rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

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.

it's not an option for every group or organization, but it seems like it would be better to get a third party to lead a discussion on race, or at least someone with some training.

Their stated reason for requiring everyone to speak was that it's important for everyone to engage with these issues, however uncomfortable it makes you. I really get the impression that they went in with one thought only, which was "White people don't talk about race enough, let's make the white people talk," not realizing that this is going to put a greater burden of discomfort on POC and also give the impression of prioritizing white voices.

Part of the problem is that the supervisors running the meeting (both white) think they're experts on race and equity, ostensibly care deeply about it, and thus are very defensive about the idea that they might be doing a less-than-stellar job.

"We've called this impromptu meeting so we could put the few POC who work here on the spot by telling the rest of us how not to be racist. We then will have ten minutes of voluntary confessional time for whites to say how guilty they feel about racism, followed by snacks in the break room so we can all be awkward together and eat pizza."

Maybe my email was too tactful. I'm not sure the "um, you guys led a staff discussion about race where some POC weren't allowed to talk, do you realize how bad this is?" part of it got through.

I may have complained about this before but one of my schools tried to have "implicit bias training" as part of the mandatory professional development for teachers, and it upset so many people that the principal backed down and made it "optional." Which means only the people who wanted to examine their implicit bias actually did the training. Which is...exactly not the point.

my workplace has made the mistake of thinking that because it's majority POC that we don't need any more training, that we are fully cooked and ready to rip in a world devoid of racism
sadly, nope

Keith Olbermann making some unusual choices this morning

Yes @realDonaldTrump has always been, will always be, and on the day of his bid for re-election, still is: a whiny little Kunta Kinte https://t.co/hIIrt1Ke17

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) November 3, 2020

Huh.

The going theory is that he didn't want to type "cunt" and well... this wasn't a better choice

If that's not some kind of autocorrect snafu, Pearl Crabs is back to being my favorite cartoon whale.

God, I'd forgotten about Olbermann. Wish you hadn't reminded me.

please tell me what autocorrects to "Kunta Kinte"

what kind of spell-correct offers kunta kinte

lol xp

I'm sorry everyone, I typed "baby" and autocorrect changed it to "Kunta Kinte". Curse you, Apple!

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) November 3, 2020