Actually lots of people in this thread, including the OP, believe it to be racist. If not, why was it even included in this thread? Why not just stick with the glaring example of the first button and leave it at that.
I have to agree with Carol here. For me, the button’s stupid and, even if I were a Republican AND a Christian (of which I am neither) I’d still never wear it. But that doesn’t make the button racist, nor the button wearers for that matter. I can’t even see any deeper hidden meanings here. Someone tell me what I’m not picking up on. Because you’re proud of being X, Y, and Z you automatically hate all that isn’t X, Y, and Z? That doesn’t even make sense.
Fuck you if you can’t take a joke.
One of the things that is going to send this country straight to Hell is the ability of many of its citizens to generate huge quantities of outrage and offense at any perceived slight or insult.
You’re ugly, you’re fat, and your kids are not precious and unique snowflakes.
Well Clinton did have two terms to get it done…oh wait George Clinton :smack:, nevermind.
CMC +fnord!
Right. Carol Stream is a suburb of Chicago, and I don’t think the poster who goes by that name has ever mentioned his or her gender. Really wants to avoid revealing that, apparently, for whatever reason.
If that “Jewish Lobby” garbage was put up on the Obama website by a Ron Paul supporter, color me not surprised.
What’s happening with the Ron Paul groupies? Are they all going to write in their hero in November? Vote for Bob Barr? Go back to full-time lobbying against chemtrails? Get drunk with the hard-core Hillaryites? It’ll be interesting to see if McCain makes a concerted effort to woo them.
The political button flap at the GOP state convention seems a bit overblown, seeing as the racist overtones this campaign season have largely come from the Clinton camp.
I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make here. 
:dubious: 
Is the button really racial “hatred”? That seems pretty strong for just a dumb joke.
Is there something I’m not getting from the lame-ass joke, perhaps? I don’t see any implication that one race is inferior to another, or even playing on any stereotypes of any race.
I’m not thrilled to be defending the Republican party, but shouldn’t there be some indication of hate before accusing anybody of hatred?
I’m offended by the button.
I’m a 50 year old Black chick and I’ve mellowed over the years - I’m not overly sensitive but I can’t understand how anyone can defend the sale of that crap at a party sanctioned event. It’s not just a “dumb joke”. It’s pitiful.
Well, please help me understand it, explain why it offends you. A lot of the racist jokes I hear over the years I see as being offensive because it makes a race look inferior, or plays off of a racial stereotype. Maybe I’m just not getting the joke here, but I don’t see why this one is offensive. Yes, it’s a “joke” that involves race, but surely not every joke that simply involves race in any way is automatically “racial hatred”?
But at least Carol Stream can have it’s own button.
I hear she looks an awful lot like a broken record.
Put me in with the “it isn’t offensive, per se, but it’s pretty fucking lame” group.
This ‘joke’ bugs me because it’s devisive. It tries to say that Obama is different from other presidents. If it was another white guy then there’d be no problem, but because this person is black well things are going to be different aren’t they? He’s not just another person, he’s a black person. It makes an ‘us’ and ‘them’ situation. And even though there’s nothing in the joke about it, ‘them’ are never as good as ‘us’.
If the next president was going to be of Chinese descent, would the joke have been about the Yellow House?
The White House isn’t called the White House because a white man lives in it. The “joke” is taking a non-color issue and makes it a color (race) issue. That’s offensive to me in this context. It’s the assumption if we elect a black president we’ll somehow have to change the way we do things.
Do you honestly think the good ol’ boys at the Republican convention did not see this as racist?
Setting is important. By virtue of the fact that this button was on display at a Republican state convention implies a negative bent on anything said about Obama. And that’s fine for policy positions, etc., but race? Even though it’s said in the form of a joke, the underlying message is that Obama’s race is incongruent with the White House. It’s also a reminder that this is a black man, yall. A Black Man!
If the target audience for this button had been anyone except Republicans, I probably would probably just see as it a lame joke. But in this case the setting creates a context that makes this joke offensive and lame.
