19th July 2009, 11:43 AM
lazyfatbum Wrote:
1.) He's deformed and doesn't even look human while the white male is depicted as subtle and sophisticated. If he (honky) was in the same art style, it would just be a bizarre comic. The other factor is his speech, but of course the 'yas boss' dialogue is something that came from the fact that blacks during that time (implied) simply weren't educated, but it should be noted, their dialect sounded exactly like any uneducated southerner. Its a spoken southern dialect. Black, white or whatever. It could be easily used to make fun of southern people in general.
He's "deformed" in the sense that he has big lips, big ears, and a big, vacant grin on his face. Is it not true that this is the same type of caricature that we were talking about before?
On the other hand (and you touch on this in your post), if the black person was given white features (as in facial proportions, which you purported to be what black people in media are given to be more accessible and aesthetically pleasing and are most likely right about it) is wrong too, as there's a subtle message in there saying that black people only look beautiful when they look the most like white people.
I could apply "bury my head in the sand" logic and say that it's true that black people in the south were uneducated, poor (hence liking cheap watermelons), and subservient to their white masters, so there's nothing racist about this cartoon.
Quote:2.) The idea that a black waiter is serving watermelon to a white customer is not racist. The implied hate is that A.) Honky is trying to bring up the fact that Bosko just wants hims a big ol' watermelon piece, you get the idea that he is indirectly belittling him as if there are others present at the table and is trying to direct attention to his poor judgment and unsophisticated dialect and manners. B.) That he's a slave and he is speaking to his owner, that's not racist. That happened, there is no implied hate, that is the way things were.
I don't really get the "there are other people at the table" part, but other than that, I think this is the crux of what makes the cartoon racist, and in retrospect, I don't think it was the best example to bring up. I had actually considered taking it out of my post last night for that reason, but decided to leave it up there.
Quote:The idea that black people look more like monkeys than white people do.
...and it's a fact.
Yes, it's a fact that black people look more like gorillas than white people. The problem with comparing black people to apes or gorillas is that it's more than likely done it a way to dehumanize and degrade them. If blacks and whites were on the same playing field and there wasn't a history of whites dehumanizing and degrading blacks, I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it.
Really, who wants to be compared to an animal? If you had a girlfriend or wife who was a little long in the face, would you laugh and high five anyone who called her a horse?
Quote:Big lips. No one says Angelina Jolie resembles an ape. In fact, women are paying a lot of money to have their lips enlarged and is usually considered very appealing to have large, pouting lips. Every woman wants big lips, big lips on a male (of any race) usually makes them look more beefy, more powerful. I have huge lips, so I get the same remarks. But these women, myself, no one says they look like an ape. Fish maybe, but no one uses the A word.
I have big lips too and have gotten compared to a donkey before. :) Thankfully not by a woman, that would have stung me so much more.
Quote:Ever seen that commercial, I think it's for... I dunno, some prescription drug or something. But it would show food on one half of the screen, and then people that resemble that food. It was pretty ingenious in some of its designs to make the people look like the food and vice versa. Disney and Pixar has a great way of making everyday objects resemble people, a tea cup handle becomes a nose and looks completely natural, etc. Disney also showed us that black people can resemble frogs or lions just as well as apes and in fact takes great pride in the idea of making people in to animals and using their facial features to match a particular animal. It is a natural human interaction, just like when we talk to a stinky pile of laundry or yell at our computers to breath lfe in to inanimate objects, or imagine animals as if they were people.
I feel that the anthropomorphization of animals or inanimate objects is contextually different and not related to this discussion. This is more about the reverse of what we're talking about - making animals/inanimate objects more human so we care more about them. What we're talking about is making human beings of one race seem less human to marginalize them.
Quote:We can even make a lighthearted joke of 'lol Britney looks like an angry vulture in that pic" or what have you, so its all very inherent.
The person who would probably be hurt the most by this is Britney Spears, and it's not like she looks like a vulture all the time. This is markedly different from comparing an entire race of people to an animal that's seen as a lesser form than humans, but an animal resembling a human nonetheless.
Quote:So here we are, looking down the barrel of these horrible claims that its natural to see black people with strong black features compared to modern apes in physical appearance and we load the gun with the question: Is it racist?
I might sound like I'm contradicting myself here, but making the simple and innocent observation that black people resemble apes more than whites, in and of itself, is not racist. It's just that it's a very fine line to walk, because most people making that comparison are doing it in a hateful/derogatory manner. Again, if black people had no history of being persecuted and subjugated by whites, this would practically be a non-issue (aside from the fact that no one wants to be compared to an inferior beast).
Quote:If that image you posted had a black man depicted with subtlety and sophistication like the whitey is, and mind you this is a trick question, would it still be racist? I'm very curious to what your answer would be.
Given that it'd still be playing off a stereotype that's part of a larger, collective, racist archetype, I'd say it'd still be a little racist, but it would be more bizarre than racist (and probably funnier for that reason). It'd be slightly more of a subversion of that line of thinking, because BLACK PEOPLE LOVE WATERMELONS LOL usually goes hand-in-hand with BLACK PEOPLE ARE POOR DUMB UNCIVILIZED SOUTHERN MOTHER FUCKERS LOL, but I could still see why black people would be offended by it, because of the connotations it has towards racism towards blacks that some white people still hold.