rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

PB is a designated terrorist group in Canada fwiw

Noodle Vague wrote:

Mark: The title Wheel In The Roses was Max's, the sleeve was Mick's. He owned The Last Of The Nuba [a photographic book by Leni Riefenstahl']. The image was intense, there was something in those eyes, an energy, that fitted.

Thanks for the quote. I did some digging, and it gets interesting, as the photo in question was indeed included in Riefenstahl's 1973 book, but she didn't take the photo, George Rodger did in 1949. (Plenty of sources on the web - here's one, here's another. Aside: I just realized that the first photo on the 1st linked site was used for the 1st Guadalcanal Diary album cover...)

This page says: ...a note on the dustjacket of Riefenstahl’s first book, The Last of The Nuba (1973) credits Rodger’s work for inspiring her: “The author was so fascinated by this photograph taken by the famous English photographer George Rodger [he was a Scot] that for years she tried to find the Nuba in order to study the life of these primitive people.”

Also: For a film project she was planning, Riefenstahl had offered Rodger £1,000 to tell her where he had found the Nuba. With the memories of Belsen-Bergen still fresh in his mind, Rodger refused, but she embarked on the project anyway, which left Rodger extremely bitter.

So regarding the subject of the photo itself: In Korongo Nuba wrestling, the champion is carried on the shoulders of the defeated party in what's known as "the chairing of the victor."

they PUT IT BACK UP

GEMTECH® innovation, Smith & Wesson® manufacturing.
Perce|eption Brand creates apparel + goods for the tactical athlete. https://t.co/1RDzgMQ6uz pic.twitter.com/7rQ4s478Zl

— Smith & Wesson Inc. (@Smith_WessonInc) February 27, 2023

Purseeeepshun brand?

"Veteran owned" Perceeption Brand is definitely not a nudge-wink-nod to the Proud Boys AT ALL, why is it always about race with you people.

apart from the guns, the dude in the pic doesn't seem to be packing much below the belt ... idk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV2Aj45WxRA

Aldows Hooxlay's Dours of Perceeption

Another for the "This IS Racist" files:

https://heartlandsignal.com/2023/04/17/fbi-investigating-gop-okla-officials-caught-on-tape-talking-about-lynching-black-people-murdering-newspaper-reporters/

Using spoiler tags here because it is very blatant and disgusting:

GOP officials from McCurtain County, Okla. are being investigated by the FBI after they were caught on tape expressing their frustration about it not being socially acceptable beat up and hang Black people, as well as their desires to hire hitmen to kill newspaper reporters.

Fuck. I forgot about the paragraph spoiler tag issue.

Apologies, I've only just realised this Tweet dropped the R/T so will make no sense to some of you. s pic.twitter.com/Ru5oMqllz8

— Ally Fogg (@AllyFogg) June 17, 2023

I think we are way beyond the Tebbit test now, thankfully. People of Indian origin (my children included) can support India and are no less English on account of it. Anyone who thinks this impulse is Tebbit-like has misunderstood.

— Philip Collins (@PhilipJCollins1) June 17, 2023

I kind of want to defend Collins here, a little bit? In that this is obviously an unwise and insensitive thing for him to tweet, but part of this is that a joke might read one way when shared between Collins and his British-Indian kids at home reads differently when put on twitter by a white political journalist without any additional context, and that's what has happened here, rather than Collins revealing his personal bigotry (and indirectly the bigotry of Keir Starmer's Labour party), which is how most of twitter seems to be interpreting it.

Collins said elsewhere that he counts himself as a fan of the Indian cricket team - the way I read his original tweet is that him and his family are all supporters of the Indian cricket team, and see themselves as part of a community of 'supporters of the Indian cricket team in Britain' which Collins is conflating with 'the British Indian community' (maybe presumptuously/insensitively, but there has to be a lot of overlap on the Venn diagram), Collins identifies Sunak as a fellow member of this community due to his Indian heritage (I think Sunak's wife is Indian also, as in 'born and raised in India' Indian) and is jokingly chiding him for being insufficiently fanatical about the Indian cricket team by showing an interest in the ashes, a contest that India is not involved in (people on twitter objecting that there's no contradiction between supporting England in the ashes and also supporting the Indian cricket team, yes of course, that's the joke, he jokingly ribbing him for not meeting a level of Indian cricket team support that he knows himself is ridiculous - he does actually think Sunak is a disgrace)

