IMHO, there’s a great difference between continuing to use a symbol of goodness that has been used for millenia, even if it was, at one point, adopted by a genocidal warmonger, and marketing products based on stereotypes born of racism.
I am part Asian and I wasn’t offended by the shirts. But people buying clothes from A&F… now that’s offensive.
Way back in 7th grade (about 1971) we had to write stories with morals.
Mine was about a couple who were oriental and kept trying to have a white baby.
But it didn’t work.
The moral: Two wongs don’t make a white!
While I disagree with your statement of ‘fact’, I think that addressing whether or not it is accurate is a red herring.
Instead, I ask you to give careful thought to the following:
Since the development of an industrial society ‘whites’ have dominated the world. I don’t intend to digress into any discussion of why this is so, except to say that I don’t think it is due to any ‘racial superiority’; it just happens to be current situation.
Unfortunately, many ‘whites’ believe that it is racial superiority, either consciously or unconsciously, and their attitudes and actions reflect that. Some of these people are honest enough to feel guilty about it.
Can you see how the ‘non-white’ world might feel uneasy about any indication that ‘whites’ might consider ‘others’ feelings so inconsequential that they openly ridicule them? Why they might express support for each other against what one group feels is a cultural slur, but shrug and turn away in indifference when the target is ‘whites’? And why many ‘whites’ are willing to overlook many racial slurs directed at them?
Consider this: The dominate member of ‘white’ society, the US, demonstrated its willingness to commit acts of almost incomprehensible destruction and violence against another group when it dropped the bombs on Japan. Since then we have developed even more powerful and atrocious weapons. If you have so little disregard for the feelings of the Chinese that you expect them to silently accept something they are offended by just because you think it is funny, how hard would it be to feel that it is okay to drop a few bombs on them if they disagree with you about something more important? Better to speak up now about the little things to keep reminding you that they have feelings, too, than to silently accept and accept and accept until the bomb-owners have lost all respect for your feelings.
I’ve seen several people mention something similar, and wanted to comment on the subject.
The reason that members of a particular group may, and do, ‘adopt with pride’ an offensive stereotype is to defy the power of that stereotype to hurt them. If you are blond-haired, blue-eyed WASP and someone calls you a ‘slant-eyes’ you are not likely to feel insulted because obviously the term doesn’t relate to you in any way because you aren’t Asian. It has no power to hurt you because it is meaningless to you. If that person calls you a ‘honky bastard’ your reaction might be quite different!
Remember the childhood mantra “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me”? This is just a way of denying that another’s persons words have power over you. So, if you are Mexican and wear a t-shirt that says “wetback” or “greaser”, it doesn’t mean that you are accepting that term as a valid description, but that you are advertising to others than those words have no power to harm you.
Insults are often used as weapons; but if someone attacks you with what they think is a sharp knife but is actually a rubber fake you aren’t hurt in any way and can laugh at them for being ineffectual.
And in case anyone has forgotten to mention this, it is not just about racism - women may qualify as the ‘most, worst, and longest abused’ ‘minority’ on the planet.
Absolutely. And one of our most valuable assets is the ability to admit that we can be wrong, and accept that there’s room for more than one opinion in the world.
Nobody is saying you have to share them, just acknowledge that they exist and that those feelings are just as valid as your own.
And why are people not entitled to have individual opinions? Is this a version of ‘majority rules’? Do we have to poll all of the Asians in the world to see how many find the shirts offensive before admitting that they are?
Why don’t you walk around wearing a T-shirt that says “All Chinese are stupid because native Chinese speakers have a hard time pronouncing American English”? Because that is basically what those shirts say.
I’m sure any Chinese people you meet will understand when you explain to them why they shouldn’t be offended.
Let me preface this with some information.
I’m a 22 year old, white (1st Generation American), German raised, city boy from the mid-west. I have many friends from different cultures and value their differences. I watch Bill O’Riley and love him. I think he’s dead-on when it comes to most things. Jessie Ventura is my personal hero.
This gives me an opportunity to bring up something that’s been bothering me for a long time. I always hear references to the “<Insert Race Here> Leaders”. Am I the only person who finds this to be completely inane. To be quite honest, were I “African American” (Another term I find ridiculous) I would be EMBERASED by Jessie Jackson. The man does more harm than good.
The real issue here is about our ability to accept each other. In high-school I identified more with my immigrant Vietnamese friends than most of the whites I went to school with. They seemed to be a better class of people by and large. They were here to learn. I wish my own race could do this.
** We are all Human, race is irrelevant! **
Cite Cecil
[disclaimer]I haven’t read this whole thing, and I’m not even sure when it was last updated. So forgive me if I’m being redundant or bringing up a thread that was already abandoned.[/disclaimer]
People in that situation would have a valid reason to be offended. They’re living proof that Asians work other places than stores, restaurants and laundries. Work references can have tremendous racial connotations. Black man shining shoes, for instance, or Latino woman as a maid.
I heard a Latino actor (comedian? I missed the introduction) being interviewed on KABC a while back. A lot of the discussion had to do with what was good and bad about being Latino in LA. Whoever it was said, “Man, sometimes you just gotta laugh…I was in a parking lot once, and this guy comes running up to me all upset. He said, ‘I locked my keys in my car! You’re Mexican, right; can you get them out?’”
**
Assuming you mean Native Americans, who brought them to America against their will? Miles Standish? They were here first, darlin’. What they were unwilling to do was give up their turf. And rightly so. 
**
:eek: Then what happened?
Hmm hope this wasnt braught up. I didnt have time to read all of the posts. But no you cannot have something PC and be funny. To laugh is to have an expression about someone elses pain or discomfort or your own. That is why we laugh. And if you dont laugh it is not funny so therefore to be funny is to be non pc.
Just think, if all of these PC liberals get their way anything funny would be outlawed or banned. Hmm. Can you imagine the laughter police listening for giggles because they know where there is laughter there is someones discomfort. And everyone knows it is a constitutional right to not be offended right?
I simply fail to see what is destructive here that isn’t destructive in political satire where individual persons may be characterized by speech or appearance.
If a significant Asian population is offended and demands that I accept that, well, big deal I guess. Let them take the shirts down.
I just wonder when we will ever be able to get passed these sorts of things. It worries me that hostile reaction to these types of images create as much reactionary racism as they were hoping to eliminate.
AFAICT, these shirts will neither defeat racism nor promote it. As such, the whole thing seems vastly unimportant to me. But then again, I’m white, so obviously I cannot empathize with feelings of ostracization. :rolleyes:
'Cause, you know, that is only limited to historic races, not to anything else.
:rolleyes:
Can someone translate this from Foaming Right-Wing Idealogue to English, please? I’m just a comically-insensitive PC liberal trying to get by.
Remeber. White people never feel isolated. Those kids in Colombine were just brainwashed by video-games. Thats all. :rolleyes:
Destructive as in, former Cabinet member Henry Cisneros being called “Cheese Nachos”? Or somebody, I forget who, mocking Judge Ito, during the OJ trial, by bucking his teeth and pronouncing the name “EEeeee-toe”?