Blackface/white face and Hollywood

Blackface/white face and Hollywood - Printable Version

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Blackface/white face and Hollywood - Darunia - 8th July 2020

A white person donning "blackface" make-up is worthy of a person losing their livelihood and career regardless of context. Even someone who did it twenty years ago before it was so taboo is no excuse, and freedome of opinion has no bearing in this case. Similarly no white people can voice black/asian/etc. cartoons anymore (think Apu on the Simpsons and Cleveland on Family Guy), why has nobody spoken about the film "White Chicks" or "Hamilton?" Why is it all right for minorities to don the attire and personas of white founding fathers, but if a white person dresses up as a person of color, they are public enemy number one? Are you seriously advocating that in the future, actors can only voice characters of the same color as them? Can black actors only voice black cartoon characters going forward or does this only apply to caucasians?

The ultra-liberal mobs and BLM are not trying to create a free, egalitarian society---they are actively building one wherein minorities are beyond reproach, and all must IMMEDIATELY acquiesce to whatever their demands may be... they have the right to riot, vandalize and destroy public property, and pandemic warnings about congregating outside don't apply to them... how many large companies have recently dropped a product or TV show, or altered something, or in some other way pandered to the mobs? I am a stone-cold atheist, as you may know, but why is it all right for rioters to meet and protest in the streets, but religious people can't congregate and pray? How about either nobody can go out en masse, or we all can... but we're pandering, aren't we folks?

If I am outraged by something, can we cancel it to make me feel better too?

If I am offended by something, can I riot/raze/tear/burn it down without any due process? Or does it only apply to liberal mobs? Can you? Can BLM?

Is there really an objective "good" or "evil" in the universe, or is everything nuanced and open to interpretation?

RE: Blackface/white face and Hollywood - Weltall - 8th July 2020

There is a lot of nuance to this discussion, but your post kind of skips over all of it in favor of making simple, reductionist points.

I mean, minorities didn't use whiteface to dehumanize white people and advance negative stereotypes (and their real-world consequences) for decades. White people haven't historically been passed over for roles in movies and TV for decades either in favor of persons of color. White Americans have been in control of everything forever, and that control was really bad for everyone else, and now the pendulum is swinging the other direction. Equlibrium will arrive after a generation or two when white people no longer get automatic superiority and privilege just for being born with the preferred skin color. So, the quicker we get to that point, the better.

Also, no history ought to be forgotten, but Confederate history is shameful and the political ideology which emerged from its ruins has no redeeming qualities. It belongs in books and maybe a few museums, but those dumb statues should be paving parking lots of abortion clinics so they finally serve a useful purpose.

RE: Blackface/white face and Hollywood - Sacred Jellybean - 8th July 2020

Minorities are already under-represented in Hollywood, so it's an extra slap in the face that a minority character is created and played by a wypipo. There are, I imagine, plenty of south Asian actors ready to step up to the plate and play Apu, so why not use one of them? There's something almost territorial about it. The same way that black people can use the n-word, but no one else can. In some cases, it's appropriate to have proprietry among racial groups.

As long as a racial minority is subject to stereotypes that are reinforced by media, isn't it more appropriate for said minority to play the character themselves, and have some control over how the race is portrayed? They can give their own spin on it, from stereotype to personal experience, to a little of each. But letting a wypipos do it could result in (or be seen as) mocking the minority.

Quote:Can black actors only voice black cartoon characters going forward or does this only apply to caucasians?

This is kind of a fair point. Should Asians only ever be allowed to play Asians? Can Chinese people play Japanese, or vice-versa? The two groups despise one another. Should we trace family history to ensure that an actor of the Correct Ethnic Group play the character? Honestly, I don't know. But there's a decision to be made between that, and a white guy acting out a "tenk yoo come aghen!" stereotype for yuks.

Like, it doesn't offend me personally, but if it offends the group in question, why not defer to them? I'm not subject to that kind of racism and stereotyping, but they certainly are. I can, to an extent, put myself into their shoes and see why they're salty about it.