Obviously a white men telling a South Asian man that that he's a disgrace for supporting/not supporting a particular national team on the basis of his ethnic background is going to get people's backs up, regardless of whether or not it is done in a joking way, and it was a stupid mistake for Collins to post that to twitter, but people are reading it as him saying that Sunak is not "one of us", when I think in context he actually means the opposite, the joke relies on Collins seeing himself and Sunak as part of the same community in a way. Is there such a thing as a 'British-Indian community' that includes Philip Collins as a white man who is married to a British-Indian woman and has kids with Indian heritage? There's maybe not a clear-cut yes or no answer to that question, but a blanket 'no' has depressing implications. I know there's a left-wing critique of sentimentality about multiculturalism - that it obscures real injustices and power relations behind mushy feel-good images of people of different colours and creeds being nice to each other etc - but I do find something quite sweet about the image of Collins and his kids all cheering for India together, bonding over both being part of a wider group together. But I think this is what Collins was trying to get at, that he's a white guy who supports India and Sunak is a brown guy who supports England, and this is maybe the opposite of what someone might initially assume at first glance, and isn't all this rather wonderful, that we're in a mixed modern Britain where these boundaries and allegiances are no so clear cut etc - this is possibly more mushiness that obscures the real power relations and possibly my own complacent white sentimentality, idk. But it's the opposite of the 'English are English and Indians are Indian, and these colours don't run, and that's how it should be' attitude that people are attributing to him.

that's fair, up to a point, but Collins has had all day to make a similar argument and looks too stupid/partisan to make it

I don't care much for Collins, but I think it's reasonable to think that defending yourself on twitter is a doomed venture, particularly when there are a lot of people who are very much not inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt, and the best move is maybe to switch your phone of and wait for the hubbub to die down a bit

Is there such a thing as a 'British-Indian community' that includes Philip Collins as a white man who is married to a British-Indian woman and has kids with Indian heritage?

i don't think correcting yourself when you've said something offensive is about winning over people who don't like you, it's about going on record as saying "i fucked up". so i don't see "not worth arguing with the angry mob" as an excuse for not publicly acknowledging your offence and trying to apologise

kind of similar situation with the Margaret Hodge racism speech that's been revived this week - people saying "oh you've taken her words out of context" but refusing to think about whether context gets you off the hook for repeating racist tropes

I am married to someone who is British Asian and I would never consider myself part of the community in a speaking of it sense, what the fuck is this post
― half the population ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (gyac), Saturday, 17 June 2023 18:31 (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

what do you mean 'in a speaking of it sense'? If you mean that being a white person married to British Asian doesn't mean that it's a good idea to go on twitter and start posting stuff with an implicit 'as a member of the British Asian community' then I agree, that would be crass and offensive, and something to apologise for (and I think Collins should apologise, if that wasn't clear), if you're white you are obviously in a different position than someone who is British Asian themselves, and should remember that and keep it in mind when speaking in public. But someone has married into a British Asian family, it seems inaccurate to say that they are in no way part of a British Asian community, a semi-detached part maybe, but still a part

But he’s not. I’m not. And it absolutely does matter that he feels comfortable making a joke like that. Sunak’s a cunt but his background is his, and regardless of how Collins feels about how close he is to the community, he’s never had to have his citizenship or commitment to the country questioned just because of his background. He’s never had to think about that for a second. That’s why he made the joke he did.

Heard he broke up with his wife by fax

Oh, think twice, 'cause it's another day for you and me in paradise

I had blessedly never even heard of this Richard Hanania guy until reading this, but this is a good investigative piece on his wildly racist prior writings. This is a guy who's guest lecturing at Stanford this fall and has been embraced by Thiel et al.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/richard-hanania-white-supremacist-pseudonym-richard-hoste_n_64c93928e4b021e2f295e817

lol here's Hanania's explanation/quasi-apology — you'll never guess, it's all the liberals' fault.

First, there was the desire to just adopt a posture that was the polar opposite of those I considered political enemies. So if liberals lied a lot about race, I needed to speak “harsh truths,” without much careful thinking about whether I was actually getting at truth or simply being similarly dogmatic.

(not linking to the full thing but easy to find if you're so inclined)

Is it racist to wear Under Armour?

vibes seem weird on that brand

I thought there was some Trump/Under Armour connection, so ... probably.

