Because I don’t agree with everything you say you assume I’m racist and so will filter my words through that. Are you self-aware enough to realise that you might be doing that?
As for not being racist, I only have my own experience, ethics, beliefs and actions to go own. For any practical purposes I am not a racist. You assume I am, I’m sorry if my denial bothers you. I know I’m not racist to the same degree that I know I’m not a thief or a swindler or an adulterer.
That you can post this with apparently a straight face is a perfect example of your huge blind spot. You will cling to the small-scale context of a brief dialogue or paragraph, but discount the large-scale context of history and societal conditions. They are both relevant.
The act of dressing up or wearing a costume and then allowing someone in the public to see you, or making a statement in public is an act of communication, and in communication, you are responsible for understanding the context and connotations of your acts or statements in the eyes and ears of your audience.
You keep harping on the intent. Intent is only one factor in an act of communication, and it may not even be one of the important factors. As I said before, you don’t get to act like you’ve fallen out of the sky when you choose to engage in communication. You are responsible for understanding the broader context in which you live.
Some things that have happened in history are so cruel and violent and abhorrent–and still continue today in a form that changes people’s lives–that you are being callous and insulting by insisting that you deserve the benefit of any doubt.
Even in this thread, you are being told about what blackface means to black people. It’s not just a thing that happens. It’s a thing that has played a role in generation after generation of suffering. And you insist on saying “but I don’t mean it that way.” That is you exercising a privilege of your position that black people don’t get to do. They don’t get to stop being black for even one breathing moment in their lives. But you feel you have the privilege of saying “well in this instance, I’m not exercising my power as a member of the ruling class in a white supremacist society, so give me a break”
No, I don’t assume you’re racist – not more than any other white person. I just said I don’t trust you to be a judge of your own racism.
This just shows that you don’t know what racism is. You have no clue.
Nope, that may be what you think, but not because that is what anyone has said. You are challenging a strawman.
On edit: I see that you have pushed BeagleJesus into giving an answer that does not have much nuance. But, as you have ignored any nuance in any answers given so far, can’t say that I blame him/her.
Because there is nothing absolutist about it. Do you know what a null hypothesis is? I specifically said that it is rare, not that it cannot be done. That you think that that is an absolutist position is absurd.
If you know that what you are going to do is going to piss people off, and you do it anyway, well, that’s the definition of trolling, so yeah. What else would you call it when you do something that you know will piss people off?
Trolling is trolling, and trolls troll.
I get it that you think that, but there is no reason for you to think that, unless you have already taken a position of your own. You are demanding that we give you bright line definitions, and then complaining that you think that people are giving absolutist answers.
the only absolutism I can give you is that if you can’t figure it out, then you should just avoid it.
Yes that was repeated a number of times, but is still not that strong a logical argument IMO. The skin color or eye-shape of the person one is trying to emulate is not a costume, for them. But the whole dress up is a costume for the emulator. I don’t see any logical objective reason to draw a bright line in how to dress up to look like somebody else as to whether various features of the ‘target’s’ appearance are their ‘style’ or their innate appearance. I think the hair color examples reinforce that. It doesn’t make any difference if Lucille Ball’s hair color was natural or not, a costume featuring it makes the emulator look more like her.
This is ‘person from Mars’ view I realize, but I still don’t think it’s productive to twist ourselves into pretzels trying to find pseudo-logical bass ackwards arguments like that as to why it’s logically, objectively different to darken your skin to dress up like somebody with darker skin rather than wear a mask of them which includes their skin color, or if that’s supposedly inherently offensive, to have the same hair style etc.
The reason it’s viewed as offensive is the particular history of a style of entertainment, principally originating in the US, where white people blackened their faces to appear as black people. It’s now viewed as having been for the purpose of ridiculing black people, or in any case viewed as symbolic of a racial hierarchy with white people on top and free to decide without input from black people what was offensive or not.
There’s no point in searching for logical reasons why particular form of costume in general are inherently offensive or not. Although other, current, context not just the historical context, could also affect it (eg. a person depicting someone of any race in a costume makes it clear they are doing it to mock that person in some way that’s viewed as out of bounds).
As for dressing up as your African American ‘hero’ as a white person in the US: just don’t. It’s not worth the potential grief no matter how you go about it.
I don’t have any major problem with the rest of what you wrote, but this conclusion you draw seems like you (and others) are petulantly and deliberately still missing the point.
White people can dress up as African American characters/celebrities. Just put on the right clothes, with the right style and affectations and viola, man. You too can be President Camancho. Or Tina Turner’s character from Beyond the Thunder Dome. Or Mr. T.
