rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

What if you really love soccer and bottle openers

lol

I mean, I've seen so many bad tattoos of Eminem on white shins, I'd really hate to see some of the Tupac ones.

OK, this one's pretty good.
https://i.imgur.com/9J1xtoC.jpg

Not sure if this is really Tupac, but survives the "ITR?" test.
https://i.imgur.com/0bHW56v.jpg

All right. Just gonna stop here before I go any deeper.
https://i.imgur.com/JJKd90Q.jpg

first tupac tat kinda looks like a lady til you get to the mustache.

https://bklyner.com/students-at-brooklyn-middle-school-sent-home-with-insensitive-problem

That's not only gross and insensitive but completely misunderstands what the 3/5 compromise was

or at least it's worded in a way that could leave you with the impression that black people got *some* representation through it, when in fact all it did was give southern whites disproportionate power, arguably worse for black people than if they had not been "counted" at all.

Question written by a black woman btw

it was certainly worse than if they had not been counted. their oppressors were "representing" them.

but yeah, not a good math problem.

xp hmm -- maybe written with a sense of irony then?

it was certainly worse than if they had not been counted. their oppressors were "representing" them.

Exactly. But it's true that this whole thing is often presented as "the racists thought Black people were only worth 3/5 of a white person" when in fact it was the racists who were arguing for pardon-the-expression "equality" here; if each Black person "counts" for representation but isn't allowed to vote, that is a huge boon to the white people "representing" the people they're oppressing

The problem was created by a mentor teacher – not affiliated with Achievement First–who modified the original problem about groceries to teach about the history and inhumanity of the three-fifths compromise.

lmao liberals trying to indoctrinate our children and teach them america is racist, and aren't they the ones telling us we need to "amplify" black voices ? but of course as soon as a black woman tells an uncomfortable truth about a fundamental historical fact (liberals aren't actually interested in history, just anti-white propaganda), it becomes "insensitive" and right on cue, the typical snowflake outrage. really tells you who the real racists are here.

— tucker carlson, probably

There is literally nothing wrong with this math problem aside from casting it as a hypothetical.

if this was your first introduction to the 3/5 compromise, then I'd say it is not an ideal vehicle for informing people about that history, but otherwise yeah

the thing is that all math problems are hypothetical. and they are almost always presented as trivial scenarios, precisely because the goal is to isolate a specific mathematical operation without the influence of personal bias or ethics. we hope to teach children to wrap their heads around a given concept before they go on to apply them in e.g. physics, psychology, or moral philosophy.

i think it goes without saying that when we teach kids about the history of slavery in the united states, it absolutely matters how the facts are presented, i.e. what information is emphasized and the broader ethical context that educators use to frame the circumstances and of course to link ugly historical truths to the present. the reason people find this insensitive is that the language of middle school mathematics is inherently incapable of performing these tasks.

It's a controversial question, certainly. It's also very clear on expressing the mathematical principle meant to be exercised. I do think changing it out of the blue without any context or tie into subject matter from a concurrent history class is weird but I also think the teacher changed it to provoke this exact conversation about the Constitution and how racism was embedded within the founding documentation of this country. I don't think the teacher was trying to put students in their place or hinder their learning and I have zero problem with issues from one academic discipline informing presentation of another, regardless of the age of the student.

I think you can call this clumsy overreach but I don't think there's any reasonable metric by which you can call it racist; was she lying about what was in the Constitution or how slaves were accounted for in calculating population figures for representation.

i could see how one might make the argument: "middle school history curricula already teach this subject but have seemingly failed to highlight its deeply dehumanizing aspect in a way that transposing it into a math problem has done"

but i think that ultimately the three-fifths compromise is an example of racist violence, an explicit acknowledgement and codification of chattel slavery, and as such needs to be treated with more tact and more nuance than a math problem like this can provide, regardless of whatever beneficial conversations about racism in american history this outrage might have provoked.

I guess, personally, I find it an incredibly callous question. I don't generally advocate for trigger warnings, but in this case... 'surprise! we're talking about historical dehumanization in a one-off math problem you're doing for homework during Covid-summer!' would be mega-upsetting for most of my students, irrespective of backgrounds/experience/racial identity. And I don't think it would be a constructive kind of upsetting that would lead to empathy. I can definitely see an argument for using the problem in a well-managed classroom as part of a larger, mediated discussion on race and historical trauma... or as a connection to interdisciplinary themes, when in-person processing is available. But sending this into the question-mark of home for kids who are already struggling with enormous psychological stress of 2020 is dicey. It strikes me as likely to activate stereotype threat through stress arousal, and especially for children who are doing good-ol' adolescent soul-searching regarding their own cultural/racial identities. Not sure they're perfect parallels, but I think I'd respond to with similar frustration to math problems about (say) alcohol abuse, the Holocaust, wage gap or the impact of broken land treaties by the US government.

otm

^

I agree it's a callous question, intentionally so. I also agree that this would have made a lot more sense as part of an interdisciplinary package of materials rather than one teacher slinging truth bombs.

I don't think it's racist to point out how shitty this country is on race.

This is, after all, the rolling "Is this racist?" thread and my opinion is that this is not racist but also not at all well thought out re: implementation.

