Anyone who is going to seriously try to deny the racist intent is not even worth responding to. There’s no debate about it. it’s racist, and you know it and trying to deny it, or feign confusion about it is borderline subpontian.
Most humans look reasonably simian - it really doesn’t take much photoshop work to make anyone look like an ape.
I guess, tho this is the first I’ve heard of it. I just think that automatically assuming it is because of race is just as racist.
Um, so as not to hijack, can you post a link to the peace sign thing?
Wow, it’s amazing how much you know about faceless people on the internet!
Here’s the stuff on Malia:
http://www.thefrisky.com/post/246-malia-obamas-peace-shirt-sparks-criticism/
Mainly it was Freepers but still. It was truly appalling.
Bizarre. What they are saying doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the picture!
Or just maybe they do it because they are racist.
No.
Well, yeah. They’re taking an innocuous picture and using it to spout racial hatred. It’s sad that there are still attitudes like that around. But at least they’re in the minority.
Explain it to me as if I were five please, because I really don’t get the whole line of thinking behind this particular outrage. Yes I’ve heard the idea before that comparing blacks to monkeys is somehow racist and offensive. Yet comparing anyone else to a monkey is fine. Why is that?
Because there’s a difference between comparing an individual to a monkey because of specific, personal characteristics, and comparing an entire race to monkeys, and saying they’re subhuman because of their race.
Can we please stop playing dumb and pretending we don’t get it now?
I’ll tell you I’m outraged about. I’m outraged that the liberal media hasn’t reported on Michelle Obama’s naked photos. They are obviously pornographic, and yet the the mainstream press does nothing! I know that this board won’t let me post pornographic pictures, so I’ll only link to the “cheesecake”. It’s still full frontal nudity, but the arms are covering her nipples so it should be safe for work.
How can we, as a Christian nation, allow this woman to talk to our children?
I had to post the joke. Just had to. But on a more serious note, anybody who can’t see that photoshoping a black person into a chimp is racist is a freaking moron
I’d give someone a pass on that if they weren’t from America and were unfamiliar with our historical racial stereotypes.
**Q.
“What? It’s just President Obama! We put him in a top hat and white gloves, you know, to make him look classy!”
Q.
“Okay, but his face is black already, right? We just made him a little blacker, just to enhance the contrast! You know, chiaroscuro!”
Q!
“Aw, come on… everybody knows he’s a good dancer! And who doesn’t love a nice big watermelon? You’re just looking for any excuse to be offended! Lighten up! Heh… not that he *can *lighten up, eh? Heh heh!”
No. It’s the correct interpretation of the picture. That’s the level these people are on.
Maybe Irish people were more often depicted as monkeys than black people; maybe they weren’t. I don’t know. In that one cartoon Argent posted, the guy looked more like Mr. Hyde than an ape.
But nobody ever really believed Irish people had tails and were subhuman, like some people really believed about blacks. Nobody’s grandmother ever claimed Irish people have extra bones in their feet, and are otherwise truly different from regular humans.
That’s what makes the act of depicting a black person as a monkey so offensive. Some people have really believed this stuff, and some people still do (I hope not the tail part, but the other stuff).
And I think it goes beyond just trolling. That is, people aren’t saying these things just to get a reaction. It’s out of this racism mindset that was a huge part of our culture and isn’t entirely gone. It’s something we like to think is gone, anyway, and sometimes we get a huge shock when we realize it’s still there.
There’s real racism out there, but especially when you’re dealing with the internet it’s hard to distinguish the real thing from stuff people say just to get a reaction.
True. But I do think that the kind of person who thinks that getting a reaction out of something this racially charged probably has a better than average chance of being bigoted. I also just don’t get the people whose automatic reaction is to defend the ones who are doing it and to condemn the people whose reaction is “Racism.”
OK. So it isn’t the same thing as some random black person saying that they are the victim of racism “simply because they are black”?
I didn’t see anyone defending whoever did the photoshopping, nor anyone condemning those that think it was racism. I don’t know about the others, but my question came from the feeling that some black people tend to blame everything on their color, and not on their actions, so it just seems that the racist card is played too often and too easily. Not to mention all the folks that rally around any black person who has had a bad knock and claim they couldn’t help it/won’t get fair treatment/were oppressed and all the other stuff they blame other than the guy just happens to be a jerk.
No, it isn’t the same thing.
Your “feeling” is incorrect, and does not have a bearing on what is happening in reality.
In fact, Michelle Obama hasn’t made any comment on this situation as far as I know, and not everybody posting to this thread is black, so…