how racist is this shirt? + general racism discussion

[Eldo]

Family Guy pokes fun at everyone, the whitetrash for being stupid, the black people for being repressed, and the Asians for being complete geeky nerds.

[Gaiseric]

South Park is better.

[Libaax]

I am glad i live in a country racism isnt funny.

There's no way I believe that. No matter where you go, you're going to find people who are racist, or people who know how to take a joke. I can chuckle at a joke like that because I'm not racist, and to me it's a ridiculous stereotype. Things that are ridiculous usually invoke a chuckle out of me, even if it's involuntary. Besides, saying you and your countrymen don't find racism funny has got to be bull. You've already admitted to liking Dave Chapelle. No one can deny that most of his jokes are based on stereotypes.

Actually, you know what? You're right, racism isn't funny. However, ridiculous stereotypical jokes usually are, and that's all that shirt is, just like nearly all of Chapelle's jokes. I don't like stereotyping either. However, a joke is a joke, and as long as it's not terribly malicious, I'll usually view as that, nothing more than a joke. *shrugs*

Like I said, I understand where you're coming from. Racism is horrible, and believing all people of one type fit their stereotype isn't much better. I don't really take that shirt seriously, but as I've said, I don't condone it either.

I didnt mean to say over here there arent race jokes that we find funny. I have friends who are immigrants from 20 diffrent countries and we tell stereotype and race jokes all the time to eaocther.

I am not saying sterotype and race jokes cant be funny, i am just saying this t-shirt doesnt look like a joke to me. '




Its a given certain things are diffrent for diffrent people.


Gotta agree with Eldo, the only time i would see the shirt as a joke is if a native american weared it,cause then its very clear the person is making a joke about his own race.

[Starnum]

*Nods* That's understandable.

[Libaax]

I could have wrote that last post in the first page and have made myself understood better much earlier.

Its just that i was shocked by the opening post of thread by mr felony and let my feelings get the better outta of me.

[MrFelony]

well maybe it'd be better to clear up my perspective for you. When i bought that shirt, i didnt think it was racist, because I love gambling, a little too much sometimes . all that shirt represented to me was that I loved gambling and that i thought it was funny that they had a chief non it. I guess i've been a little ignorant because i didnt really have any racist intentions with the shirt...but the path the hell is paved with good intentions

[swallow]

Gotta agree with Eldo, the only time i would see the shirt as a joke is if a native american weared it,cause then its very clear the person is making a joke about his own race.

Some people are just too touche. So whoever marketed the shirt should just have marketed to Native Americans, give me a break.

As part of an ethnic minority I really don't give a damn what other people say. I actually like stereotypes - it makes the world more fun, you call me something I don't like, I'll retaliate in kind.

I think earlier in the thread someone said something about whether a person should dress up like Hitler in front of Jews. Hell yeah! That would probably mean that they would get beat up pretty bad by the end of the night. It'd teach everyone something important.

Oh and Gaiseric is right.

[MrFelony]

or you could just do what prince harry or whoever the youngest and dress up like a nazi

[Shaka Zulu]

Even though I dont have much problems with that shirt(but it is offensive, and I question your motives of wearing it), and being too PC isnt good, its still not something to be taken lightly. And saying stereotypes are only fun and shouldnt be taken seriously is a bit of half-assed cop-out, considering the long term effect it has on the common(stupid) man(humour is good, and is a good way to deal with issues, disarm them, but in most cases its not, and it trivialises important issues, shouldnt be used as an excuse all the time), a bit of indoctrination to think this or that is ok to think.

Feels like quoting this little speech is warranted(not really, but its a good read) considering the topic.


Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture 1993

…Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

The old woman is keenly aware that no intellectual mercenary, nor insatiable dictator, no paid-for politician or demagogue; no counterfeit journalist would be persuaded by her thoughts. There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination. There is and will be more seductive, mutant language designed to throttle women, to pack their throats like paté-producing geese with their own unsayable, transgressive words; there will be more of the language of surveillance disguised as research; of politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute; language glamorized to thrill the dissatisfied and bereft into assaulting their neighbors; arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.

Underneath the eloquence, the glamor, the scholarly associations, however stirring or seductive, the heart of such language is languishing, or perhaps not beating at all…

[Brainpiercing]

Shaka Zulu, could you point us to the entire speech? It seems lacking some context to me, so I'd like to read it in full, if possible.

[Shaka Zulu]

Yeah, I couldnt remember where I read the entire speech(and saw a clip of it) , could only find those two paragraphs(who out of context as you said, they dont come after eachother) of her extremely long speech.

But here's what I could find of the speech(the part I wanted to show, of what she says about language) on Wikiquote(great site if you want to check out your favourite writers, most interesting quotes are of Noam Chomsky):

