13th July 2009, 7:59 PM
Quote:You pulled an image off google and called it racist because it depicts a black woman with exaggerated African American features who's in the middle of a mindless rant and obviously insane.
You're right, except I typed in "racist hispanic caricature" into Google image search and the picture of McKinney came up. In fact, I didn't even know who Cynthia McKinney was until your post. Shows how culturally aware I am. Anyways, the images I posted were simply made to prove a point: that it defintely is possible to paint a racist caricature of somebody, no matter their race (except um, for white people). Maybe the caricatures I chose weren't the best examples of that, but whatever, I was pressed for time and was just looking for a simple illustration.
Quote:This image, is a simple ad talking about watermelon ice cream, sold to children. With a picture of a messy looking kid using the artstyle of the time which Dragonball Z paid homage to. Because its an artstyle.
Bullshit, while the guy who drew the ad might have simply been trying to sell watermelon ice cream, it's still reflective of an extremely racist period of American history. According to Wikipedia (which is obviously not the best reference but it's all I have) the term "Pickaninny" is "an offensive, derogatory term for black children." While the term may have been originally coined to describe any unkept or messy child, it definitely became something that was used exclusively to describe young black kids. Way back in the day in might have been thought that calling a young black kid picaninny was "harmless fun," but it most certainly wasn't harmless and is another racist footnote in American history. That ad is clearly racist because it blatantly adds to a stereotype that blacks are poor, dirty, and cheap. While this was for the most part true when the ad was printed, it doesn't make it right to poke fun at it, and is again, reflective of a racist culture. I'm surprised you see the ad as being so innocent.
Quote:An exaggerated charicature of a Japanese soldier obviously aligned with Nazi Germany telling Americans that when you take a shit, it lands in Japan. This is WW2 Propaganda, it's not racist - It's hate of the enemy and morale boosting fun. That slant eyed bucktoothed Jap is begging to be shot for his alignment to Germany, look at his arrogance of some stupid little island people who thinks they can best the Fucking States, what better way for anyone, even little Johnny, to do his part in the war then to send his feces to Japan while in the restaurant, movie theater or whatever that sign was hung in.
Once again, when I see Japanese hate propaganda it reminds me of an extremely racist period of history. It's allegedly meant to inspire comradeship and bravado and to rally support behind the troops off defending our freedom and whatever, but what's dangerous about anti-Japanese propaganda is that they weren't meant to collectively inspire the nation to rally behind their military so much as they were meant to create a deliberate hatred for anybody who looked Japanese. They were the enemy because of their race. Anti-Japanese propaganda added to a virulent racist culture where over 100,000 Japanese Americans were interned for really no other reason that being Japanese. Tens of thousands of Japanese-Canadians were also interned, and there are several documented cases (and this is probably true for at least a few Japanese Americans) of Japanese-Canadians who were also World War I vets (fighting for Canada) who were robbed of all their belongings, interned, and eventually deported because they were thought to be the enemy. It's that part of history that comes to mind when I see anti-Japanese propaganda. It's not meant to find humour in cultural differences like Trisha Takanawa, but instead meant to inspire hate.