And a crow is just a crow, and a monkey is just a monkey.
The only “outraged” and “bent out of shape” people I see in this thread are the ones overreacting to some other posters’ reasonable and thoughtful explorations of whether and how an innocently intended image might nonetheless come across as racist if taken out of context.
The rest of us are calmly and realistically discussing potential nuances of symbolism and idiosyncratic interpretation, like grownups.
I don’t see how it could be. But the thing is, someone could easily decide it is so, regardless of your best intentions, the author’s intentions, etc… We can’t control what others think.
I’d say if it’s not obvious (which it isn’t), then why worry?
I’d say this thread was sort of the wrong way to test thing since it primed people to look for racism. I’d take the duck picture, show it to some people and just say “What do you think of this?” and see if any significant number says “That’s one racist duck!”
Except crows and monkeys were used as racist caricatures of Black people, and ducks… were not.
Also a valid question. After all, we just spent dozens of posts in this recent thread debating whether the possibility that some rando might incorrectly interpret a religious icon and get mad over an innocent picture of a Hindu swastika can be reason enough not to use the Hindu swastika symbol. Just because a user’s intent is innocent doesn’t automatically mean that the intended use is a good idea.
Right, which is why the discussion of this image here has been focusing on potential misinterpretation of its secondary and anthropomorphized characteristics rather than its basic duck identity.
I mean, maybe? As @Miller suggested, @whc.03grady may not want to spend much time explaining “It’s not a racist thing!” to people. Inviting hassle, even unjustified hassle, might not sound like a good time.
I think the thread has demonstrated that it’s unanswerable. We have people here that are literally seeing a different image than others, due to the vagaries of how their computer is displaying a highly-compressed video and how that interacts with their own color perception.
But the distortions produced by a tattoo artist, while significant, have no relationship to those caused by the computer display. It’s unpredictable whether any given image will somehow have the details inadvertently altered so as to give the impression of racism for someone inclined to look for it.
When some of the people thinking there are minstrel-like elements can’t tell the difference between a circle and a rectangle in those secondary elements, I’m not going to give their side a lot of weight.
O…kay, I guess? Not quite seeing where the geometric-shape issue comes in.
What shape is a banjo body?
If you removed the hat and stick, what remains would just be one cool anthropomorphized dancing duck - with sportcoat and neckerchief. Would that work for you?
If not, you could always try for one of the noncontroversial Dr. Seuss characters.
Sure, that’s why I said they should just show it to some people blind. If I showed ten people a swastika I’d likely get ten “wtf??” answers back and know it’s a terrible idea even if I didn’t prime the pump by asking if there’s anything racist about it.
I’m not an expert on tattoos. If one uses a good artist and makes it clear that specific colors and design are important, doesn’t one expect to get either something very close to what’s asked for, or else an explanation that the artist can’t do that?
Oh, I see, you as a music aficionado are rightfully incensed at somebody’s lumping a cigar-box chordaphone into the category of “banjo”.
TBF, though, AFAICT many minstrel-show bands did use rectangular box instruments as well as banjos.
Not the ones that poster specifically linked to. Plenty of banjos, didn’t see any box-basses.
More importantly, the banjos there are emphatically not “like the duck’s”.
All it does is make me question the ability of one side of the argument to actually see what’s in front of their face. Because not only were they mistaken on obvious visual differences, no-one else corrected them either.
But sure, make with sarcasm, that’s suuure to make me reconsider my stance.
And in any case, I don’t actually see a wealth of minstrel bands playing homemade instruments. Perhaps you’d care to link to “many”. Hell, even a few.
That is indeed the question, yes.
Nobody other than you, as near as I can tell, thought that the exact nature of the instrument is what makes the image possibly dubious.
I find this discussion interesting, and reminiscent of much I encounter/hear these days. I don’t see it as anything other than a duck. But some folk obviously do - going so far as to say it is clearly a “racist trope.” Who is right?
It raises the issue, do certain persons “see racist tropes” when they really oughtn’t? I would think getting offended by this image would properly be awfully low in priority for folk concerned with racism and equality. But each of us gets to be bothered by whatever we choose.
I don’t have any tats. I just don’t care for them. But anyone else is free to do what they wish with their body. I would think a random walk through a farmer’s market in warm weather would reveal any number of body ink more clearly - uh - “offensive” than this dancing duck. But to each their own - both in choosing a tat and choosing to assign value statements to someone else’s ink.
It’s not the nature of the image that was dubious. It was the clear certainty of the observer that the minstrels in their link were using the same instrument as the duck.