rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

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

not to get all neil gaiman-y but i think it's important that thousand year old stories not get disposed of for a century of misuse

on the plus side, since around the 90's, reclamation is happening in (some) school systems... anansi and the gum baby is a lot more likely to be taught to grammar school kids these days than uncle remus

that said, i grew up with a copy of little black sambo given to me (if i recall correctly) by my Black second grade teacher so
http://www.yourtango.com/sites/default/files/styles/header_slider/public/its-complicated.jpg

bearing in mind of course that "well, ACTUALLY"-ing someone else's offense and actual experience is always a bad look

as that article points out, tar has a real violent connotation in america's shameful history of lynching that harris would have been well aware of so that signifier in particular raises from a particularly ugly place. "briar patch" seems more specific to the trickster figure's cleverness in recognizing that the outsider antagonist can't see their inherited home as anything other than hell. thus it ever was.

(finally getting some use out of that year studying bettelheim!)

thank u for this intel. I figured 'tar baby' as concept was off limits but agree that the briar patch is still a useful concept. i feel like you can easily make up alternatives if you're speaking with someone (eg "NOOOOOOOO don't make MEEEEEEEE work from HOOOOOOOOME") as LL suggested. I also think a lot of people under 50 don't know what being thrown into the briar patch means.

I found that NPR article which was not terribly helpful imo (frankly once i found out the book's author was white i stopped taking it as any voice of moral authority).

I knew about the ice cream jingle which is a drag because I am a simple boy who is triggered by the promise of soft serve that is legally fit for human consumption.

I actually had looked up "Turkey in the Straw" and saw the same stuff. What I meant was that the song (unlike say, the afaict blatantly racist "Jimmy Crack Corn") absolutely has racist connotations/roots, but when I glanced at the lyrics, as with, say, the (much later but still problematic by association) "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah," it didn't necessarily seem innately racist. What I saw were lots of racist variants, as noted in one of the first lines of the "coon songs" entry: "The song "Zip Coon", a variant of "Turkey in the Straw" ... " But no argument, racist connotations are enough to get that stupid tune out of circulation. I actually did find this entry that indicated the racist version of "Turkey in the Straw" came *first* which is another strike against it:

https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/question/2018/may.htm

Maybe this has been discussed elsewhere, but I've been wondering about The Breeders' "Lime House" forever...of course they say it's about Sherlock Holmes in an opium den, but why does Kim full-throatedly sing the words 'tar baby'? Is it just white people whiting, is it benign ignorance, is it dog whistle?

I know "black tar" is a type of heroin, right? Maybe she's just trying to be clever? Certainly "Gigantic" has its issues as well.

The first verse of the lyrics to "Turkey in the Straw" as listed on Wikipedia are literally about whipping slaves

I guess maybe you could say it was about whipping horses but...

i agree that we need a substitute because it's a VERY useful concept.

Don't threaten me with a good time?

And yeah, "Zip Coon" came first

Josh in Chicago, yeah,.black tar is a cheap and pretty readily available form of heroin...and that was always my read on the song, tbh, but the 'tar baby' line always bothered me.

Certainly "Gigantic" has its issues as well.

holy shit, file this under "shockingly old when you realized" for me

90% white crowd singing along to it in Brixton was kind of uncomfortable tbh

lol I can imagine.

Genius annotation comes in handy:

According to Deal, the main inspiration for the song was the film Crimes of the Heart, in which a married woman falls in love with a black teenager and the song “Gigantic” is credited to Mrs John Murphy (Kim Deal’s pseudonym at the time of Come On Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa as an ironic feminist joke).

The song’s voyeuristic lyrics mostly revolve around a woman’s observation of an attractive black man making love to another woman, culminating in the oddly light-hearted but sexual chorus: “Gigantic, gigantic, gigantic / A big, big love”.

Oddly enough, the “big black mess” line wasn’t written by Kim Deal, but a friend of her husband’s named John Draper, who was writing random phrases down to help Deal flesh out the song. Out of his list, she kept “big black mess” and “hunk of love”.

oh geez. i never made the connection

There's other stuff I find even more questionable, like the "shady place" line, which like "black tar baby" could be intended as a dubious pun.

Xpos known that song for 30 years and never crossed my mind that there was a racial connotation.

In my infinite naïveté I initially assumed – for the better part of a decade, at least – that 'shady', 'black' and 'dark' were all abstract signifiers meant to convey a racy mood. I still want to believe that's the case.

Likewise 😬

wtf were they thinking?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-54419760

Fitness centre operator PureGym has apologised "unreservedly" for an "unacceptable" Facebook post from one of its gyms about slavery.

The Luton and Dunstable gym said "slavery was hard and so is this" regarding a workout designed to "celebrate black history month".

In a statement PureGym said the post was "wholly unacceptable" and "was not approved or endorsed by the company".

PureGym added it was removed "as soon as it was brought to our attention".

The company is the UK's largest gym chain by membership.

The workout, entitled "12 Years of Slave" after the Oscar-winning movie with a similar title, included 12 different moves such as burpees, push ups and box jumps.

I'm on a conference call and I think I pulled every muscle in my face stifling laughter in case my mic isn't actually muted

o m f g

sadlol

The workout, entitled "12 Years of Slave" after the Oscar-winning movie with a similar title, included 12 different moves such as burpees, push ups and box jumps.

I mean

The Luton and Dunstable gym said "slavery was hard and so is this"

I'm screaming

dude behind this btw

https://vimeo.com/344055848

The Luton and Dunstable gym said "slavery was hard and so is this" regarding a workout designed to "celebrate black history month".

expected the name of the company to be dunder-mifflin

slavery burpees

"burpees are for convicts" is already a thing with gym dudes