There is a long history behind the idea that something white is “tainted” and made less desirable by inclusion of a little blackness.
Look at the “one drop rule.” In many states, you were considered legally black, and therefore inferior, if you had the slightest trace of African ancestry. It didn’t matter what you looked like. (Wikipedia Article) Also, there are many stories, both real and fictional, about people who are able to “pass” as white, only to have their worlds fall apart when people around them discover that they have some black ancestry.
And here’s a (painful) example from my personal life: I’m white. I college, I dated a guy for a couple of months. One day, he told me that he would never sleep with a woman who had slept with a black guy, because that meant she was “marked,” and he wouldn’t want that passed along to him. Of course I dumped him right away. I never did tell him that he was now “marked” too. (I still wonder whether that was the right decision. )
Also, in the English language, “white” connotes pureness and goodness, and “dark” connotes that which is dangerous or bad. This is unfortunate, of course, but it is part of the language at this point.
That button neatly tapped into the twin notions of blacks being able to “contaminate” whites/whiteness, and the color white being more pure than darker colors.
It is blatantly racist. The very inanity of the sentiment reinforces this, as it’s designed to appeal to the same sort of knee-jerk xenophobia as comments like “Obama rhymes with Osama” do.
On preview: You with the face brings up a good point–that the button implies that a black man is “incongruent with the White House.” So much so that it implies that we’d have to change the NAME of the place if he’s elected.
OK, assuming this is a correct analysis, does that really rise to the level of “racial hatred”?
If I had to guess, I’d guess that they saw it as a joke that involved race, but they did not see it as a joke that put down a race, and hence judged it not racist. It could be simply insensitivity and ignorance of how stupid it is to make a joke that involves race in any way. That’s just my guess, of course. But as much as I dislike the GOP, and in fact do think a lot of them are racist, calling this joke “racial hatred” seems like quite an overreaction IMHO.
Yeah, well, you see a “recent and tawdy history” of the party as a whole extrapolated from one incident at a state convention, and I think you’re full of shit. I resent it when my party is accused of holding as an institutional “value” something that is so antithetical to its actual philosophy. You see evidence of some wider institutional Republican racism in this distasteful little incident because that’s what you want to see. You extrapolate from a state party convention a value you would like to assign to the national party because that what you want to extrapolate.
But of course I have absolutely no doubt that if this were an incident at a Democratic state convention and buttons were handed out by one exhibitor that were offensive, well, that would just be an isolated incident of one bad apple, which of course could not be extrapolated to represent the opinions of the convention as a whole, much less the national party. But we’re talking about Republicans, so it could not possibly be just one or two racially insensitive dumbasses, no – it has to be those mean ol’ racist Republicans.
Your assertion the party as a whole provides “aid and comfort” to racism is complete and utter bullshit.
And all of whom prior to that were racist Democrats. Suck on that.
Seems to me that with this argument, any joke in the English language whatsoever that mentions the black race is by definition racist, because of the connotations you mention. Is this a correct interpretation of your argument?
Is it possible, in your view, that this is not necessarily the interpretation that the writer of the button had in mind? Speaking for myself, I did not see this interpretation, but perhaps I am insensitive. It’s certainly possible the person making this button was insensitive as well?
That would be more clearly demonstratively racist, since referring to Chinese as yellow is already a widely known-as-offensive stereotype, and referring to black people as “black” is not (to my knowledge).
Yes because it plays to a larger audience stirring racism. And it does so with the apparent stamp of aproval from a part of the government. Someone who yells fire in a crowded theater does no actual physical harm to anyone, right? In a similar vein, it’s why we have laws against ‘inciting’ a riot.
That’s laughable in my opinion but since neither one of us were there I’ll agree to disagree.
It plays to a wider audience stirring jackassery, not racism. Not pretending that race isn’t there does not equate to racism.
It’s a silly racial joke - but it isn’t a racist joke.