You know what's really funny? When an Asian dude plays up stereotypical characters and another Asian dude calls him out on it. There's a grudge match I want to grab a bowl of popcorn for. https://www.thewrap.com/ken-jeong-rips-critic-accusing-him-of-yellowface-buffoonery/

btw I'll never stop saying wypipo, it's hilarious and you can't make me stop

RE: Blackface/white face and Hollywood - Sacred Jellybean - 8th July 2020

also its offensive for a wypipo to dress as an ethnic group for a costume (like generic Mexican or Indian) but should be totally acceptable for them to dress up as a specific character of a different ethnicity and change their skin color as part of that costume

thanks for coming to my ted talk

RE: Blackface/white face and Hollywood - A Black Falcon - 8th July 2020

Darunia, the protests have actually been largely peaceful. There are exceptions, such as the amount of looting in the early days in Minneapolis, but most of the protests thankfully have not been like that. Focusing on the looters and such is quite inaccurate.

Otherwise, the point in Hollywood is about representation. When you have very few roles for minorities, is it okay to not even give them the few character roles of their race?

Sacred Jellybean Wrote:This is kind of a fair point. Should Asians only ever be allowed to play Asians? Can Chinese people play Japanese, or vice-versa? The two groups despise one another. Should we trace family history to ensure that an actor of the Correct Ethnic Group play the character? Honestly, I don't know. But there's a decision to be made between that, and a white guy acting out a "tenk yoo come aghen!" stereotype for yuks.

Yeah, what is the limit here? I have no idea, but it's not "white people play all the roles", at least.

RE: Blackface/white face and Hollywood - Sacred Jellybean - 9th July 2020

What do we say when a minority embraces a stereotype and plays it up for laughs? Like Gedde Watanabe playing Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles.

[Image: 52DWuwL.png]

Granted, that was a long time ago, in a different era. Though, per above, some of the same criticisms were leveled at Ken Jeong. In any case, Watanabe is an Asian himself, making a personal decision to act out a stereotype, basically yellowface. His decision, and identity, are invariably politicized. For better or for worse, it's no longer a "personal" decision. It has ramifications beyond just acting like a clown.

So, who's to judge his decision? Other Asians? Why should he be stripped of his autonomy and have to adhere to what a bunch of strangers think? Isn't it kind of gross that a minority has to bear the responsibility of how people view his ethnicity? It was already difficult for Asians to get cast in movies, so should we be sympathetic that he's just "playing the game", for lack of other opportunities? Is he a race traitor, helping to ridicule fellow Asians to get paid by Hollywood?

I don't know the answers to these questions. But these kinds of identity politics are complex, meaningful, and intriguing. Invisible Man (the novel by black author Ralph Ellison, not the H.G. Wells sci-fi story) touches on a lot of these considerations.

RE: Blackface/white face and Hollywood - Weltall - 9th July 2020

This all serves to illustrate why race is a dumb concept that doesn't benefit anyone. I don't think of myself as a white man, nor do I feel any connection, community, or special togetherness with anyone else who has white skin, just because they have white skin (for that matter, I don't tie being male to my identity in any way, either). I'm Ryan, I'm an individual, and my experiences are my own. My culture is what I produce, alone or in collaboration with others.

RE: Blackface/white face and Hollywood - Darunia - 9th July 2020

My fellow gorons--hear me!

First of all, what is a wypipo? I think I understand from context but I have never heard this before. Please define. Is that a slur of “why people?”

Quoth the Weltall, “There is a lot of nuance to this discussion, but your post kind of skips over all of it in favor of making simple, reductionist points.” Also quoth the Weltall, “I mean, minorities didn't use whiteface to dehumanize white people; white Americans have been in control of everything forever, and that control was really bad for everyone else.”

General! Are you not also eliminating nuance from your arguments by making clean-cut, absolutist, black and white (no pun intended) arguments and findings of morality? You make it seem as if all white people are inherently racist, and all non-white people are victims. Not that it really matters, but do you know for a fact that no minority has ever dressed as a white person to be offensive/mean-spirited, in human history? Pray tell, whence your gift of clairvoyance? Furthermore, are you saying that everyone who ever donned black face makeup was consciously out on a mission to “dehumanize” anybody? Or was it just not that big of a deal back then? If a black man said “I hate all white people” and put on faux white face paint, and mocked you and your family, would you laugh and high five him, or would you denounce him? I suspect that some of you folks far, far to the left of Goron City would congratulate him and paint murals of him on the nearest building you come across.

