This would be easy to get away with if Morris dancers were stuck in Brigadoon. They’re not, they show up on Youtube. Sure, no-one in their live audience is going to take offence (or wouldn’t have 30 years ago - demographics change) but nowadays?
There are probably a great many things out there that would be frightening or perhaps offensive to me just because I don’t understand their context.
We can’t reduce everything down to a universal denominator without discarding a lot.
Can you give me an example of this “genuinely trying to copy a skin tone”? Because all the examples I can find are, yes, “a single very dark tone”
So what makes noses caricature but skin tone not?
That really, really doesn’t get them a pass in my book (after they’ve been told the first time that it’s not on - you are telling them it’s not on, right?) Not in the modern world.
Short version - depends on how it’s drawn.
MrDibble, can you tell me how the modern world should resolve the issue discussed in thisthread?
It’s the one I linked earlier - and the situation is:
[ul]
[li]The term ‘Paki’ is horribly racist in the UK[/li][li]The same term is just a neutral descriptor elsewhere[/li][/ul]
We don’t have to discard* all *cultural uniqueness in order to develop a universal value that says “Hey, these groups of people have historically been oppressed, and one of the ways that was done was by reducing them to a cypher based on skin colour. Maybe that’s not OK anymore?”
Sure, but it seems like we’re saying we also need to do that merely because someone might misunderstand us as reducing them to a cypher based on skin colour, regardless of our intent.
Personally, I’d say the rest of the world should suck it up and stop using the term, myself.
I mean, ‘Jap’ isn’t a South African pejorative but you won’t catch me using it.
And I’ve given up on ‘white trash’ and ‘hillbilly’ after interactions here, even though those aren’t the native epithets for poor Whites.
No, I’m not saying that. But I am saying every instance of using skin colour to signify “Of African Extraction”* is* such a reduction. Every last one.
But that doesn’t mean every time* it looks like* that’s what’s happening, it is the case - I’ve allowed that it might not be the case for Border Morris, for instance (although I doubt it, myself)
That’s what I thought (when I blundered into that thread).
Read the thread. It turns out that one of the places where ‘Paki’ is neutral, is Pakistan.
How is the term ‘black’ at all acceptable, in this case?
Fair enough
And often also in discussion between Pakistanis in the UK, though rarely with outsiders (except for my generation and older who was here in the UK before the epithet became abusive- they use it more freely.)
I understand this. And they’re welcome to use it in-group, like ‘nigger’. But I won’t use it, and I’m not in the UK, I’m sure it’s pretty neutral here too. Common decency stops me.
Well first of all say whether you think such an attempt would be racist or not. Otherwise it’s moot anyway.
I made it very clear.
Noses are a caricature, if they are a caricature i.e. not trying to accurately depict the appearance of an individual.
Skin tone is also a caricature if it’s a caricature i.e. not trying to accurately depict the skin tone of an individual.
I wasn’t offended and no offense was intended, why is it not on? Why should I want to mould China into the condition of the West on this issue?
Shared language to ease understanding?
It’s not my preferred term by any means (for one thing, it distinctly lacks clarity) and I tend not to use it off this MB
I can’t say because I’m having difficulty picturing what you mean in my head.
And we’re not discussing making up a White person to accurately depict the skin tone of a particular African individual, are we?
You weren’t offended being treated as an exhibit? Good for you. I would be. If someone tried to touch my hair because it’s afro-textured, they’d get such an earful.
Because the attitude of the West (well, the enlightened parts of it)* is the right one*. I’m sorry, but treating Black people as natural curiosities kind of should be dumped into the dirtbin of history.
By this I mean that I tend to use terms with much more specificity, such as “Bantu” or “Congolese” or “Mr Smith”, and my default everyday term for a South African Black is “African” (which, yes, excludes all non-Black Africans, but it’s the term I grew up with)
It is also, to the extent that one chooses to discuss the “reality” of race, off-topic to this thread as I have already noted.
[ /Moderating ]
Point is, there can be no universal, one-size-fits-the-the-whole-world version of acceptability, and it’s not even reasonable to expect people to ‘play safe’ - nobody can know every possible context in which they could be understood.
And acceptability changes over time. I my life it has been correct to call people in the USA with African heritage ‘Colored People’, Negroes, Blacks, African Americans, People of Color. Two of those terms are now verging on derogatory and who knows what will happen to the later ones in time.