Ok, it’s pretty obvious who has the hang ups here. Where on god’s green Earth did “crack babies” and “youth crime” come into play? If that is the attitude you walk around with it is little wonder that you find such offense and feel that you’ve been forced to “live your whole life with everyone reminding you in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that you don’t belong” Perhaps the reason you don’t feel you belong has more to do with your paranoia than anything else. Increasingly that is my perception. Get the chip off the shoulder, it isn’t attractive.
Look, my position has been and still is: racism is racism and all of it is bad. I even started a pit thread about it last year. I am not arguing that black folks have to deal with more racism than white folks, they do. What I am saying is that we should condem it all equally, if we give one brand of racism more credence than another, we are just perpetuating what we are railing against. Equal means equal for everyone, no exceptions.
Where are you getting this idea from? First of all, the shirt was a promotional prize at a predominantly non-black university;so this wasn’t some item targetted to black people for the purpose of inducing some good-natured chuckles at themselves. And secondly, if your hypothesis is true, why was it even necessary for the shirt to specify black men, given the promotional audience? Can’t you see how the message changes simply by having the subject be black men instead of men in general?
Rhum Runner, I’m sorry man, but it really seems as if you are trying very hard to defend a piece of shit. If you think the shirt is funny, fine. Say so. I’d rather you admit that there’s just cause to find it bothersome even while finding it funny, than to watch you repeatedly portray this thing as some equal opportunity lampoon against all men. People who find it offensive (myself included) are not imagining things, we are not overinterpreting things, and we are not blowing things out of proportion. In order to make your case, you deliberately have to be dense.
Question: Wouldn’t you be just a little bit suspicious of an Arab wearing a shirt emblazoned with “10 reasons why a beer is better than a Jew”? Gotta say I would.
Do you think a shirt saying, “Why beer is better than a White Woman” prominently displaying a large picture of a muscular white man would be worn by a racist black man at a predominantly black college?
To me, “10 Reasons Why a Beer is Better than a Man” wouldn’t be offensive. The one mentioned by the OP, however, I consider to be in bad taste.
To those who think there’s nothing wrong with it, maybe you can clear some of my confusion: why black? What differences are there, either physical or behavioral, between a black and a non-black man that would cause the jokes on the T-shirt to not make any sense had it been as I’ve written it above?
If the T-shirt doesn’t have any overt racist statements on it, why include the word black? Especially at a predominantly white college?
Hell, who knows? Maybe they were leftovers from an event predominantly attended by blacks, and someone thought (none too clearly) that this was a good opportunity to dump out their excess inventory.
Are we sure that Anything is better than College Girls gone Wild?
I do have to put my 2 cents in, Racist jokes are nearly intolerable. Though, as Blalron pointed out, they do assist people in realizing how utterly rediculous racism is. It’s like dead baby jokes. People find them funny, but mostly because we find the idea of being a babykiller as preposterous as being a racist
I guess I’d be more prone to defending it on the whole freedom of speech route. But yeah, you better believe I’d think twice about treating a person who would wear it kindly
I have a feeling that if you saw a racist black man wearing a shirt like this (or one directed towards white males), you wouldn’t think it was so funny. You would use it as evidence that the black man was in fact racist.
Rhum Runner:
What attitude are you referring to? The attitude in which I resent being told to “get over it” by someone who doesn’t understand how much “over it” I already am? The attitude in which I hate not being able to rant over asanine things in our society just like everyone else? The attitude in which I lose my impatience with patronizing fools who think it’s alright to laugh at everything, but not alright to feel bothered by non-funny things?
You don’t know my attitude.
Maybe if we were talking about something a little less obvious, I would agree with you. But noticing the racism behind a shirt that says “10 Reasons Why a Beer is Better than a Black Man” does not require paranoia. In fact, you’d have to be delusional to keep saying that it’s not racist or can’t be justifiably interpreted as such.
Maybe if the company who makes this shirt had a shirt like this for every ethnic group, I would feel like I do about Chris Rock: they’re an equal opportunity offenderer. But I don’t think there’s a “10 Reasons Why a Beer is Better than an Chinese/Hispanic/Jew/Eastern-European,Christian/Handicapped Man” t-shirt. I’m betting the only ethnic group they lampoon like this are black males. That’s why it’s racist.
If you can’t see this, you’re a lost cause and I’m through with you.
There is absolutelt no excuse for anyone to disagree with Monstro’s outrage. Any decent person should be outraged as well. If the shirt had been marketed in a predominantly black college, then it would just be a harmless teasing of the brothers by the sisters. If the maker had omitted the “black” from the shirt, then the caption, “10 Reasons why a Beer is Better than a Man,” would be a more universal variation of the same theme.
But as it stands, this shirt was meant to be sold to white people in order to demean black people, and that should be repulsive to any civilized person.
First of all, I do not deserve this kind of bullshit from you. My reading comprehension is just fine. All that I wanted was for you to specifically clarify your stance.
As you seem to be saying that you believe offence to be an on/off thing, rather than something that is actually very nuanced, I now know where you stand and can respectfully suggest that you are wrong.
Mind you, I am not sure how you can fail to see that jabs that target traditionally marginalized groups are inherently more harmful (and thus more offensive) than those that target groups closer to the center of power, but there you go.
Hey, don’t underestimate Weirddave’s white boy pain. He’s experienced such prejudice against him for his skin colour, and all those jokes about how he can’t dance, it’s just rubbing salt into the wounds.
The day white people can finally be free of prejudice in America will be a great day.
