Black american culture in the US is often daft and cries out for satire.
You are 100% just making that up. You are absolutely without a doubt making that up and I’d love to see you provide any single shred of evidence to the contrary.
*Bolding mine.
Such beliefs do not always appear in a vacuum. It’s worth remembering that Indigenous Australians make up only 1/40th of the population, but represent 1/5th of the prison population. Combine that with the indiginous communities’ problems with child abuse, substance abuse and rape, and people are going to start getting sick of being blamed for other people’s self-destructive actions.
The problem, as far as I see it, isn’t that saying bad things about a significant part of the indigenous community is racist, the problem is that it’s true.
So do you think the problem here is a fundamental characteristic of the race in question or the aftermath of the marginalization of a people resulting from centuries of brutally unfair treatment and racism?
Just so you know, one of those answers is all kinds of shitty.
It’s a bit hard to provide “evidence” for “what-if” scenarios (I’m certainly not going to start poring over my history texts on Colonial History and 19th Century Warfare to “win” an argument on a messageboard), but look at it this way:
The primary supplier of arms and ammunition to the Confederacy were the British “Gun Trade”. Confederate buyers would purchase arms and ammunition from British manufacturers (notably the London Armoury Company), initially with cash, but later with cotton and what few raw & trade goods the Confederacy could still produce. These guns were then smuggled past the Union blockade into the Confederacy. There was almost no local Confederate arms industry- a couple of thousand revolvers (almost all being copies of Colt or Remington designs from the North, with the exception of the LeMat) and Fayetteville rifles made using equipment captured from Harper’s Ferry.
The point of all this is that the British didn’t actually need Confederate cotton because they could get their own from India (without "slavery), so assuming the Confederacy had managed to “beat” the Union (or at least convince them to leave the Confederacy alone), who were they (the Confederacy) going to sell their major cash crop to? The Union sure as hell weren’t going to buy it. The British didn’t need it (they had their own), and the British could undercut the Confederacy’s prices anyway. They might have been able to sell some to Mexico or other Latin American countries, or possibly somewhere like Russia, but there’s no way it would have been enough to support their entire economy.
The Confederacy also lacked significant heavy manufacturing industry, and the end result is that after a successful Succession, they were still going to owe a lot to the British- who were staunchly anti-Slavery. And the Royal Navy at the time was the world’s most powerful, and if the British said “Right, you’ve got your Secession, now let’s see a timetable for the phasing out Slavery”, then the CSA would have no choice but to comply because otherwise they’d have the Royal Navy blockading their ports (and the Royal Navy would mount a successful blockade) and their economy would collapse entirely because they’d have virtually no trade capability.
Even if- if- the British decided to look the other way regarding the Slavery issue (and I honestly doubt they would), the economic realities of the time meant that slavery was no longer a particularly efficient institution, and since the Civilised World was (largely) opposed to it, it was only a matter of time before the CSA were forced, coerced, or persuaded to abolish Slavery whether they liked it or not.
I think the problem is a fundamental characteristic of the culture, not the race. Even if the problem is the result of centuries of brutally unfair treatment and racism, that would not change my opinion of the people responsible one iota. They are humans, and they have the ability and the responsibility to not abuse their children or torment innocent people, no matter what their history.
So for the hundreds, maybe thousands of years that this culture was the sole occupant of Australia, do you think all the bad things you mention were endemic to their civilization?
You see this sort of thing in a lot of (all?) places where one culture has been throughly subjugated by another. In the US it happens in the Native American populations; reservations have high crime, high alcoholism, and low education. It also occurs in black ghettos. Again, more crime, more drug use, less education. I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to draw some conclusions here, is it?
Yes, individuals are responsible for their own successes or failures. But when the minority of a culture is subject to a different, harsher, set of rules and conditions than the majority population of a culture; well, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise when those people have higher rates of criminal activity and lower rates of societal success, should it?
Some of the attitudes expressed here about Austrailian Aborigines remind me of the early 20th Century limited views that some whites held in the United States. You would have us think that they are nothing but a bunch of savages.
They include writers, artists, an Olympic Gold Medalist, a Wimbledon champion, human-rights activists, and multiple “Austrailian of the Year” winners. But school history books begin with the 18th Century and the arrival of white people. I can remember when American textbooks and literature books were like that.
If you are not educated to understand why something is racist, you may miss the point altogether. Entertainer Al Jolsen was very popular in America before World War II. He did some of his routine in blackface. I remember seeing it in a biographical movie that came out in the Fifties. I didn’t have the sense that he was ridiculing blacks at all. I just thought that for some reason he was pretending to be black. But in retrospect, of course black people didn’t look or act like that.
In elementary school some of us had an “expression” teacher who gave us little monologues to memorize and act out. Almost without exception they were written in what I would call “black voice.” It was as ridiculous and racist as blackface. The closest thing that I can think of to it is the way some of the really ignorant guys on “Amos and Andy” used to talk – only worse. I can’t believe these monologues were recited at school programs as entertainment. Now I wonder how we could have been so stupid not to notice how racist what we were doing was.
In 2007, an Australian comedy TV show called The Chaser did a sketch where the cast painted their faces black and impersonated the Jackson 5:
With no American judge present to cast an instant judgment upon it, the sketch came, went, and was quickly forgotten.
