Why do racists compare black people to apes in the first place? Where did that come from? What is the etiology?
It simply means less than human. Having evolved (even though dumb fucking racists don’t accept evolution as a thing) less that the whiteys. Fuck me. Honestly, did you really require an explanation???
Really? Asking that question is pretty much a Danny Baker level of dumbfuckery.
Yeah but why apes in particular? Do you have an actual answer?
I thought “a Danny Baker level of dumbfuckery” pretty much addressed your question.
No? Then let me help. Let me point out your views that it’s blacks (not outrageous US Republican dominated gun policy on behalf of the NRA) that are responsible for gun violence. Or that if one is looking for neo-Nazis, why, the best example is Rachel Maddow.
But you’re actually in a better position to evaluate what is so terribly wrong with the US, and why it’s sliding towards blatant racism and fascist authoritarianism, than most of us. All you have to do is look in the mirror, and observe the slack-jawed dumbfuck staring back at you.
Well, if we’re going to not forget things, let’s at least try to remember them accurately. Prince Harry’s notorious costume was not “Hilter”, but the uniform of a Nazi soldier in Rommel’s Afrika Korps, tying in with the party’s (oddly chosen IMO) theme of “Native and Colonial”.
While I think it’s in poor taste for almost anybody to cosplay as a Nazi (and especially so for a member of the House of Windsor) it’s clear that Harry was just dressing up as one of the “baddie” colonizers without any intent of glorifying or endorsing Nazis in general, much less “Hilter”. Similarly, somebody who attends a costume party dressed as, say, a school shooter or a pedophile priest is being pretty tasteless but not in any way condoning school shootings or child sexual abuse.
As for Danny Baker’s ape meme, I can’t in the least understand why he’d want to make a racist joke about Markle, but I agree with Riemann that “racist joke” is the only interpretation that makes even a little bit of sense as a joke. Portraying a brand-new baby, who has literally no known personality traits or past actions so far, as an ape for any non-racist reason would just come across as meaningless surrealism, like depicting a giant blue octopus on the dome of Saint Paul’s or something. What’s it even supposed to mean? It has no comprehensible message.
The vile message “HAW HAW DARKIE BABY IS AN APE BECAUSE SUBHUMAN GEDDIT”, on the other hand, is unfortunately all too comprehensible, because racists keep on gleefully repeating it at every opportunity.
Well seeing as he was only playing dress up as a Nazi soldier as opposed to Hitler that’s totally fine :rolleyes:
When you’re writing/drawing something, you’re concentrated, and bent on your view and interpretation of it, and I find absolutely unsurprising that other interpretations wouldn’t cross your mind at any point.
In fact, writing this, I suddenly realized that I either intended to do or actually had done exactly what he did. I had to check. Some months ago, I drew a woman of clearly mixed ancestry nicknamed “monkey” because of her tree climbing habits. After having verified, I didn’t in fact write the nickname in the text, but I definitely had it in mind and would certainly have mentioned it in a subsequent drawing that I just happen not to have made yet (and it’s not some subconscious thing, either, because it’s a variation, with others and older instances being white women). I since thought many times in fact of this drawing because I’m yet to make the next one, and of the text, and of the nickname that I like, and the connection with the racist slur never occurred to me.
Search for pictures of Begoña Villacís . Markle is mixed-race because one, she’s American (where “race” is not about either looks or ancestry but about culture and self-identification), and two, she’s living in a time in which America has this concept of “mixed-race” (just thirty years ago she would have been considered African-American). Villacís had to explain to her children that she wasn’t divorcing Daddy to go marry some dude she hadn’t even met, yet she’d be considered White by most Americans (some would change their mind once they saw the diacritics).
I’ve seen a Spanish newspaper (owned by an American company) refer to the baby as mulato. That’s wrong on a ton of levels*, but since I have you Brits here I’d like to ask: do you guys normally consider someone one of whose grandparents was mixed race black-and-white as being “mixed” themselves?
- it’s considered politically incorrect (derives from mula, mule), which many people don’t care about but that specific newspaper would never use that specific term to talk about many other people to whom it applies more accurately; it’s most often used to refer not just to someone with mixed black and white ancestry but to specific ratios thereof (half-black or more); it emphasizes one branch of the kid’s ancestry to levels which aren’t normal in a Spanish cultural context (oh hello, one-drop rule… oh wait, that’s not a rule we’ve ever had). That kid’s most recent wholly-black ancestor is about as recent as my own wholly-Italian one, but nobody would emphasize my Italian-ness to that extent except as a joke when commenting on my pasta dishes.