“White Americans have been in control of everything forever, and control was really bad for everyone else.”
That right? What do you suggest replace this? Nothing in the system as far as I know really prohibits or discourages anybody from serving in government, writing a book, making a movie, painting a painting... where is all this control? What "white control" here, today, in 2020, prevents a black/chinese/goron from doing whatever he wants to do in life? What prevents a black teenager from going to college and getting a good career? Is it "whitey" keeping him down? I just don't see it. I worked my way through college, working fulltime so that I paid it as I went and graduated with no debt. I didn't get a free ride. How is it diffeent from anybody else? Perhaps in some deeply southern places, Alabama or Mississippi or wherever---I live in Massachusetts... ::ahem::, I mean I live in Goron City... perhaps in those racist states, I could entertain the belief where it might be harder for a black person to get ahead---but not in the majority of the country.

No good at all came out of America between 1918-2016 Weltall? Leading the Allies through two World Wars, landing on the moon, all the art and literature that has been produced, ushering in the internet, etc.? The left selectively finds the worst in America, to help flush out your narrative that we are evil and need you to redesign the future for us… and to be sure the right does the same, skipping the bad and only finding the good… I am trying to stand in the middle and direct the traffic as these opposite forces clash. I say that NEITHER SIDE IS 100% right and America is NOT an evil country! I choose to side with whoever sees the good in my country. That always tends to be the conservatives. You never hear a liberal say anything good or positive about the United States E-V-E-R. I am wearing my conservative hat today because of that. Tomorrow I will wear my liberal hat when we rail about some other topic.

“Also, no history ought to be forgotten, but Confederate history is shameful and the political ideology which emerged from its ruins has no redeeming qualities.”
I agree with some of this, but your discussion kind of skips over all nuance in favor of making simple, reductionist points. I agree 100% that there should be no statues that explicitly extoll slavery. But, am I wrong, in opining that perhaps, friends, not all Confederates were slave-holders, and not all of them enlisted to fight for the evil banner of slavery? Certainly, I agree, that there should be no statues to promote slavery. But not everyone who donned a gray uniform did so to rush off to die fighting in order to enslave people--just as not everybody who fought on the side of Germany in 1945 was doing so because they wanted to help Hitler kill Jews--and not every Union soldier who wore blue was on a righteous crusade to help liberate his fellow man. If someone is bombing my house, and killing my friends and family, then I don’t need any ethereal moral arguments to grab a gun and shoot the attacker dead. You burn my city, I don't care what color/race/creed you are--you're my enemy. The South was desperate and defeated after several years of war. Can you not fathom that some young Southerners, perhaps men not too different from you and me, took up arms to try to prevent Sherman’s march? If ::YOU:: had been born in 1845, and raised in the antebellum south, without the benefits of a 21st century liberal arts education, do you really think you would have the same opinions/beliefs that you hold today? Or would you probably have just gone with the flow? Or remained silent? Maybe room for some nuance here?

You must admit that at least some of those confederate veterans were only defending their homeland, without any/much consideration towards obsolete, racist ideals. Some might have signed up to avenge a fallen relative who died. And yes, I think that at least SOME signed up to fight legitimately for state’s rights. Were the majority of Confederates racists? Probably, I think… certainly even? Should their collective memory entirely be shit on? Certainly not.

I propose an alternative: rather than destroying statues other people put up before you were born, statues which mean a lot to some people for their own reasons which are none of your business and need not be approved by you to be deemed legitimate, why not go BUILD your OWN new statues? It's like kids in a sandbox, fighting over whose Ninja Turtle toys they are going to use, so they keep throwing sand at each other. Go build a statue of George Floyd if you want, and leave Teddy Roosevelt alone on the steps of the history museum... self-righeous iconoclastic bastards... try BUILDING and not DESTROYING... oh, but it's just so much FUN to let loose, and burn and destroy though! Way more fun, and easier!

RE: Blackface/white face and Hollywood - Sacred Jellybean - 9th July 2020

Wypipo a slang/slur for white people. It was possibly also used as a code word, so social media bots won't flag posts for containing the phrase "white people" for review. If a post is deemed racist ("Kill all white people", "white people are the master race", and many subtle shades between), it would get deleted and/or the user banned. So leftists/poc started using it to fly under the radar. But, I did a cursory search and don't see anything to back that up, though, so I may be wrong.

