So, now you and CrazyCatLady argue about whose racism is worse, mkay? That’s going to solve a lot. Blacks are racist against whites- it’s “giving the cold shoulder”; whites are racist against blacks- people are being “too sensitive”.
It’s
all
BULLSHIT!!!
It’s ALL wrong, people! Kee-rist! A blind man could see it on a cloudy day! You guys sitting here arguing which brand of bigotry is worse only proves my point! ( and makes y’all look like Bozos, BTW )
Read CrazyCatLady’s post, Weirddave. How is her point relevant to the thread at all?
And for that matter, what’s your point? That I should ranting against all “list” shirts, not just the one that bothers me? Yeah, I don’t think anyone would call me a whiner then. :rolleyes:
Umm, Dave, I’m not arguing about which is worse, I’m just trying to point out that it’s a two way street.
I freely admit that there’s plenty of white-on-black racism out there, and it tends to be a lot more violent and ugly than black-on-white racism, and it’s a terrible, tragic thing. It just really bothers me that people keep bringing up the geography involved, as though Kentucky being the quasi-South automatically makes it a hotbed of racist activity. These stereotypes are every bit as stupid and counterproductive as stereotyping blacks as lazy, promiscuous, yadda yadda yadda.
FTR, I think the T-shirt was a damn stupid idea. Probably not deliberately malicious, as others have implied, but incredibly stupid. Of course, I also thought Big Johnson shirts were really stupid, but somebody must have liked them because they sold like crazy.
reply from Monstro:
Do you think that men view their mothers and sisters in a different light from women in general? Negative stereotyping of any group that is kept from positions of power is outrageous! How can you expect those who don’t understand your rage here to see the problems you face when you don’t see mine? It is the same problem in a different guise.
How many men think of women as fresh meat? How many men ridicule women drivers? How many men think that women should be fulfilled by cleaning toliet bowls and washing clothes? How many women are in the Senate compared to men? How many dumb blond jokes are told about blond men? How many women are CEOs of the Fortune Five Hundred? When was the last time you heard a man described as “ditsy”? How many women have coached men’s basketball teams? The answers to these questions explain why you and I are in the same boat and why it is difficult for others to understand.
This doesn’t address other stereotyping that I have to deal with as a Southerner or as a person with an illness that ignorant people blame on me (clinical depression). I am not an ignorant barefooted incestuous redneck hillbilly who speaks a stupid dialect. Nor is my illness just a matter of changing my attitude.
I am not trying to hijack the racial issue. I don’t tolerate racial comments without speaking up. I spent 20 years teaching in inner-city schools – which is where I asked to be placed. I live, by choice, in a neighborhood of Blacks, Hispanics, Eastern Indians, Cambodians and whites. I believe in being sensitive to all harmful stereotyping. All I ask is that you open your eyes to other forms of prejudice that you may be participating in yourself.
And I’m not one of them. Despite having grown up and lived in predominately black communities my whole life, I have chosen educational and work settings that leave me always being a racial minority. Like I said, most of my friends and associates are white. My white friends say that I’m the “whitest black person” they know.
Despite all my efforts to “blend” in, I have people on this very thread not understanding me, probably intentionally.
It’s also helpful if people are receptive. Many times they are. But many times people think they’ve gotten entire groups of people figured out and they don’t want to listen to the truth, because they can’t understand it or handle it.
Regardless of the cause, it’s THERE. I know it is. And that’s why I think a mass-distributed t-shirt like the one described in the OP (remember that?) is dangerous. A shirt like that would only serve to promote “black refusal”. I know this black would refuse to deal with you if you were wearing that gahbage.
Perhaps. Or perhaps realizing that Kentucky isn’t exactly in the “liberal north” would help to shoot down the naive idea that this could be only chalked up to stupidity, not maliciousness.
Umm, you do realize that this shirt was almost certainly not conceived of or produced in Kentucky, right? It was just distributed there.
I never said I didn’t understand your rage, Zoe. Just because I don’t share it, doesn’t mean I don’t emphathize.
Got it?
Excuse me if I’m peeved by the tone you’re taking with me, but I am. I understand that you think I’m a hypocrit for not rallying against ALL stereotypes, but I can’t get worked up about everything. Everything doesn’t affect me the same way. I don’t have enough energy to weep about EVERYTHING. I can only be sensitive to a certain number of things. One of these things is being black. Another is being a woman. Does the latter take a second seat to the former? Yes. Shoot me. But I imagine your whiteness and femaleness don’t share equal footing either.
I see a different dynamic between the ribbing between men and women and the ribbing between whites and blacks. You don’t see the difference, fine. But I do. Shoot me.
Just so you know, I have a problem with anti-female prejudice too. Just because I’m not going crazy over anti-female t-shirts doesn’t mean I have my eyes closed to other prejudices.
I’m tired of defending myself. My fingers especially.
