rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

thanks sleeve.

xp imago, i can say you were OTM 490 if that helps?

https://streetcarsuburbs.news/camp-reenacts-civil-war-battle-on-juneteenth-director-apologizes/

White guy wearing a Howard t shirt ?

Howard University? if so, then no

If not racist then…inappropriate?

Maybe he has a family member who attends or attended.

or he attends / attended the school himself

maybe his name is Howard

xp or he's employed there, or has some other connection to the school, or just wants to support the school, or just likes the shirt

I know at least two white guys who went to Howard for grad school, one in the physician assistant program, and one who I think did an MFA. It's a good school!

I'm a white guy who wears a FAMU shirt from time to time. Didn't go there. Was never employed there. Did live in Tallahassee. Racist? Let me know, because if it is, I'll burn the motherfucker.

Burning FAMU apparel... racist? Y/N

Can we spend more time policing people for what they do than what they wear plz

i'd love to start with policing calstars from posting tbqh

What the rest of us are getting worked up about, obviously, is that there are any number of pests (both insect and plant) that are actively killing parts of native forest. There are hardly any Ash trees left near where I live, and every warm season there are swarms of the spotted lanternfly, which are absolutely disastrous for many plants and the animals that depend upon them. So many trees have died in the years since it first got to metro Philly.

peace, man, one way to fight the lanternfly is to PLANT MILKWEED. The lanternfly loves it and is attracted to it, but milkweed sap immobilizes and kills the lanternfly :-)

― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Wednesday, March 9, 2022 2:08 PM (six months ago) bookmarkflaglink

Weird thread to revive but I just wanted to clarify something upthread - you see we're having an increasing issue with lantern fly infestations here in NJ so I searched the term on ILX out of curiosity and found table's post. I was intrigued but it turns out milkweed is not a solution, according to this source below debunking it... bummed because we have the pest's favorite tree out back next door and it actually is a nice looking tree despite being classified as a weed. This particular one thinks it's an oak tree or something and would pass as one if it weren't for its foliage. Anyway, now neighbors will be incentivized to destroy it because of these jerk flies and we'd then lose a huge source of greenery out our back window, where we in particular have no personal access to greenery otherwise (no yard access).

https://www.farms.com/news/spotted-lanternfly-experts-debunk-myths-about-the-prodigious-pestilent-pest-164065.aspx

Lanternflies are an absolute fucking plague near me - they're everywhere - and I hate them because most bugs for whatever reason don't land on me or bite me, but just this week I've had lanternflies land on me three times already, including one that landed on the back of my neck and started walking up into my hair, and it freaks me the fuck out.

I'm not sure if I'd recognise an Ash if it was fully healthy. Seems all of the ones I'm seeing are partially bare. Skeletal looking trees.

Notice the effect a couple of years ago but only recently found out what caused it.

I dreamt a lanternfly flew at me and I punched it.

^ great The Smiths song

I was at a park and had to grab onto a branch so I could adjust my shoe. I felt a crunch and looked to see that the entire branch was completely coated in lanternflies.

I made a new thread where we can discuss invasive species without being off-topic on the racism thread: Zebra Mussels, Honeysuckle, and Spotted Lanternflies! - Rolling Invasive Species thread

I know it's a parody but uhhh...Eskimo by The Residents??

Yeah, Not Good

handy that this thread popped up, maybe on a related note and i didn't want to butt in with my questions on the actual thread: the trailer for this new Rema Rema film makes a bit of play of what i assume was artwork from the time - decontextualised "anthropological" looking photos of African men, seems a bit awkward to me in 2023, maybe it flew at the time

are you calling leni riefenstahl racist

lol is that where it's from? ok i googled. cue film of bunch of white post-punk people furrowing their brows and explaining why it's not an ish

idk where it's from I just guessed

it actually is ffs

https://www.facebook.com/60SecondDocs/videos/apache-skateboards/316255613739266/

"I decolonized the skateboard industry"


... so are you a racist if you buy any other brand?

yeah probably

Eskimo by The Residents??

At the risk of being accused of naïveté, is this ameliorated at all by the fact that the band, being anonymous, doesn't code as white? How would the album seem if it were made by Inuit musicians?

the "lyrics" alone don't really help that argument. i guess you could argue it's all aimed at the naive-anthropological mindset but then it's still uncomfortably using those tropes

I think Eskimo may be a callback to this bit from the back cover of Meet the Residents:

Sankefinger returned to England to become a rock and roll star, and the Mysterious N. Senada, well, he just disappeared one day. The Residents have ventured to guess that he has probably gone to the arctic regions. He believes some musical link is hidden among the Eskimos of the frozen North.

(pardon the typos)

Yeah, look, I love The Residents and Eskimo in particular is an incredible album musically, but at best it is culturally insensitive. It's not racist in terms of them hating 'Eskimos' (itself an outdated term) but it is using the anthropological theme without any consideration for the peoples it refers to - it others and depersonalises them. Most people would consider that a form of racism.

otm, also thanks for that info crut

I guess the part that made me most uncomfortable is at the end where the people start spouting commercial jingles. On the one hand, it's an acknowledgement of the devastating effect of white culture (connected to the liner note that nowadays they spend "most of the day watching reruns on TV"), but it's also a hopeless denial that any resistance is possible.

At the risk of being accused of naïveté, is this ameliorated at all by the fact that the band, being anonymous, doesn't code as white?

well to me they clearly code as being from the South

is this more or less the same as groups like Sun City Girls or CAN dabbling in faux ethnography?

Basically all faux ethnography is super difficult to navigate imo. It can be illuminating in terms of how colonial history was manufactured, but who are you treading on to make your point? Whose real stories are you dismissing when you create imagined ones?

Putting "Injuns" alongside farmyard animals in that Old Macdonald's Farm thing they do on the b-side of "Diskomo" has always made me cringe.

sun city girls' name is bad enough

it refers to Phoenix AZ, ffs

lmao

oh

I assumed it was a big black type thing

it refers to Phoenix AZ, ffs

― obsidian crocogolem (sleeve), Friday, February 24, 2023 10:30 AM (thirty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Specifically, Sun City is a planned retirement community outside of Phoenix where elderly folks ride around on golf carts. Calling yourself "Sun City Girls" is a "joke" about that

What is the bad connotation of Sun City Girls?

sun city girls using their rich white dad's trust fund money to fly around to the middle east and north africa, recording radio stations and street musicians and releasing it for profit is a discussion to be had maybe. also one of the best bands of all time.