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Toni_Morri ... .281993.29

believe that one of the principle ways in which we acquire, hold, and digest information, is via narrative — so I hope you will understand when the remarks I make begin with the first sentence of our childhood — that we all remember — the phrase: "Once upon a time."
"Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise." Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures.
"Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise."
In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement.
One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, "Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead."
She does not answer, and the question is repeated. "Is the bird I am holding living or dead?"
Still she doesn't answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.
The old woman's silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter.
Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. "I don't know", she says. "I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands."
A dead language is not only one no longer spoken or written, it is unyielding language content to admire its own paralysis. Like statist language, censored and censoring. Ruthless in its policing duties, it has no desire or purpose other than maintaining the free range of its own narcotic narcissism, its own exclusivity and dominance. However moribund, it is not without effect for it actively thwarts the intellect, stalls conscience, suppresses human potential. Unreceptive to interrogation, it cannot form or tolerate new ideas, shape other thoughts, tell another story, fill baffling silences.
Tongue-suicide is not only the choice of children. It is common among the infantile heads of state and power merchants whose evacuated language leaves them with no access to what is left of their human instincts for they speak only to those who obey, or in order to force obedience. The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek — it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language — all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.
There is and will be rousing language to keep citizens armed and arming; slaughtered and slaughtering in the malls, courthouses, post offices, playgrounds, bedrooms and boulevards; stirring, memorializing language to mask the pity and waste of needless death. There will be more diplomatic language to countenance rape, torture, assassination. There is and will be more seductive, mutant language designed to throttle women, to pack their throats like paté-producing geese with their own unsayable, transgressive words; there will be more of the language of surveillance disguised as research; of politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute; language glamorized to thrill the dissatisfied and bereft into assaulting their neighbors; arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.
The vitality of language lies in its ability to limn the actual, imagined and possible lives of its speakers, readers, writers. Although its poise is sometimes in displacing experience it is not a substitute for it. It arcs toward the place where meaning may lie. When a President of the United States thought about the graveyard his country had become, and said, "The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. But it will never forget what they did here," his simple words are exhilarating in their life-sustaining properties because they refused to encapsulate the reality of 600, 000 dead men in a cataclysmic race war. Refusing to monumentalize, disdaining the "final word", the precise "summing up", acknowledging their "poor power to add or detract", his words signal deference to the uncapturability of the life it mourns.
Language can never "pin down" slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity is in its reach toward the ineffable. Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical; erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue?
Word-work is sublime... because it is generative; it makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference — the way in which we are like no other life.
We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.
Passion is never enough; neither is skill. But try. For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.
Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names. Language alone is meditation.
Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.

And here's alot longer speech, or should I say, a little story she tells, in the same event(Nobel awards in 93, she won for literature). Great read, but not much to do with what I wanted to show about the implications of language etc.

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/lite ... cture.html

[Starnum]

Remember how I've said I have several Native American friends? Well, a buddy of mine and I went to the Hornets game last night, and he's a Choctaw. After the game we went out to a club and got smashed, it was a blast. Anyway, the point is, when he came to pick me up, I showed him that shirt and asked him if it offended him.

His response was, "Not really."

*shrugs* Take that as you will.

[Malvado]

I'm mainly African-american(i'm a failure!!) and I love FRIED CHICKEN AND WATERMELON!! OH my god they are sooooo good. I had some bad tasting fried chicken this morning though.

I'm also some small margin native american but so seems everyone else that I seem to meet so it isn't such a big deal. No that shirt isn't racist, loving gambling and being made well off by it is a complement. It's like saying Jews being frugal but having lots of money. Being well off is a good thing and sadly(i suppose) most Jews I meet are well off.

[Brainpiercing]

Well, saying Jews are good at business is EXACTLY a cliché. In the past, it drew a lot of resentment, well, can we say ENVY towards the jews. Admittedly by stupid people, which unfortunately can't be eradicated. But there IS a reason for the cliché, because for a very long time the jews were banned from other professions than trade - at least in what was then not quite Germany. (That was when the rest of the world should have been made fun of for being, well.... medieval dorks. Unfortunately there were probably more dorks. As usual.)

The other cliché was the jewish nose, which (again) appears on some people, but made jews look bad, much worse than any gambling or business cliché.

But now when you look at Israel, how many of those cliché's do you see? Luckily, by now the Jews have all become brutal zionists....

[MrFelony]

a stereotype is still racist whether or not its a beneficial one. like asian's being good at math and hard workers. its gotta suck when you are a lazy asian who is bad at math...

[swallow]

This kinda reminds me of the Lemon of Springfield, where the boys were about to cross the Shelbyville border and made such a fuss over it, while the girls were constantly crossing it without notice.

Then again, I don't live in a part of the world where I have to be worried about being blown up because of my race, so maybe I'm being a bit too blase.

Oh yeah, I am lazy and I am bad at maths.

[Sandman]

I am Souix, tribe in South Dakota if you didnt know, and this is what this shirt should say

[psi29a]

I am Souix, tribe in South Dakota if you didnt know, and this is what this shirt should say

[reiketsu]

Ok, first let's not forget that the best kinds of jokes are meant to be provocative and far from be politicaly correct. Unless the person who is telling the joke has the main intention to insult the joke's target, there's no point in overeact on the joke.

However...

People tends to mistake Freedom of Speech with "Right to Bombs us with their nonsenses and expect to get away with it". Those are the kind of people who could easily look deep into any of us eyes' and say, "Your mother is a ***!", claiming it was a joke and feel all "hurt" if you reply with the same coin. They should simply be ignored. I doubt they'd dare to keep wasting our time once they notice we don't care about what they have to say.

The first step to stop with racism is stop to classify people as "minority", creating like a wall around them. And tha other is to try to have some comon sense and do the simpliest thing ever: Do not do to anyone what you would not like to have done to yourself.

P.S.: I have no coment about the shirt. But I agree that anybody who wear such a kind of shirt is trying to get a reaction on it. I'd simply not wear it.

[Malvado]

P.S.: I have no coment about the shirt. But I agree that anybody who wear such a kind of shirt is trying to get a reaction on it. I'd simply not wear it.

I'm a minority. We are like less the 12% of the population. Makes me feel special.

[reiketsu]

I'm a minority. We are like less the 12% of the population. Makes me feel special.

Well, 12% of the whole American population is yet too many people trying to spank me if I walk with a racist-like shirt on the street.