Zoe:
This is, in a word, stupid. Maybe I could understand your vehement display of “frustration” if monstro had branded your opinions about woman list-shirts as being whiny and misplaced, but guess what? SHE HASN’T. Her opinion about the black man shirt has nothing to do with your opinion about other kinds of shirts. By claiming that her opinion can not be respected simply because she hasn’t exhibited equal concern about supposed anti-woman lists makes you look like an asshole searching for reasons to plug up your ears.
Could have fooled me.
I’m a native Kentuckian, though I can’t say if I’m an average one or not, how do you know?
I was born in Louisville and have lived all my life, save one year spent in Mass., in this state.
I know many black people. I know black maintenance engineers who clean the lab I work in. I know black phlebotomists who draw the blood I run tests on. I know black pathologists who work here. And I know the Chief of the whole pathology department, a black woman.
My parents never taught me to view a person by color or to fear them because they looked different.
Are there racists here? Hell, yes. Unfortunately I also work with people who whisper and say things like “He’s, well, you know… black.”
I’ve not traveled extensively but I have been a few places- including Cinncinnati, Chicago and Manhattan. I’ve seen idiots like the aforementioned in those places too. I’ve come to believe that no one area has a monopoly on bigoted morons.
And when I first heard about those shirts at UofL I thought them incredibly stupid and offensive. I can see why people would be upset over them.
My views, for what they’re worth, as one out of about three million residents of the state.
CrazyCatLady:
Umm, what does it matter?
Several comments I’d like to add to this train wreck :
(1) Several people have said something along the lines of “you don’t have the right to tell monstro what should or should not offend her”. Honestly, I have to disagree. This is the pit. People have every right to make such statements. If someone comes into the pit bawling and weeping about how horrible they feel whenever they hear the word “niggardly” used, or how the chief terrorist on some show was an arab, or how someone referred to them as an “Indian” instead of a “Native American”, I expect them to get ripped to shreds. People whining about, and getting offended by, stupid trivial things waste enormous amounts of time and money in the US today.
But anyone who thinks that the T-shirt in the current discussion, in the context in which it was distributed, is just a trivial, minor thing that should be laughed off is idiotic, ignorant in the extreme, or hopelessly insensitive. Bear in mind, monstro did not just walk down the street, see a person wearing the shirt in question, and fly into tears of rage. Rather, the shirt was being distributed by a frickin’ BANK! Banks are not known for being wild and wacky institutions. Banks don’t usually take chances and push societal boundaries. So on the surface, at least, a bank wouldn’t distribute something unless it thought it was so mainstream and inoffensive that it would bother no one. After some further discussion, I think it’s pretty clear that the bank itself had no idea what was going on, and apologized immediately and convincingly, but can anyone honestly not understand why monstro would be upset by the situation?
Crikey!
(2) As for the question of whether the list was intended for black women (which tends to put it in the least offensive light possible), it seems pretty clear to me that it was. The very jokes themselves are things like “a beer won’t get you pregnant”. Won’t get you pregnant. Do white guys worry about being impregnated by black men? For that matter, do white women worry about being impregnated by black men?
I would bet large sums that the list was supposed to be a joke for black women and somehow (through clerical error, stupidity, gross misjudgment, or what have you) ended up being distributed at a mainly-white college. But I can’t prove it…
(3) On the topic of making-fun-of-blacks vs. making-fun-of-whites, well, it’s complicated. On the one hand, I would certainly like to be as idealistic as WeirdDave and say “all racism is wrong”. On the other hand, we don’t live in an ideal world.
A racist joke can, imho, end up anywhere on the spectrum from totally harmless to hideously hateful. Various factors contribute:
-As has been mentioned many times, the respective power levels of the teller and subject group. If a white guy makes a joke about blacks being dumb criminals, he might mean it totally in fun. On the other hand, he might be a truly racist person. And there are some number of truly racist white people who have some amount of power in the US today. And even if the teller doesn’t mean it seriously, someone who hears it might believe that he does. So, it’s just a joke, what harm does it do? Well, it very well might actually do some harm, or at least be indicative of a mindset or group that will go out and do harm. I would not blame a black person for being offended and/or frightened at hearing such a joke.
Conversely, if a black man tells a joke about white men having small penises, or having no rhythm, what harm does it do? None, really. As far as I know, there are no large historical trends in the black community in which there were groups who had power, used that power to oppress white people, and justified that oppression through their belief in diminuitive white penises.
-Related to the first point, there’s an enormous difference depending on what particular stereotypes are being discussed in the joke. For instance, one of the most persistent anti-semitic stereotypes is that Jews are greedy money-grubbers. It would be hard for me to laugh if I heard someone who I didn’t know telling such a joke. On the other hand, if someone was joking about, say, Jewish American Princesses or Jewish Mothers, I would be far less likely to take offense.
-Also vitally important is the context in which the joke is told. When I’m with people who I’m sure are not racist, and who I’m sure are sure that I’m not racist, I might occasionally tell a truly horrible joke because I know that nothing will be read into it. But I would never tell such a joke in company that I was less familiar with, and particularly not ever around children, and Extremely Particularly not on a T-shirt that I was giving away as a free gift for a bank promotion.