What’s wrong is to assume you can’t go as a black character unless you either share or can copy their skin tone. Do you agree with this? This seems like something everyone should be able to agree on. I don’t understand the idea that unless you are allowed to paint your skin without raising an eyebrow, then you might as well not even bother dressing up as Giordi or whomever. It’s that attitude that conveys a inordinate fixation with skin color that actually does look a lot like a racial hang up.
I think I’m being practical. Though you’re free to call it whatever else you want. In fact everyone does not agree that potential offense is limited to skin painting. In some cases masks have been questioned, in other cases exaggeration of hair styles. And whatever ‘everyone’ agrees today could change next week.
My advice would be, just don’t.
I trust my own understanding of what racism is.
Then you realize you have taken an attitude that is useless to actually changing society for the better, right? That you are not helping the people who are victimized by racism? Are you content with this?
In other words, what I said I suspected has been shown to be true.
Sure I do, I use it regularly in a professional and statistical sense. You can frame the question in various ways can’t you? The null could be that there is no benign intent unless evidence is strong enough to the contrary. Or, it could that there is no malicious or racist intent unless evidence is given to the contrary. You may go one way, I may go the other. Neither is objectively correct but I maintain that assuming malice unless proved otherwise is not the way to go. I prefer the latter case because my interactions with other human being on a regular basis lead me believe that malice is much rarer than good intent.
I wouldn’t even give it name seeing as it is an inescapable part of human interactions.
What would you call voicing a political or religious view that you know will piss people off? Would you suggest that certainty of that offence is reason enough not to voice it?
I know that is what you think, but there is no rational basis for telling white people not to cosplay as a character who happens to be black.
I hold it as an absolute moral necessity to treat people equally regardless of sex, gender, sexuality, ethnicity and actively work to challenge discrimination where I see it.
It is how I was brought up, it is how I am wired and it is how I act in real life. I’ve nothing to prove.
What I don’t do is blindly agree with every position taken on this subject which some people incorrectly interpret as being supportive or racism or racists.
My simple point is that condemning every skin tone change as racist is…
a) incorrect
b) unhelpful
It is a honest and consistent position. It does not mean that I think racism is not real, that people should be free to “black-up” without consequence, comment or thought or that different cultural and societal factors don’t combine to mean it is more problematic in some places than others.
It can be mean-spirited and racist, it has been mean-spirited and racist, but it is not always mean-spirited and racist. My challenge is always to those who deny that last point. My approach is always to start with that last assumption, others do not.
Actually, most everyone you’re arguing with has stated that there are cases where it could be forgivable or even appropriate.
What you’re ACTUALLY challenging, consistently, is whether how other people feel about an action should have a bearing on whether it is permissible. You’ve repeatedly suggested that ALL of your actions COULD be offensive, and that you couldn’t possibly know that.
The rest of us are advising you that, for multiple reasons, darkened face paint will, in nearly all cases, be offensive and will make people uncomfortable.
You seem to think that a white person’s desire to wear darkened makeup – so long as they aren’t doing so as a purposeful, spiteful, intentional racist – trumps consideration of the very genuine sense of offense, discomfort, and loss of safety that will bring to people of color.
No, in other words, after much showing that you are not going to understand nuance, one single person i this thread was frustrated enough to give you the bright line that you were looking for.
If that is a win for you, congratulations.
If you actually want to understand things, then you are going about it all wrong.
You are, once again, missing the point. If you hear hoofbeats, do you think horses or zebras? You are insisting that any time people hear hoofbeats, they approach it from the assumption that it is zebras, unless it is proven that they are horses.
Deliberately pissing people of is not an inescapable part of human interaction. It is something that you choose to do.
Depend on whether or not i care about pissing people off. As I have said repeatedly, I have no problem with pissing off trump supporters, so if my criticism of Trump offends a trump supporter, I don’t give a shit.
That does not mean that I set out with the intent of pissing off trump supporters, and I do interact with trump supporters on a regular basis in my life, and I am aware that if I just start spouting “trump sucks”, then I will likely piss them off too. So, even in my criticisms of a man I loathe, I still try to maintain “appropriate” circumstances.
What I am hearing from you is that if your “accuracy” in your portrayal of a black celebrity pisses people off, you don’t give a shit.
No. Because
Even a man who’s pure of heart
And is normally laid-back
Can become a racist when the show is on
And his face is daubed with black
a poor choice of analogy. You are trying to suggest that the frequency of racist intent is akin to horses and that of benign intent is something akin to the frequency of zebras in normal life. I simply don’t accept it and I suggest it is nowhere even close.
In any case I’d probably plump for the hoofed animal that is most common in my own area whilst being completely happy to accept that in other places and other circumstances a more exotic hoofed animal is far more likely. Your reaction here seems to be outrage that anyone could possibly reply “zebras” and that because it isn’t right for you it cannot be right for anyone. Are you going to tell the tribesman on the African plain that, yeah, he may have answered “zebra” but seeing as they are an equine species that he is wrong and they actually count as horses.