In any case, it's a really dumb and obnoxious word, and for whatever reason, makes me giggle. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

RE: Blackface/white face and Hollywood - A Black Falcon - 9th July 2020

On the subject of Confederates, what you're missing is, again, what those statues exist for. They do not really memorialize the Confederacy. They were put there in the early 20th century to remind black people of their place, and to tell whites how much better they are. It doesn't matter that many Confederate soldiers didn't own slaves, they were fighting for the right of people TO own slaves. That was their cause in its totality: for the right to own people. "State's rights", both before the Civil War and after, was a cover used to hide what they actually meant, they wanted to keep the right of their states to oppress minorities.The pre-war Southerners were very clear about what they were fighting for, though, their right to own black people.

Why should statues which exclusively exist to denigrate people and remind them that they are inferior to whites -- EXPLICITLY remind them of this, not in some abstract way -- stay up? Why should statues funded by neo-Confederate groups and the KKK and such be left in place? There is no reason to do so. Nobody is going to forget history because a few statues that advocate for discrimination are taken down. What you will get, however, is a slightly more equal nation.

Also, why should we continue to memorialize traitors who wanted to destroy America? We should not. I don't see Benedict Arnold statues in every town center, why should we have Robert E. Lee ones all over the South? We should not.

And again, as for Teddy Roosevelt, it's not about TR there, it's about the two other people in that sculpture, the incredibly stereotyped minority people to his left and right behind him. Look at an image of that statue, it's kind of crazy that it's been in a public place so long!

Quote: General! Are you not also eliminating nuance from your arguments by making clean-cut, absolutist, black and white (no pun intended) arguments and findings of morality? You make it seem as if all white people are inherently racist, and all non-white people are victims. Not that it really matters, but do you know for a fact that no minority has ever dressed as a white person to be offensive/mean-spirited, in human history? Pray tell, whence your gift of clairvoyance?

There is a very, very dramatic difference between being a member of the group in power, and not being a member of that group.

Quote:Furthermore, are you saying that everyone who ever donned black face makeup was consciously out on a mission to “dehumanize” anybody? Or was it just not that big of a deal back then? If a black man said “I hate all white people” and put on faux white face paint, and mocked you and your family, would you laugh and high five him, or would you denounce him? I suspect that some of you folks far, far to the left of Goron City would congratulate him and paint murals of him on the nearest building you come across.

That people actually thought that that wasn't a big deal is one of many examples of how bad racism is in this nation and how far we have to go. Blackface was always offensive and people should have known that. And as we have seen, how someone responds to being outed as using blackface in the past matters -- people who are contrite about it and apologize sincerely seem to be at least somewhat forgiven. I am thinking of Justin Trudeau and Ralph Northam here, offhand. They really shouldn't have done it, though. Just because being racist "wasn't a big deal" doesn't mean being racist wasn't wrong.

As for your other fairly specious examples, again, there is a huge difference between being a member of the ruling group and not being in it. Of course there are racist black people out there, but since minorities don't have the power as a group to turn that into the kind of oppression they face, that doesn't matter anywhere near as much as racist whites do. Power matters.

Quote: What "white control" here, today, in 2020, prevents a black/chinese/goron from doing whatever he wants to do in life? What prevents a black teenager from going to college and getting a good career? Is it "whitey" keeping him down? I just don't see it. I worked my way through college, working fulltime so that I paid it as I went and graduated with no debt. I didn't get a free ride. How is it diffeent from anybody else? Perhaps in some deeply southern places, Alabama or Mississippi or wherever---I live in Massachusetts... ::ahem::, I mean I live in Goron City... perhaps in those racist states, I could entertain the belief where it might be harder for a black person to get ahead---but not in the majority of the country.