CanvasShoes:
It’s hard for me to imagine it, too. It’s hard for me to believe that people actually sat around a table, brainstormed for a few hours, and then came up with this biscuit of an idea. AND WERE PAID FOR IT. It’s even harder for me to believe that someone put their stamp of approval on the idea and thought that no one would find it offensive.
Maybe they just genuinely thought it was funny and didn’t stop to question why they found it funny. Most racist people probably don’t know when they’re being racist. They will rationalize their actions and beliefs by describing them with many different terms, but “racist” will never be one of them. So maybe they thought they had nothing to hide.
So, the T-shirt offends Monstro as well as some other people on this board. The same T-shirt does not offend other people on this board. So one can assume that you all agree to disagree…?
you with the face, the fact that shirts were designed and produced elsewhere is only relevant because of this little bit of stupidity:
Evidently, if these shirts had been shipped in from the North, they’d be the result of idiocy, not malice.
I’ll have to pony up here with a “what the fuck were they thinking”…
I’d really like to know the trainwreck of groupthink that led to these things being handed out. These shirts were likely made up for black women, and rejected. At best, these shirts got included in the credit card promotion by accident (mixed in with other rejects they were unloading), at worse, someone actually thought that this might go over well in the South, since we are all drunken racists.
Either way, you’d think whoever was working the booth would have caught it at the very least.
Oh, and for the record, even if this was malicious, it was still stupid. This is a freaking college, not a Klan rally. People were probably protesting this after 5 minutes…
But the venue at which the shirt was used only compounded the basic and fundamental problem with the shirt. It wouldn’t matter if the shirt was “intended” to be distributed at the national convention of the National Association of Black Women. It wouldn’t matter if it was produced by the National Association of Black Women for the organization’s own members. (In fact, that would open a whole new can of worms.) The shirt was and will remain regardless of intent or creating organization behind it, ridiculously racially offensive. Period.
All actions have consequences. And in the case of such “stupid” and supposedly meaningless jokes, they very simply and very seriously add to the very extant, very real atmosphere of division and disrespect based on race that exists in this nation and runs the spectrum from general attitudes of mistrust and fear to incidents like the death of James Byrd and the murder spree of Ronald Taylor.
If the goal of all good-minded people is to truly move towards a society where skin color is of no consequence, then there is a clear, bright line to be drawn about insult “comedy” based on or predicated on race and racial stereotypes – they cannot be tolerated, no matter who they come from, who they are tagetted to or the situation in which they are presented.
Add me to the people who don’t understand how anyone can see how this isn’t offensive.
CrazyCatLady
See, here’s where I’m having difficulties–how is monstro contributing to the problem by expressing her displeasure with this T-shirt?
Sheesh, NO kiddin’ monstro!!!
People!! How did this thread degenerate into a “who is more worthy to whine about prejudice against them” rant?
The OP was about a piece of racism against blacks. Period. Probably none of us will know whether it was intentional on the part of the distributors, or just extreme stupidity and poor judgment. But it IS an offensive piece of work, that t-shirt. For those of us in this thread, it ranges from being “just a mild joke, but probably bad judgment” to “extremely racial” (I lean more toward the “pretty damn racial” end of things).
But going off on side tangents about “blacks are prejudice against whites too” (damn, talk about a self-serving whine!!), or “All prejudice/discrimination is bad discrimination and WHY is the OP too “dumb” to see it” is all really just going away from the main point of this rant.
The OP saw this shirt. It was offensive to her. It’s offensive to many of us. She has a RIGHT to be offended by it, DESPITE whether or not a few idiots in this thread think it’s actual racism or not. And for her to come in and rant about being offended is also her right. And it’s no more “whining” on her part than are the often silly and nonsensical rants about “People should stop adding smilies, or LOLs” to their posts are.
So there!!! pppppppttttttttttthhhhhbbbtt!!!
The Wrong Girl, I agree. How can we ever expect people to be sensitive when we don’t speak up about what hurts. And I think Monstro has done that well and then stood her ground when others didn’t understand.
Monstro said:
Monstro also said:
You have every right to choose your priorities. I can see that you are not as disinterested in other stereotyping as I had thought. Please excuse me for making such a huge assumption. I am sorry that my “tone” offended you. It was not intentional.
Agree to disagree about what? That it’s offensive?
I don’t think that makes any sense. If it offends people, it’s offensive. Period. The fact that it doesn’t offend other people doesn’t make it nonoffensive.
Of course, that’s a pretty useless definition, all by itself, because I’m sure there’s almost nothing that doesn’t offend someone. But this shirt certainly seems to offend a reasonable proportion of the population.
If someone finds something truly, deeply hurtful, as many posters in this thread sincerely seem to do, “agreeing to disagree” strikes me as more than slightly condescending. “What, you thought my joke about the holocaust was offensive? Well, me and my buddies didn’t. I guess we’ll just agree to disagree, eh?”