Pretty much by definition yes, that’s what “deliberate” means. However, If I choose to enter into a mixed ethnic/sectarian marriage knowing that I’ll offend either/both groups involved am I deliberately causing offence? If I choose to do it in order to cause offence is that different?
My understanding of nuance appears to have been good enough to correctly sniff out the absolutist position under the surface. We’re all grown-ups here, if that is not what they think they have ample opportunity to correct it or re-state it or apply their own nuanced enhancement.
If you see it in terms of sides and a win/lose proposition then I can see why it might annoy you. But it’s a discussion. Back and forth, clarification and question. If that’s what the poster actually thinks then better to get it in the open isn’t it?
So, you are saying that the vast majority of the time that someone applies blackface, it is done with respect?
I will disagree with this. It may be the case for what you have been exposed to, but that is simply a matter of lack of experience and ignorance on your part, as the vast majority of the time that blackface has been applied, it has been used for the purpose of mocking and denigrating minorities.
No outrage, you are just making that up. You are asking why some people would be offended, and I am answering why some people would be offended. You don’t like the answers, and that is fine. But then you ascribe an emotional state to your debate opponent that does not exist, and that does not further productive conversation.
My reaction is the simple stated fact that people will not assume zebras, as horses have been far more common. I am not outraged at all if someone stops and says, “Hey, maybe that’s a zebra.” but I am puzzled as to why you are not able to understand that people may say, “That sounds like a horse.”
Well, for your own conscience, intent matters. If you fall in love with a person, and your love offends someone, then you can make a decision as to whether your love is worth more than their offense. In that, I would support your decision.
If you are not in love with someone, but you marry them specifically for the purpose of offending people, then, even though all the same people are offended to the same degree, I don’t think you have made an appropriate decision.
Either way, the same people are offended, but the second way, you will offend anyone who has a shred of empathy.
So, if you love your cosplay so very very much, and your costume to portray that character causes offense, then you can make a decision as to whether the accuracy of your costume is worth more than their offense. You can do that, and if your commitment to a character is so great that you cannot live without applying skin tone changing makeup to more accurately portray it, then I will understand your decision, but I will still try to talk you out of it.
If you are not so much in love with a character that their accuracy is that important to you, but you do it anyway, then you are doing it for the specific purpose of offending people.
You claimed that deliberately offending people is an inescapable part of human interaction, and I disagree entirely.
Not really, and even if that particular poster actually does have an absolutist position (which I do not believe, given the nuance that they showed the first umpteen replies they gave you until you wore them down and they gave you an answer out of frustration), then you have done nothing to show that any other poster here, who has been patiently trying to explain to you why this would be considered offensive, has any sort of absolutist position.
We would lay out quite a bit of nuance for you, and you would come back and claim that we laid out an absolutist position. Your understanding of nuance is pretty much non-existent.
Or they could just stop interacting with someone who believes that it is an inescapable part of human interaction to deliberately offend others, and seems to act in a way that lives that belief.
I do not see it as a win/lose proposition, not at all, which is why I am having trouble understanding why you are trying to score rhetorical points rather than participating in an actual discussion.
Under the surface? I didn’t try to hide anything and you didn’t sniff out shit. I happily stated that I no longer have any patience, nuance or benefit of the doubt when it comes to random acts of racism. Let’s call it the 1 strike rule: Behave in racist manner (like blackface) and I will not bother to stop and wonder why you are behaving in a racist manner I will simply label you a racist, dismiss you and move on with my life.
The only thing you have done is prove to me that this is the correct decision when dealing with people like you. You sir, have the ethos of a habitual line stepper.
Novelty Bobble, it seems that analogies of zebras and fender benders are veering off-course, so I’d like to ask your thoughts on a much simpler, closer analogy:
You see a white man with a shaved head walking down the street wearing a white t-shirt with nothing but a large swastika on it.
Do you really assume, “Ah, he probably enjoys old Buddhist iconography and is unaware of the other connotations of that symbol?”
So, let’s say you strike up a conversation with the fellow, and he says, “Ah, yeah, I’m aware of Nazis and all that, but I think it’s just a cool-looking symbol. I’m very into geometric patterns, and this is one of my favorites.” You are completely convinced that he means what he says.
Do you consider that sufficient justification for him continuing to keep it in rotation?
If yes, I think we can comfortably state that you and I disagree substantially about an individual’s obligations in considering how their actions impact others.
If no, I welcome your elucidation. I am fairly confident this will come down to you and I disagreeing about the ambiguity and/or severity of a swastika vs blackface. I would agree that the former IS more clear and severe, but I would argue that the two are SUBSTANTIALLY closer in their perception than you seem to accept.