Minorities do not get the kinds of opportunities that us white people do. They have to face a society which automatically judges them negatively based on their skin color. Do you really not understand that? I'm sure you had to work hard, but minorities start with a major societal disadvantage that simply does not exist for white people. There is vast amounts out there about what racism is and how it affects people -- how having a black name makes employers less likely to consider a resume even if every other detail on the resume is identical, how minorities are more likely to grow up in poorer neighborhoods with fewer options for advancement (the legacy of slavery has not left this nation!), etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

For one of many examples, when you or I get stopped by the police for a headlight out, or for minor speeding, or what have you, I'm sure you have no fear of the police. What would there be to be afraid of? It'll surely be a short converation with, at worst, a ticket. I've never gotten a ticket that way but it's hardly a dangerous situation... unless you're a minority, in which case if you make any kind of move the officer interprets as threatening they'll kill you. This is what the George Floyd protests are about, how our institutional racism, that automatic fear and distrust of nonwhite faces that most people in this nation have to some extent but some have more than others, leads to the unnecessary murders of many minority people in situations where a white person would have been fine because the officer would not have used violence against a white like they would a minority. For a black person every traffic stop is a life-threatening situation in a way that simply is not for me.

Quote: No good at all came out of America between 1918-2016 Weltall? Leading the Allies through two World Wars, landing on the moon, all the art and literature that has been produced, ushering in the internet, etc.? The left selectively finds the worst in America, to help flush out your narrative that we are evil and need you to redesign the future for us… and to be sure the right does the same, skipping the bad and only finding the good… I am trying to stand in the middle and direct the traffic as these opposite forces clash. I say that NEITHER SIDE IS 100% right and America is NOT an evil country! I choose to side with whoever sees the good in my country. That always tends to be the conservatives. You never hear a liberal say anything good or positive about the United States E-V-E-R. I am wearing my conservative hat today because of that. Tomorrow I will wear my liberal hat when we rail about some other topic.

Of course a lot of good has come out of America! Absolutely! I love this nation, it is the greatest nation to ever exist. Freedom, democracy, free and fair elections... we are truly privileged to live in the nation which pretty much invented all of those things, and which has had peaceful transfers of power, consistently, ever since the American Revolution centuries ago. America is a special place which has done more good for the world in the last few centuries than anyone else during that time. Nobody here is saying otherwise.

Yes, some on the far left do dislike America, but I think they are wrong, and also are dangerously misinformed if they think thjat America retreating from the world would bring any good! Handing the world over to the autocrats in Russia and China would do incalculable harm to this planet. America is still important and needed, and we need to get back to BEING that nation, which we can't do while the current occupant of the White House is there.

The point here is to make America even better, to bring us closer to our highest ideals. The founding ideals of America are, effectively, the core ideas behind the modern world. "All men are created equal" is perhaps the most important written sentence of the last five hundred years, but it has always been an aspirational sentence and not a factual one. The struggle to bring this nation closer to realizing that ideal is shown with movements like Black Lives Matter, as we slowly get closer to actually meaning the ALL in that sentence. America has come a long way and has been, at its best, the "city on the hill", but at its worst it has been a horrible place to be, particularly for minorities, and that is something which finally needs to change. And it is changing.

RE: Blackface/white face and Hollywood - Dark Jaguar - 11th July 2020

Darunia, history didn't start yesterday. Everyone living today is where they are due to the long road of history that led us here. You were essentially born on lap 8 of an endless Mario Kart race. You happened to be born a lot further ahead on the track than a black person was. (This is a bit reductionist. There are a LOT of starting conditions, but I'm using race as an example.)

Equality that ONLY looks at the present, not the past that led to the current situation as well, is useless. All it does is cement the lead you already have on the track. And that's why black people need blue shells.

RE: Blackface/white face and Hollywood - Weltall - 11th July 2020

(9th July 2020, 8:24 AM)Darunia Wrote: My fellow gorons--hear me!

First of all, what is a wypipo? I think I understand from context but I have never heard this before. Please define. Is that a slur of “why people?”

Quoth the Weltall, “There is a lot of nuance to this discussion, but your post kind of skips over all of it in favor of making simple, reductionist points.” Also quoth the Weltall, “I mean, minorities didn't use whiteface to dehumanize white people; white Americans have been in control of everything forever, and that control was really bad for everyone else.”

