Yes. I have a very attractive black friend who works as a bartender in a predominately white (customer based) bar.
She once told me you wouldn’t believe how many guys will say to her: “Yer a pretty black girl.” Then bow there chest out like they actually said something nice.
Thanks for the additional context, RoeCocoa. I agree that puts this particular remark of Rod Allen’s in a better light.
Wow, I didn’t know a webpage could have so many pictures depicting the history of racist imagery and food without mentioning this picture.
I think you’re getting caught up on the food thing, when that’s really incidental to the issue. The problem isn’t connecting a type of food to an ethnicity. The problem is that the guy’s joke relies entirely on the fact that Dominicans eat a lot of rice and beans, with no additional insight or context. It’s literally just, “Boy, those Dominicans eat a lot of rice and beans! Ha ha ha!” That’s not really a joke, that’s just laughing at someone because they’re different than the mainstream. You could take out the food reference, and plug in any other generality about Dominican people, and the joke would be similarly offensive, even if the generality is largely accurate.
I’d say they’re just common foods, period. Are there any countries where beans or rice are not eaten?
Or did you mean rice-and-beans served together in some specific way?
Ok, apparently I’m in the wrong here.
Who the hell is implying that? Why is it so offensive to think they *might *want to eat their traditional foods or that they DO eat their traditional foods? In the case of these baseball players, they all grew up in Venezuela, Cuba or the Dominican. To think they wouldn’t like to have some food from their native land is just ridiculous. “Oh you can’t assume people in Latin America eat Latin American food!” Why not? In their country, it’s just called food.
I do see why that’s offensive, but to be fair, I never said what you said. The part that’s really offensive is that you added the words “you people.” You’re really putting words in my mouth and so you can get offended at something I never said. And no, frankly, if you take out the “you people” part, I don’t see what’s so offensive. I would hope if I invited someone over for dinner they would appreciate the effort. You’re telling me that if I invited your husband over I could never cook hispanic food at risk of offending him?
But one final question: If there was a team in Japan that had 12 Americans on it, and an announcer said “The team needs to make sure they have some hotdogs and hamburgers in the post-game spread,” would that be offensive? As an American, I would not be offended. Obviously, American cuisine is seen as hotdog and hamburger-heavy.
Of all the things to get one’s panties in a pinch over, I just don’t understand why assuming that people of a certain ethnicity or heritage eat the food commonly eaten by that ethnicity or heritage is such a offense. I’m not implying or saying (nor do I believe was Rod Allen) that ONLY people of [x heritage] eat [x food], nor that [x food] is only eaten by people of [x heritage]. But to get offended when someone says Cubans eat Cuban food, or Mexicans eat Mexican food, or Arabs eat Arabic food, or Japanese people eat Japanese food, seems silly and a bit desperate for something to be offended by.
JMHO, and I was looking for others’ by opening this discussion. Thanks.
Yeah. Why else would people be offended by Rod Allen’s comment?
So if Allen had said “We need to get some Dominican cuisine on that post-game spread,” would that have been offensive?
One of the issues is also that we hear it all.the.damn.time.
“Oh, I love fried chicken and watermelon? That’s so hilarious. If only I hadn’t heard it all my life.”
Several people have attempted to explain it to you. It doesn’t seem like you’ve put any effort into understanding these explanations, instead you’ve either argued with or ignored them. Statements like this:
indicate that you have not been paying much attention to anything anyone else here has said.
You really have not been acting like someone who is interested in other people’s opinions on this subject.
I think if he’d said that, most people would fail to even recognize it as an attempt at humor, and it would pass unremarked. In the actual case, it was clear that the guy was attempting to make a joke, which leaves the question, “What did he think was funny about his comment?” The joke revolves entirely on the fact that Dominicans eat a lot of rice and beans. That’s it. There is no other element to the joke. Therefore, it’s a reasonable inference that the guy thinks that eating a lot of rice and beans is, in and of itself, funny. And that’s what pushes the joke into, “Laughing at people for being different,” territory. Which, when the difference based on cultural or ethnic differences, carries uncomfortable tones of racism and cultural bigotry.
Miller: I can see where you’re coming from, but have you listened to Allen’s quote in context? The other commentator laughed, but I’m not convinced that Allen was making a joke. Listening to the whole exchange and reading Allen’s further comments the next day, I think he was gearing up to relate an anecdote, started out with a poor choice of words, and got interrupted before he could finish the story.
