My cultural reference point to “blackface” is 1960/70s British TV shows that are lampooned now. I don’t even know if they themselves were culturally insensitive or if they were lampooning 1920’s British variety shows. My point being I don’t get references to minstrel shows. It’s not part of my cultural heritage.
I…what?
What’s the confusion. We don’t have any culture related to black oppression, and I’ve didn’t meet anyone who was black on a “talk to them daily” basis until I was 17. Black people haven’t been particularly part of Irish day to day culture until the turn of the millenium. Even Ireland’s most famous black person (Phil Lynott, along with soccer players like Paul McGrath) have talked about growing up in Ireland and not realising they were black/different. It’s just not something that we as a nation have had to deal with. And the most famous non-white person in the area I live is probably Sean Óg O’Hailpin. An Irish-Fijian dude who is probably one of the biggest, most succesful and best known GAA players of all time, both hurling and football.
When the meme in question involves a black man morphing into a cartoon blackface caricature, it should probably be a consideration. Even NeoGAF banned this meme, and rightly so, in my opinion.
But I didn’t see it as a blackface caricature, in fact I don’t see it as a caricature at all. I see it as a guy shooting a laser from a cartoon mouth and with cartoon eyes expanding, features that have no actual relation to real physical features because they are so cartoony. They’re in no way relational in a caricature way to someone’s real features, they’re totally fiction. I presumed they used a black facial background because the dude is black. Similarly I’ve seen it shopped onto people’s faces where it’s just used the mouth and eyes and no background face. I didn’t think “blacking someone up” was a feature of the meme. Maybe I’ve never looked at it properly, or don’t know the history of the meme, but it hasn’t occured to me think the background of the face was an explicit part of the cartoon.
“C’mon, guys, there are other racist things way more racist than my racist thing!”
Go fuck yourself. I was just saying that I’ve seen that Star Trek clip interspersed with something I could easily see as racist, as it’s a form of racism that is apparent to me, because of American TV. And that if it wasn’t for someone pointing the shoop da woop racist element, it would never have occurred to me.
This. Ireland’s biggest national debate on intolerence towards non-nationals is probably with the Polish (which is funny seeing as they’re so similar, historically being an oppressed, white, Catholic nation.) After that comes taxi drivers whinging about non-nationals driving other taxi’s and taking all their business away.
Yeah, I can understand that. Which is why I said I’d easily spot the KFC version as racist, and anyone exposed to American TV and cinema would. I just don’t see how a guy shooping a whoop out of his mouth is any relation stereotypical black culture. It’s nonsensical internet bastardisation of words with accompanying animation, not an attack on black people who have superpowers.