To be fair, I never promised that I would deal in nuance. My style of debate is brutality and haymakers. But, my brutal haymaker is not a false statement. White Americans have been in control of everything, forever (certainly, up until the end of the 20th century, at the very least). And, if you were American, but not white, chances are that you have encountered significant disadvantages in one way or another, just based on that fact. Martin Luther King, Jr, was assassinated just 14 years before I was born, so that's not ancient history. I was 10, and aware, when Rodney King was beaten nearly to death by four cops who got acquitted. I was 26 when a black man became President and the entire Republican Party responded by beginning its transformation into the MAGA monster mash it is today. I really do not think this is a subject which can be legitimately debated.

Quote:General! Are you not also eliminating nuance from your arguments by making clean-cut, absolutist, black and white (no pun intended) arguments and findings of morality? You make it seem as if all white people are inherently racist, and all non-white people are victims. Not that it really matters, but do you know for a fact that no minority has ever dressed as a white person to be offensive/mean-spirited, in human history? Pray tell, whence your gift of clairvoyance? Furthermore, are you saying that everyone who ever donned black face makeup was consciously out on a mission to “dehumanize” anybody? Or was it just not that big of a deal back then? If a black man said “I hate all white people” and put on faux white face paint, and mocked you and your family, would you laugh and high five him, or would you denounce him? I suspect that some of you folks far, far to the left of Goron City would congratulate him and paint murals of him on the nearest building you come across.

I never said, nor do I believe, any of the things you're suggesting here.

Quote:“White Americans have been in control of everything forever, and control was really bad for everyone else.”
That right? What do you suggest replace this? Nothing in the system as far as I know really prohibits or discourages anybody from serving in government, writing a book, making a movie, painting a painting... where is all this control? What "white control" here, today, in 2020, prevents a black/chinese/goron from doing whatever he wants to do in life? What prevents a black teenager from going to college and getting a good career? Is it "whitey" keeping him down? I just don't see it. I worked my way through college, working fulltime so that I paid it as I went and graduated with no debt. I didn't get a free ride. How is it diffeent from anybody else? Perhaps in some deeply southern places, Alabama or Mississippi or wherever---I live in Massachusetts... ::ahem::, I mean I live in Goron City... perhaps in those racist states, I could entertain the belief where it might be harder for a black person to get ahead---but not in the majority of the country.

I've lived in the south practically my entire life, so I definitely have seen things you haven't. My high school was roughly even in terms of black and white students. So, we're at a point where black kids can actually attempt to accomplish all of these things (which has only really been true for maybe the last 20% of American history), but there are a variety of ways in which it is made more difficult, where black kids have to work harder than white kids to achieve the same goals and gain the same recognition. That's the point, you see. It's not that there aren't opportunities, there is not equality of opportunity. Being born into poverty, regardless of your race, puts you at a significant disadvantage in life, and that's more likely to happen to minorities. Jeffrey is more likely to get a job than Deontae, just because Deontae sounds black. People make decisions based on things like that. I've personally been witness to it, by people who deny having a racist thought in their head. If you're black, you're more likely to be arrested and/or convicted of crimes at a higher rate than white people. The police and the justice system both disadvantage minorities.

Though, I believe that, ultimately, class disadvantages everyone to a large degree. Being born poor makes everything much harder for you, even if you're a straight white christian male.

Quote:No good at all came out of America between 1918-2016 Weltall? Leading the Allies through two World Wars, landing on the moon, all the art and literature that has been produced, ushering in the internet, etc.? The left selectively finds the worst in America, to help flush out your narrative that we are evil and need you to redesign the future for us… and to be sure the right does the same, skipping the bad and only finding the good… I am trying to stand in the middle and direct the traffic as these opposite forces clash. I say that NEITHER SIDE IS 100% right and America is NOT an evil country! I choose to side with whoever sees the good in my country. That always tends to be the conservatives. You never hear a liberal say anything good or positive about the United States E-V-E-R. I am wearing my conservative hat today because of that. Tomorrow I will wear my liberal hat when we rail about some other topic.

