rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

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

Next month's promotion is "Ab Day Macht Frei"

Pure Gym announce their new Black History Month facilities. 🏋🏽‍♂️🥴@Puregym_Luton pic.twitter.com/9UP636T8H7

— Munya Chawawa (@munyachawawa) October 5, 2020

Apparently... the guy who did this is Black

I'm fucking dying

do you get a free ronaldinho bottle opener when you join?

"slavery was hard and so is this"

imagining this line getting axed from an early draft of Bamboozled for being too on-the-nose

exactly!

Slavery was hard
And so is this
Better give me something
So I can lift

My supervisors led an all-staff discussion of race and equity by 1. giving us a glossary of terms to study for 15 minutes; 2. opening up the meeting participant list and going in alphabetical order, 3. requiring everyone to speak about their "experiences" with these terms, and 4. Stopping 1/3 of the way through the list b/c we were out of time.

The result, or course, was that the people of color on the list felt they had to talk about their personal experiences with racism, the white ppl on the list felt they had to say something, whether or not they had anything meaningful to share, and any POC staff members who happened to be in the last 2/3 of the alphabet had to listen to white guys musing about racial equity and their experience living in diverse neighborhoods without being allowed to respond. Oh, and the last person to talk was a white guy.

Am I right in thinking this is - not good?

are you sure this wasn't an episode of The Office

I sent them the most tactful email I could w/suggestions for how future meetings could better support the voices of POC, and got a politely-worded but obviously pissed-off response; basically, "We did everything right and you are wrong, but thanks for your input."

This sounds like it was a disaster

why require everyone to speak in the first place? emphasis should have been given to PoC but you require a bunch of white people to talk about race and then we get the monologue version of that Brad Paisley/LL Cool J song.

(but only the Paisley parts)

I'm just going to say that always putting the onus on the participants of color to lead the discussion is some strong "tell the class why they should stop spitting on you" energy

that's kinda why I don't get why people were mandated to speak at all. this sounds like a very slapped-together meeting with very low effort.