have these critical discussions in their society without the American voice coming down from above to tell the them how it is. NatGeo should have hired a Dutch journalist to write about this.

This was the general consumption comment:

For those upset by the blackface, this is an issue being debated in the Dutch community, BUT, also realize that if you are American, you are projecting your cultural experience of blackface from the perspective of an America-centrist history, drawing on things like American slavery and minstrel shows that simply aren't a part of the culture you are judging. Blackface is shocking to Americans, but it doesn't mean the same thing to cultures without that history. That isn't to say that Zwarte Piet's race and origin doesn't need to be reconsidered. Sinterklaas comes from Spain in the legend, and Zwarte Piet is his Moorish helper. Piet is the trickster, who plays practical jokes on the kids, and puts naughty children in the bag to take to Spain. He carries a bundle of sticks to swat naughty children, and candy for the good children (which he throws through the windows. He also plays ding-dong-ditch, leaving candy and presents on doorsteps). He is not regarded in a slave position or an oppressed position by Dutch people in modern culture. Now of course, with the tradition going back hundreds of years, the blackface hasn't aged well, especially with American-centric cultural perspectives dominating all over the world. So the Dutch are trying to find a way that they could change this tradition with an EXTREMELY ingrained character (imagine telling Americans that the Easter Bunny was cruel to animals, so henceforth needed to be a man, and not a bunny? How many families do you think would change the tradition overnight for their kids? How would they even explain to their kids who LOVE the Easter Bunny?) Some ideas that have been floated are using yellow/green/blue facepaint instead. But still, it will be very hard to get the Dutch to let go of their traditional, beloved character "Zwarte Piet". I grew up with Zwarte Piet. He was my hero as a kid, much cooler than Sinterklaas, who was a bit scary. He's as important as the Easter Bunny or Santa's elves to the Dutch (speaking of, aren't elves offensive to little people?) And I kind of do think it's a little problematic for Americans to dominate the conversation about another country's culture, forcing their own historical perspective onto that culture as the dominant culture and not even being aware that that whole history they are reactive about (of slavery, of minstrel shows, etc.) is not shared by other countries in the same way. It feels aggressive and like an example of American exceptionalism. Yes, Zwarte Piet is a sensitive issue and the Dutch will hash it out, but the debate is not for Americans to insert themselves into, I think, because they are being triggered for a whole other reason.

Never mind that the better analogy would be the Washington Redskins or that the few studies I've been able to find that survey what black Dutch think of Zwarte Piet show 60-75% of think he is a discriminatory figure.

(there's also the bit about equating dressing up like a black person with dressing up as an anthropomorphized animal)

it will be very hard

haven't they been not doing this for like my entire adult life

Hey I’m learning a lot because of this terrible person and her stupid bad opinions

http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/545

The Dutch played even less of a part in the ending of the slave trade, and what little they did was largely the result of British pressure. At first glance it seems odd that the Dutch, with so little to lose, dragged their feet while England, with a much heavier investment in the trade, took the lead. On this issue the Dutch failed to take the moral high ground which was to become so familiar to them by the later-nineteenth century. Emmer attributes this failure to the deeply conservative nature of early-nineteenth-century Dutch society and politics together with concern for the plantation economy of Surinam. More weight might, perhaps, have been given to the general fragility of the Dutch economy in contrast to the dynamism of industrializing Britain. The Dutch believed they were in no position to take risks, and only later in the century, with increasing profits from the exploitation of their East Indian possessions, did they feel able to afford to end slavery in their American colonies. Emmer sees this notable lack of humanitarian concern as morally reprehensible but notes that other countries with relatively weak economies and an investment in the slave trade and slavery were equally unwilling to act.

He also plays ding-dong-ditch, leaving candy and presents on doorsteps).

That's not what I heard it called growing up.

My Dutch friends hate the Zwarte Piet thing and actively campaign against it, was discussing this yesterday with a friend who lives in The Netherlands and was surprised to find that his entire otherwise liberal circle of friends think it's just a bit of harmless fun.

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Saturday, December 2, 2017 7:36 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The first goes for me as well. It's a disgrace. It's become our (part of our) culture wars. The fight's bigger every year, and more and more people want to get rid of it, change the figure.

It'll take a long, looong time though, I'm afraid. Can't go into the nitty gritty as it's too depressing. December has become the months where your friends and neighbours and family suddenly turning out to be racist etc.

I hear the "blackface is an American thing!" argument so many times and it's so ahistorical and dumb - European portrayals of blackness are at the root of what became minstrel/blackface culture, which was then in turn enthusiastically exported to most of Europe ("Black & White Minstrel Show" running in the UK up to the 70's etc.); it's all connected.

Dan, totally understand if you don't want to waste any more time engaging with this idiotic troll, but fwiw I enjoyed this interview w/ a black dutch person on Zwarte Piet (and other things), can't play the "outsider to the culture" card here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Be03kzCVhz8