What’s the difference between this and the Jackson Jive? Is it different because The Chaser used a slightly lighter skin tone?
Simple. It is quite different. Listen to the lyrics and understand. It isn’t parodying the Jackson 5. They are impersonating them. The whole sketch is based upon reusing a well known song, changing the lyrics to fit a local political situation, and then singing the song. In the end the sketch attempts to mimic faithfully the look of the Jackson Five. Clearly that is not easy for them, but that is the intent. If they had had more money they probably would have done an even better job of mimickry. In many ways this sketch proves the point. The Hey Hey sketch was about a mean spirited attack on Michael Jackson which included his race. It clearly used the colour of makeup as part of the mean spiritedness. The Chaser sketch tried to be failthful to the look of the original film clip of the Jackson Five. There was no mean spirited intent towards the Jackson Five. (Plenty of mean spirited intent towards the politicans targetted in the song however.)
The Chaser are not exactly snowy white purity. For the most part they are close to bottom feeders in the comedy stakes. But in this particular sketch they are remarkably tame. This is pretty much standard fare for undergraduate comedy. (That is - impersonate well know pop group, and change lyrics to fit local topic.)
The point for the Hey Hey sketch is clear. If the Chaser did it right a couple of years earlier, exactly what excuse does Hey Hey have for what they let go to air?
The only aspect of “black American culture” I saw being satirized in the performance was black American skin color. Which isn’t actually a part of culture at all, it’s a genetic difference between races. I gather that some people think it’s hilarious to base comedy on the fact that certain populations have darker skin than others, but I fail to see what’s so “daft” about having dark skin or why people born with dark skin are just begging to be mocked.
So are statements like the one above.
There was a British TV show in the 70s called The Black and White Minstrel Show that was popular in Australia. They also used to perform live shows in Australia.
Although I doubt that they meant to be offensive I think it can be offensive to African Americans for the same reasons outlined above by omgzebras. They made themselves into ridiculous caricatures of African Americans with extremely black faces.
Similar to The Gong Show from the 1970s.
Not Australian, but I am a kiwi, and I didn’t see anything funny in the act. They coulda had fun by satrising michael, but it didn’t play out like that - the only thing that even approached funny was the colour difference between michael and his brothers - but that wasn’t played up for laughs at all
Two points I feel compelled to respond to:
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Offensive is not the same as racist. It’s very hard to argue that the skit wasn’t offensive - particularly since offense is often something in the eye of the beholder, and people DID take offense. I personally don’t think it was racist - “Hey Hey It’s Saturday” is just generally offensive.
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Blaming an oppressed minority for their own poor outcomes IS racist. I sincerely hope no one in this thread is suggesting that the Australian indigenous population are responsible for their own suffering.
At the risk of being labeled a racist who would you blame, I know how a lot of modern day aboriginals live because my blue eyed,white skinned great grandfather and grandfather lived the same lifestyle. There no tar road, electricity or medical treatment where they lived today without going back to the eighteen hundreds, half you kids dying young was just how life was. At some point the oppressed aboriginals have to take responsibility for their own destiny and make use of the free education and medical care the govt is willing to provide.
Bluezooky - I don’t think your statements are racist, but I don’t think you have allowed your knowledge of conditions in aboriginal communities to inform your opinions.
If aborigines and Torres Strait islanders are full Australian citizens, then AS INDIVIDUALS they deserve the same standards and opportunities. The level of health, law enforcement and education services in their communities is below that provided to other communities. That’s without adding the understanding that these are disadvantaged communities deserving extra attention so that individuals aren’t hurt by the general community standard.
If aboriginal culture deserves protecting (which I think it does in addition to above) then we need to support that AS WELL through initiatives to supply culturally sensitive services.
That doesn’t explain the problems facing Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islanders who move to cities, though- cities where they have the same access to health, education, law enforcement, and social services as anyone else, regardless of skin colour.
Your point has no rational basis. There are any number of dolls that are pisspoor representations of people (think cabbage patch or whatever). The west also has a rich history of “whitey” icons. But a black doll that is a poor representation is racist (apparently) but a white one would never be suggested to be. Why? Because you can’t see a black doll that isn’t picture perfect as anything other than an attempt to ridicule, while the same thought would never occur to you in relation to a white doll. The problem lies in you.
I’m quite sure there would be few who did not understand that there will be people who are offended by almost anything. The more interesting question and the one raised by the OP is whether white guys parodying black entertainers is racist. Switch the “black” and the “white” around in your sentence and see how racist you are being.
I don’t know, most of the discussions have been on these boards. The thing is, every country has less than endearing terms for people from other cultures and races, but they vary greatly in offensiveness and taboo-ness. “Nigger” in the US is just utterly off the scale. It has gone beyond being a word that is offensive to use about someone in a derogatory sense and has become a word (like “Ni” from the Monty Python sketch) which is offensive by its very utterance. To the point where you risk offence by writing out the word in a discussion about culture, even putting it in quotes (ie as a word under discussion as used by other people) as you amply demonstrate by typing “the n-word”. Which is getting pretty silly.
And I guess that is a neat analogy to what leads me to question the whole idea that the skit under discussion is actually racist: it’s gone beyond what is rational. It has become a situation in which people are so worried they might be being racist or perceived to be racist or perceived to be aquiescing in racism that consideration of whether something might actually be inherently derogatory of a particular race has been lost.