For sure. On the reg, in progressive educator circles, I end up in “is it racist or is it just shitty and also about race” conversations. An unfortunately fertile area.

otm again

I'm in agreement with man alive in that the math problem contains important facts, but misrepresents them in a fundamental way, which is unfortunate. Its wording implies that a certain larger number of Black slaves were allowed to be 'equal to' a certain smaller number of white men in some way, when the truth was they were only 'equal to' so many oxen or so much farm equipment, except when counted as a sneaky means to hand more political power to slave owners.

If it were allowed to stand on its own as a history lesson, it would be a poorly conceived one. But, it was obviously well-intentioned and could open up a larger conversation, so I'll follow DJP's lead in thinking it was not racist per se.

But... a certain number of slaves WERE allowed to be equal to a smaller number of White men for the purposes of defining the population of the state, which fed into the number of representatives allotted to a given state. It's not an inaccurate statement of the calculation at all.

In a purely mathematical context "equal to" has a much different meaning than it does in a purely political context. The math problem is correct, but the political context is ambiguous and could easily be misconstrued by school children as slaves having political rights, not simply providing a numerical ratio, unless the teacher clarifies the meaning of "equal to" beyond what the text of the problem supplied.

The political context is not ambiguous.

In 1787, if an enslaved African was considered 3/5th of a person for representation in Congress, how many enslaved Africans would have been equivalent to 6 white Americans?

The context is "counting people for representation". When calculating population for representation, 3/5 of the slave population was added to the population counts of slave-holding states to determine their representative count. You're making it sound like the question implies that a certain number of representatives were set aside to represent the slaves, which it doesn't.

You are right. I read the article yesterday and the question is quoted in full. I stupidly relied on memory today rather than go back and read the text of the question. I apologetically withdraw my criticism of it as ambiguous. It was not.

https://thequietus.com/articles/28630-the-black-madonna-name-change-blessed-madonna

Because cursorily educating oneself about the history of Black Madonnas is just too much to ask.

is throwing something 'into the briar patch' racist, either explicitly (song of the south/uncle remus) or implicitly (as i type this i can't think of any implicit reference)

quick wiki check suggests that the Uncle Remus stories actively borrow from African and Indigenous origins and that the briar patch story hails from Cherokee tradition. Harris steals it from them and Disney steals it from Harris.

https://pics.filmaffinity.com/Briarpatch_TV_Series-843747636-large.jpg

Isn't that show already.... cancelled?

"Did you just tell... a tarbaby story?"

"Don't get the wrong idea, man! The Cherokees told it first!"

yes it was stolen by disney but is it considered racist to refer to being thrown in the briar patch?
that is a very good question! i realize there is no definitive answer, but i know i have used that phrase and more often than not no one even knows what i am talking about

for the record, i am not defending its use.

Perhaps we need to invent and popularize a new expression to capture the same sentiment.

"Oh," said the 90s hipster, "Please don't make me move to Brooklyn."

"Please don't make me wait for you in the bar."

"Oh god, PLEASE don't leave me in the bookstore."

"Fast, free internet and plentiful snax and weed? God no! Get me out of this chamber of horrors!"

Needs work, I know.

xpost I don't think so, not least because it doesn't have racist connotations, afaict, it's just a clever reverse psychology ploy. That is, "please don't throw me in the briar patch" means "please *do* throw me in the briar patch," because I am safe there. It's a very sort of Aesop Fables twist. I'm trying to think of some other common phrase that connotes the same general concept. There must be, right?

Btw, I've noticed just recently that "Turkey in the Straw," the fiddle tune and ice cream truck jingle, is getting called out a lot. I don't know the lyrics of "Turkey in the Straw," but it cold be a similar example of a song that may not necessarily be overtly racist itself but stems from a racist context/tradition? Or maybe it's racist. I didn't even know it really had lyrics.

i agree that we need a substitute because it's a VERY useful concept.
for me it's teaching online -- sure, it's not the same as being there in person but

* i don't have to drive or travel more than 5 feet from the same place i sleep to work
* i don't have to wear shoes or stand if i don't want to
* i can teach people in many different locations at the same time
* i can still talk with students as a group or one on one
* i can record stuff for the people who aren't there
* we are all the same size
* they pay the same!

like sure it *kind of* sucks but sure -- throw me in the online classroom!!

again i feel like it's not ideal but it's better than a probably quite racist image that no one understands anyway

i always figured the figurative briar patch was more an image whose origins are in folklore (like the fisherman & his wife, for example) rather than overt racist imagery (like the singing crows, for example)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey_in_the_Straw

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coon_song

It's not even like I spent more than 90 seconds looking for info on this

yeah i think it's pretty clear that "turkey in the straw" not only has lyrics but that they are v racist in origin

i guess re: the briar patch, i had mentally filed it in the same category as "the boy who cried wolf" or "the wolf in sheep's clothing" -- an image from folklore that explains a human trait/experience/quality/whatever (i am not a folklore expert).

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/05/11/527459106/tar-baby-a-folktale-about-food-rights-rooted-in-the-inequalities-of-slavery

Looks like you're right about the multiple origins of a "briar patch" type story--it's pretty obv a trickster variant? But I think may have have been over-written by too many racist narratives for this version to really sit well? The above link offers...a more charitable interpretation than I had expected. In short idk