You want weird vibes, Lululemon oozes weird vibes. Some sort of Ayn Rand shit going on with them. (Though if you google it, every result seems to be from 2011.)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/Kevin_Plank_headshot_2018.png

His father was a prominent Maryland land developer. His mother is a former mayor of Kensington, who went on to direct the Office of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs at the United States Department of State under President Ronald Reagan.

Plank sat on Trump's American Manufacturing Council. He stepped down from the council following Trump's comments on violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, saying Under Armour "engages in innovation and sports, not politics"

Wilson created the name to have many 'L's so that it would sound western to Japanese buyers, who often have difficulty pronouncing the letter, and that the name otherwise "means nothing". He later remarked that he found it "funny to watch [Japanese speakers] try and say it"

In the book titled Little Black Stretchy Pants, Wilson wrote that he is not necessarily opposed to child labor, as "working young is excellent training for life."

ums it looks like Underarmour may have made an aboutface, CEO left recently but also apologized 6 years ago

https://www.yahoo.com/video/misty-copeland-hard-balance-to-retain-ties-with-company-whose-ceo-supports-trump-121144433.html

he seems like a playing both sides type who would have been happy with trump going full hitler if it didn't affect his bottom line

no fan of woke capitalism but if we can knock some more of these polo shirts off their perches that would be something

Lululemon's founder Chip Wilson is a piece of garbage (but left the company around 10 years ago I think)

My wife was born in Colombia, but her father's family is Sicilian. She looks racially/ethnically ambiguous enough that throughout our life together she's been ID'd by strangers as Latin (other Latin folks used to speak Spanish to her before English, or come up and ask her to translate/help with a situation with a non-Spanish-speaking cashier or postal clerk), Asian, and even Inuit. Sometimes, if she feels like fucking with people who speak to her in Spanish, she'll respond in Italian or German. Anyway, several times since we've moved to Montana she's been presumed to be Native, including by actual Natives who have given her a surprised look at seeing her with me, or just offered a nod of solidarity in the grocery store. Today, I was picking up burgers from a bar in town and when I got back to the car, she told me that while she was waiting for me, two white girls walked past and one of them said to the other, "That Native lady's listening to Judas Priest!" This cracked my wife up, both because she didn't realize the music was so clearly audible outside the car and because of the shock in the white girl's voice.

i have to say i don't love the increasingly common term "street tacos" for....actual tacos

Start making "corporate tacos" stick

do you mean calling tacos that are cooked and sold on the street “street tacos” instead of “tacos”

street food is a huge culture in mexico/so cal

cultural thing*

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/G/01/apparel/rcxgs/tile._CB483369110_.gif

I just encountered this yesterday. It's absolutely trying to be a signifier of authenticity.

If the tacos are served out of a truck parked on a street, then it is a street taco. Otherwise, probably not.

Old El Paso and Mission are selling "Street Taco" shells and tortillas

it's one of those things to hook people who would never try anything approximating an authentic street taco, but will enjoy the fuck out of whatever bastardized version a chain puts out so they can claim "I've totally had street tacos before" and sound cool and adventurous to their friends.

Tijuana Flats had them for a little while, and they were bullshit. I had one. it was just like having one of their regular tacos on a corn tortilla, had way too much filling (I could have customized it to have less but I didn't sue me). I preferred to go to my local taqueria which has amazing tacos. (we don't have a lot of good taquerias in Orlando but there's one in question that is amazing)

You can buy Gluten-Free Street Taco Beef Jerky

I've also seen random snack food called "Street Mix"

I'm sorry it's actually "Street Corn"

https://static.wixstatic.com/media/de5c90_b30947400c774bb8ad101955fa9b14ad~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_420,h_420,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/de5c90_b30947400c774bb8ad101955fa9b14ad~mv2.png

Technically, roadkill is street food

Old El Paso and Mission are selling "Street Taco" shells and tortillas

― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes), Wednesday, February 21, 2024 11:44 AM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

seeing ortega "street taco" sauce in the grocery store is what prompted the revive actually

my corn didn't grow up in a fancy field, it came up on the streets

street food is when you eat pieces of gravel

An ear that grew from concrete

There's a dude in my town who used to operate a truck, but recently took over a bar/restaurant, and his menu still advertises "street tacos." I'm inclined to grandfather him in because the tacos are exactly the same, but...