Well, no doubt you must all already think I’m the most clueless person alive, but that it not obvious to me at all. It doesn’t denigrates a race or perpetuate stereotypes or do anything that I consider racism.
Sometimes racism is implicit and sometimes its explicit. It seems like what you’re saying is that unless something is so blatantly explicit that dead Hellen Keller can hear and see it, you can’t call it racist because it may not be what the writer purposely suggested. This kind of thinking doesn’t help anyone except those who want to get away with racial digs like this one and the sock monkey purveyors.
I give things and people the benefit of the doubt all the time, but sometimes you have to stop parsing semantics and call things out for what they are. This is one of those times.
Rev, man, I like and respect you, I really do. Which is why the best response I can think of is merely to point out that you said it, I didn’t. 
So I ask you, would you find this “joke” to be sexist if you’d seen this on a sign at an early Obama rally?
“If Clinton is President, will we have to call it the Pink House?”
If you do and your reasoning falls back on pink = female stereotype therefore it’s sexist, then all that means is that you are stuck on parsing definitions and are missing the greater point.
The whole nature of this discussion seems to be how obvious and blatant and inarguable the racism is, so it did seem like nobody was even considering any other possibility.
Sure, it’s possible the person who made the button might have intended the reader to make the same inferences you have made. I personally don’t feel the need to look for the worst inferences I can find in statements and take that as the greatest probability, even if it is the GOP we’re talking about.
No, because opposing Obama does not equal racism.
No, I mention myself to show that it’s at least possible to not see racism in the button, because I am an example. If it’s possible that I didn’t see it, then it’s possible the person who made it did not see it.
One can be insensitive or clueless about how people find offense where none was intended.
Well, help a clueless dude out, and explain it! After this thread I may never open my mouth again, I must be saying some pretty racist shit without me realizing it!
In all seriousness, if you’re making jokes or comments that point out people’s race for absolutely no good reason, then you’ll probably want to cut it out at once.
I did try to explain it, so now let’s turn it around. What is the point of the button if not to highlight Barack Obama’s race in a negative way? I’m asking you: How do you read the button in a way that is not completely nonsensical and also not a negative comment on his race?
So, if I’m consistent with my logic that using a well-known stereotype is obvious racism or sexism, but not using one may not be, then I’m missing some kind of point.
Yes you’re missing the point. The offensiveness of the joke comes not from the mere use of a stereotype, but the implication that gender is a negative thing. Saying such a thing at an Obama rally tells you a negative value judgement is being made about Clinton. The reference to pink tells you that value judgement has to do with her gender. That pink happens to be a female stereotype is incidental to the motivation of knocking Hillary down for being a woman.
I think you are being clueless at this point. Sorry.
Perhaps it will help me if you paraphrase what the negative comment being made about his race is that you see. Or is it simply the inferences and suggestions that have already been mentioned? No need to repeat those, I feel it’s been adequately explained what people are seeing. In that case, I think we’ll just have to agree that you all see them obviously, and I don’t, and move on.
It is? As far as I can tell, some posters say they see the message and some don’t. What do you want, people to pretend they don’t see the message if it’s clear to them?
I’m far from a partisan. I dislike both parties equally, so I have zero motivation to slander the Pubs as any more racist than the Dems. And I don’t feel that I’m looking for a bad inference at all, but merely observing a subtext. Of course reading subtext is subjective, and what is crystal clear to you may go over my head entirely. The question is what the button means, not whether Revtim is a racist fool for what he thinks it means. I promise.
I agree, but I don’t grasp the relevance. Can you explain how you arrived at that response? It seems non sequitur.
Is it possible for the message to be racist even if the maker had a pure and noble heart with no trace of malice toward any human in it?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080618/ap_on_el_pr/texas_gop_obama_2
They’re also donating the vendors fee, $1500, to midwest flood victims.
Thanks for the update, Squink. That’s about as good of a response from the GOP as I could wish.
When I was a kid there were tons of racist Democrats. They mostly became Republicans. :rolleyes:
The logic goes something like this: The button is obviously meant to be anti-Obama, because it’s being distributed to Republicans at a Republican convention. Why shouldn’t someone vote for Obama? The button only mentions one of Obama’s qualities: his race. The implication, therefore, is that Obama’s race is sufficient reason not to vote for him.
Now, it’s certainly possible that the person who made this pin shares your particular blindspot as to the implications of what his button was saying. It is not very likely, because most people don’t seem to have the same problem seeing the subtext to this button that you do. When you consider that there was almost certainly more than one person involved in creating and marketing this button at the convention, it becomes even less likely that none of them looked at this thing and at least thought, “Whoah, is this thing going to send the message we want to send?” It’s still possible, but odds are very strongly in favor of this being the intended subtext, and not a simple misunderstanding.
That’s an excellent response from them.
I asked YOU to explain how YOU are reading it. I feel like the rationale for why it is pretty obviously racist has been set forth repeatedly. What isn’t clear is how you are able to read the button in a way that both avoids the inference of racism and yet still makes any sense at all. So you can explain your POV and then maybe we can figure out where the disconnect is. Otherwise, yeah, we’ll have to agree to disagree for reasons you’ve already set forth, i.e, you are simply failing to see what virtually everyone else sees, for reasons unknown.
Thanks, squink. So they blackballed him, huh? 
(I am so going to hell.)
When we get there, it will always be Pledge Week.
Oh, Wait, I have another handbasket here;
The only way that button would be funny to me is if, when seeing it someone’s lapel, ya could push it and out would come the theme song to The Jefferson’s: “Moooovin’ on up, tooo the White House; We fin’lllly got a piece off the Pi aahhhhh iiieeeee…”
And that’s not even that funny, but answers the dumb pretense of it’s Haw-ra with a reference to humor about as dated.