I don't think America is an evil country, it is a country which has accomplished great things, and was founded on ideals which were extremely radical for their time. The problem I have is that we have never lived up to those ideals, the bigger problem I have is that the right intentionally does not live up to those ideals. Many good things have come from America. No good has ever come from the right wing of American politics. Not one, single, solitary thing, going all the way back to 1789. That is NOT to say the left is perfect and great and did everything right, that's absolutely not true. But, "all men are created equal" has not ever been a conservative ideal. Free, fair elections with full participation is still, to this day, something conservatives are absolutely against, and always have been. Women got the right to vote against the will of conservatives. Black people got civil rights against the will of southern segregationists who used all the same rhetoric today's right wingers use. The Confederacy was extreme conservatism wrought large, an attempt by a landed aristocracy to preserve things just the way they were, because they benefited totally from it being that way. Abolitionists were radical and progressive. Karl Marx was a huge fan of Abraham Lincoln!

Quote:“Also, no history ought to be forgotten, but Confederate history is shameful and the political ideology which emerged from its ruins has no redeeming qualities.”
I agree with some of this, but your discussion kind of skips over all nuance in favor of making simple, reductionist points. I agree 100% that there should be no statues that explicitly extoll slavery. But, am I wrong, in opining that perhaps, friends, not all Confederates were slave-holders, and not all of them enlisted to fight for the evil banner of slavery? Certainly, I agree, that there should be no statues to promote slavery. But not everyone who donned a gray uniform did so to rush off to die fighting in order to enslave people--just as not everybody who fought on the side of Germany in 1945 was doing so because they wanted to help Hitler kill Jews--and not every Union soldier who wore blue was on a righteous crusade to help liberate his fellow man. If someone is bombing my house, and killing my friends and family, then I don’t need any ethereal moral arguments to grab a gun and shoot the attacker dead. You burn my city, I don't care what color/race/creed you are--you're my enemy. The South was desperate and defeated after several years of war. Can you not fathom that some young Southerners, perhaps men not too different from you and me, took up arms to try to prevent Sherman’s march? If ::YOU:: had been born in 1845, and raised in the antebellum south, without the benefits of a 21st century liberal arts education, do you really think you would have the same opinions/beliefs that you hold today? Or would you probably have just gone with the flow? Or remained silent? Maybe room for some nuance here?

No. The Confederacy were the aggressors, they started the war, their aims were absolutely against every high ideal of America. They were trying to destroy the United States so they could create their own totalitarian slave empire, and I don't give one microscopic damn about whatever heritage that's supposed to represent.

Germany, after 1945, aggressively scrubbed all traces of Nazism from their country, and it is illegal to fly the swastika or glorify that evil. That's what America should have done with the Confederacy. There is no value to its continued existence in the public forum in any way whatsoever.

What would I have done if I lived then? Who knows? I was totally on the other side of the political fence for many years, and I won't pretend I'm a hero or saint just because my views have shifted. I'm not out there protesting right now.

Quote:

Quote:You must admit that at least some of those confederate veterans were only defending their homeland, without any/much consideration towards obsolete, racist ideals. Some might have signed up to avenge a fallen relative who died. And yes, I think that at least SOME signed up to fight legitimately for state’s rights. Were the majority of Confederates racists? Probably, I think… certainly even? Should their collective memory entirely be shit on? Certainly not.

It's not defending your homeland when you fire the first shots. So yes, shit all over that entire collective memory. I don't care what their reasons were. They fought for an evil cause, and they're all long dead, but even now, their way of thinking is a deadly toxin poisoning American politics and society. To honor anything they did in public is to endorse what they fought for, and I will not ever find that acceptable.

Quote:I propose an alternative: rather than destroying statues other people put up before you were born, statues which mean a lot to some people for their own reasons which are none of your business and need not be approved by you to be deemed legitimate, why not go BUILD your OWN new statues? It's like kids in a sandbox, fighting over whose Ninja Turtle toys they are going to use, so they keep throwing sand at each other. Go build a statue of George Floyd if you want, and leave Teddy Roosevelt alone on the steps of the history museum... self-righeous iconoclastic bastards... try BUILDING and not DESTROYING... oh, but it's just so much FUN to let loose, and burn and destroy though! Way more fun, and easier!

The people living in these cities are the ones tearing down these statues, who are you to tell them they should endure their presence, especially when the entire point of them being erected was to remind black people of their place?

RE: Blackface/white face and Hollywood - Dark Jaguar - 15th July 2020

This guy makes a point better than I ever could.

"White privilage" doesn't mean you have it on easy street Darunia. It just means that of the myriad problems in your life, not one of them is caused by the color of your skin.