All my life, I’ve had to deal with people who make ethnic slurs and try to pass it off as innocent humor. I don’t think that’s what happened here.
I think you are stuck on that food thing. The food element is irrelevant. It could be Eskimos and igloos, or CEOs and scotch and cigars, or little girls and skirts. Ignore that. Let’s break it down for you:
Stereotyping (and generalization) of people is lame, tired, and cliché. Even if it is a super positive stereotype, like all Asians are good at math, it’s still tired and cliché. Even if it’s a super positive personal stereotype, like “George is the stud!”, in the absence of ever commenting about other aspects of George, is mildly offensive. Sure it’s great to be thought of as attractive, but no one wants to be pigeon holed into being defined by one single attribute.
Generalizing makes you seem stupid. Of course, correlations exist in reality, but they are almost never as interesting, significant, or as relevant as you make them out to be.
Humor has at it’s core judgement. We laugh to make bad things seem better. There is always some stigma, real or assumed, attached to the subject of humor. If a person or group of persons is the subject, it’s very easy for them to take it personally. It’s hard to tell if someone is “laughing with you” or “laughing at you”.
Race is a made up attribute, and ethnicity comes close, with cultural background skirting the edge. Anything you say about them is inherently a bit non-sensical.
There’s not a lot of playing field between ‘racial’ and ‘racist’. It can be hard for people to tell the difference.
To sum up: any generalization about people, even positive, is if not actually offensive, at least kind of lame, unless treated with the careful precision of a very clever humorist. Any humor in which the subject is a person or persons other than yourself has great potential to offend them. And any comment at all involving race is likely to run the risk of seeming racist.
I think people made way too big of a deal out of a stupid comment. But the comment was really stupid. It wasn’t :eek: but it was :rolleyes:
Want to bet? There are lots of stereotypes about the food white people eat to. Example: If they are WASPs the stereotype is that their food will be bland and tasteless and they will be more interested in the liquor anyway. If we are talking about rural Southern whites, the stereotype food is country food similiar to soul food cooking with references to possum and squirrel. In stereotype land all white California’s are vegetarians immersed in the lastest health food fad.
Sure. Let me know how much and the exact terms.
Maybe the question was too subtle for you, so I’ll rephrase it: When was the last time you heard a sportscaster, for no reason, without any provocation or previous reference–just out of the blue–randomly start talking about the diet of the players simply because they were white?
I was NOT saying: “There are no stereotypes about ‘white’ food.” (Whatever that could have meant.) That’s not the issue, and it seems a little disingenuous for folks in this thread, including the OP, to insist that this is the only issue they can perceive here, after all the explications given. You’re not fooling anyone. You’re not that dense or naive.
Not every adult. Not every one. Isn’t that a little … stereotyped? Dare I say, bigoted?
The era is the same for everyone. Everybody of any given age has been raised in the same era.
Now THAT is offensive. It’s Black Pudding, not Blood Pudding dammit.
/hijack
I’m as English as “Fish and Chips”, though I rarely eat them.
And we all know about the "Frogs"on the other side of the Channel who used to call us Roast Beefs.
The fact is that there ARE hyper sensitive people out there who get offended by just about everything and anything, but they’re very much in a minority.
Much more common are the “Holier then Thous”, people who get a cheap thrill from castigating others for their insensetivety, or some sort of “Ism”, racism, sexism, sexual preferenceism, ageism, you name it.
This makes them feel all saintly and superior, and hopefully puts the other person on the defensive
It has little or nothing to do with a genuine concern at the statement made, and everything to do with their own ego.
Unfortunately the net result is a further division between ethnicities or other social groups, rather then an acceptance, and fellow feeling with those in your community who are not identical to yourself.
Every time some idiot pretends to be shocked and/or outraged by something like this, it puts back social intergration by just that little bit more.
Mind you, if there were a greater social aceptance and intergration between the various social groups these people wouldn’t have a pretext to jump up on their soap boxes and do their attention seeking thing.
When you can laugh at yourself a little then others tend to empthasise with you.
Hey they’re just like us for all the outward differnces, rather then they’re different to us; lets avoid them as much as possible.