Largely not- after all, it’s not as though we’d normally know unless they brought it up. Unless they describe themselves that way, I guess, in which case no-one would argue. I had a co-worker whose Dad was black Jamaican and Mum was white British; he referred to himself as mixed, and his own kids, who had a white mother, as white. White with one black grandparent, but they looked white (both blonde as babies was a big part of it), so they were.
Racism here does largely seem to be based on appearance, and is skin tone dependant, rather than strictly ancestry. Take this for example… Bit odd when we’re supposed to be the country obsessed with family history, but there you go.
It does actually incline me towards thinking Danny Baker really wasn’t thinking about race, but about the ‘Media circus’, about the birth, as the kid probably really isn’t going to be described as black here. It’s not really that obscure, the phrase has been in about half the headlines over the last few days, as the tabloids start reporting about the reporting about the baby in an attempt to drag it out.
I’m sure at some point he did, although behind closed doors. It’s usually a safe bet to assume Phil has said something offensive on every topic.
No, we haven’t forgotten it. And Harry took a lot of deserved flak for both, as I vaguely recall.
In Old School terminology young Archie would be considered a “quadroon” but these days, in those instances where racial makeup is relevant (or amongst those who get worked up about such things), “mixed-race” usually suffices. That said, and as always, a lot depends on physical appearance. For example, Barack Obama is mixed race but looks black, so is considered black for most intents and purposes. Someone who can “pass” for white will usually be considered white.
Welcome to the club of those who realize pool has the “good people on both sides but the worse people are on the not racist scum side” viewpoint.
Pass for white until Black ancestry is known. Sad that still applies.
Just to add to this – Obama “looks black” because our society has decided that people who look like Obama are black (for the most part). There’s nothing about his looks that are more intrinsically “black” than intrinsically “white” – it’s just that our society has decided that people with slightly dark skin and certain hair textures count as black, whether their ancestry is 10%, 30%, or 70% sub-Saharan African (or anywhere in between).
FWIW, Bakerhas issued an apology.
(He seems to have deleted the tweets about how the row meant it was his turn in the barrel, and how everyone could fuck off.)
I am aware of all this - I was just taking it as read to avoid the tangent that we’re now on.
I don’t know Baker personally, but when I saw the story this morning my first reaction was that the truth was along the lines of his subsequent apology, quoted above. He has explained it better than I could, and I see absolutely no reason to doubt it. The key point being, as someone has already said, why would anyone in his position deliberately post a picture with racist intentions? It was a thoughtless and terrible mistake. That doesn’t totally excuse it of course, but he is at worst guilty of subconscious racism, which as BigT said is something we all have to watch for and fight against, sometimes.
Also, and I’m not saying this to be deliberately controversial, but why is the race of the child even relevant in this day and age? If that picture had been posted on the birth of any of Will and Kate’s kids, for example, there would be no such reaction. So, those who have taken offence to this are the ones to bring race into it. It seems a ‘quiet word’ to Baker as to this being inappropriate (which he immediately realised anyway) was the way forward, not vitriolic outrage and calls for his sacking. I totally understand his initial reaction being disbelief at this storm in a teacup, though his subsequent words are much more appropriate.
He doesn’t. Put him between a picture of some 100% black guy and some 100% white guy, and I defy you to show me objectively why he looks more like the former than the later.
And many celebrities who are listed as black (check “most beautiful black women” lists, for instance) look even less stereotypically black than him (the mother of the royal baby being one of them), to the point for some of being indistinguishable from a white woman unless you know that they’re supposed to be black and actively look for evidences of it.
Would you have guessed that the royal baby’s mother was “black” if you hadn’t been made aware of it? I know I wouldn’t have and have difficulties finding any black feature at all on her pictures.
He very much does. He has the same darker skin color as many if not most black people. In many photos, his skin color is the same as his wife’s, who is unquestionably black even when her skin is at its lightest. His hair has the curls of black people, to the point that he has to keep it shaved really short or have an afro. He speaks with a black accent.
No one who didn’t know his parentage would call him anything other than black, because we all know 100% black people who look like him.
And the fact that you don’t think that celebrities widely known as being black look black says that you don’t know what black people look like. They wouldn’t be known to as black unless they looked black.
Though Megan Markle isn’t one of them, and is not actually known to be black. That was overly emphasized when due to marrying a UK royal.
Obama isn’t that much lighter in skin tone than Mandela, and Mandela, from reading his Wikipedia page, appears to be ethnically 100% South African (Xhosa). Is Mandela a “100% black guy”?
