I just don’t care. She has zero power to impact my life, and it doesn’t seem directed at any minority group that could be impacted by an individual.
Herr comments punch up, instead of down, so it’s easy for me to assume the comments are humorous, or perhaps even deserved (have you stopped to think that maybe we do smell like wet dog when we are wet and perhaps our inability to stand the sun as long as other groups is a mark against us? Hell, we all know the truth about gingers from South Park!)
Hell, white GOP members that hate libtards impact my life more than she does. Even non racist ones seem to hate our country and the people who are struggling, regardless of race or gender. Paul Ryan can disportionally hurt black and other minority people without being racists
From the way @Strollen puts it, (and let me know if I misunderstood) the only way to prove she isn’t a racists at this point would be to go out and marry a white guy. If she is really smart, she’ll marry a white trans person who is bisexual, just so we know she doesn’t have anything gets LGBT+ people as well.
You see, when I read this, I understand right away that you don’t really think I have impressive mind-reading skills, even though you quite clearly say that you do. It’s almost as if there might be some way of communicating things by saying the opposite of what you really mean! We ought to have a word for that.
It can’t really be the case that one can only employ parody and sarcasm in defined works of fiction. Can’t you do it in a stand-up routine? Can’t you do it in an essay? Can’t you do it in forum post? Can’t you do it in a tweet?
You don’t need acrobatic contortions to find context for many of them. The “fuck white women” tweet that I saw was in response to exit polls that showed that the majority of white women voted for Trump. In that context, I think that’s a perfectly reasonable sentiment. It’s possible you’re referring to a different one though.
In that context, it isn’t even facially racist. If the same exit poll shows that old people voted overwhelmingly for Trump[*], and you said ‘fuck old people’, no one would even notice the sentiment. Certainly no one would say it proves you’re a gender discriminator. Well, I guess someone probably would, but it would be silly.
[*] Of course it does say that, so you know how I feel about old people in that context.
So, I’m pretty much done with the Jeong topic, but I’m going to share a little secret that will blow your minds:
One of the reasons I cant get too upset about Jeong is that non-white people talk about “white people” all the time. Like, constantly, almost every day. When culture has defined your identity for you in opposition to whiteness, it’s something that tends to weigh heavily on your mind. Most of that discussion is going to be about exploring the boundaries, and trying to define one’s own identity as a “person of color”. But guess what? Some of the things we say about white people are going to be less than complementary. So, it’s going to be pretty easy to find “racist statements against white people” from pretty much everybody.
So, in summary: its true. All people of color hate white people, just like you’ve always suspected*.
This might have been true twenty—or even ten—years ago, but nowadays there is no such thing as ‘obvious parody’ when it comes to crap like this. Truth has become crazier than fiction.
Oh come on. I don’t have tolerance for racism against whites because I don’t have tolerance for bigotry, full stop. I find bigotry towards people based on the shade of their skin, accent, surname, who they love, etc to be categorically wrong. I can simultaneously hold that belief while understanding that in the USA, racism towards minorities has a far greater negative impact on their lives because it is punching down in a very real way.
Sorry I’m not cool with bigotry towards specific races you deem to be acceptable targets, though. I tend to think it’s just wrong, period.
Good point. I think part of what doesn’t work for me is comparisons are not of the same form if that makes sense. So if you & Tom would like to rephrase your comparisons with actual famous cases being very obviously and clearly parody, from the same media or form as Jeongs then that would be helpful.
To muddy the waters a bit its like me comparing the game Postal to the movie Falling Down. It doesnt work somehow even though there intent MAY be the same, it just falls flat you know?
Its just that comparisons between forms are less helpful to me if that makes sense? So if there are instances of other people posting racist abuse on twitter to another ethnic group without any context but which everybody immediately accepts as parody then that would be helpful.
I think part of the problem we have is social media is relatively new. So the rules and previous work to refer to are fairly limited. Its also true I think that social media is tricky to do nuance and tone with. In large part because we cannot see each others body language or hear our tone of voice.
edit: after your saddles summary:
And not to add another response but yes I think thats exactly the reason Blazing Saddles works and works well. Its just such a different form it misses for me what we are discussing, Jeons for me has more in common with Michael Richard’s (Kramer) stand up racist rant/joke in terms of ambiguity.
It seems to me that after you strip the comedy from Blazing Saddles, the actual message of the film is this:
that white people are largely stupid and venal
that they will retreat into racism at the slightest opportunity
that they will only accept people of color when they are driven to it by exigency
that even then their acceptance will be grudging and, to them, shameful
that if a black man wants to succeed, he has to ignore their racism and make himself useful to them
It’s true that the film makes racist white people look bad. That’s the point of offering it as a comparison. And saying that it’s fiction so it doesn’t count is silly; one of the purposes of fiction is to make clear basic truths that are otherwise hard to get people to understand or accept.
Now: Is Yglesias actually saying that liberals are the real racists because Byrd was a Democrat, or is he mocking the right-wing argument that liberals are the real racists because Byrd was a Democrat? I think the answer is obvious.
Yes, but my question is this: given the message of the film, do you think it is genuinely a racist statement against white people? Do you think it proves Mel Brooks is a racist?
Cheers. I get it. But that’s clearly (in this example) not him comparing say korean people to dogs then walking away in silence you know?
And to answer your follow up. No I think Mel Brooks is clearly not racist and in fact was working hard to show racism. I think its a great movie. It just doesnt work on any level for me as a comparison with what Jeong did.
To use my other (equally not exact because its not social media) comparison was michael richards being racist or funny or acting or reacting to abuse? Reasonable people could conclude any of those things.
Sorry for my multiple edits. My thoughts were evolving as I typed them :)
Actually, I was thinking of a of different context, maybe I got her insult confused I think she called white woman bitches instead.
But this is actually the textbook definition of racism. You are generalizing about an entire group of people. It is really easy to figure this out. If a Republican, noting that overwhelming number of blacks voted for Obama, said fuck black people (and I am sure many Republican have said this), everybody would agree that’s a racist comment and if the person made many insulting comments about black people we could infer that a person was racist. If the person, however made separate tweets saying fuck whites, Asians, LQBT, straight, Jews, Catholics, Mexicans, Italians, young and old people who voted for Obama, then is clear it is Obama votes he hates. Likewise if Sarah had tweet how she hates all types Trump voters that would have been fine. As long as she sticks to editorial board stuff.
Saying fuck old people isn’t racist, but it is ageist. It is also incredibly stupid to make any of these generalization because there millions to tens of millions of folks who who are white/black or somewhere in between, and young or old who didn’t vote for Trump, Obama, Hillary etc. What you should be upset about is their bad political choices not their demographics.
I did, and even outside its use in a troll fight, within the context of her community/tribe/environment it still isn’t racist, because I now understand their definition of “white people”, especially as so many examples are being cited on the police/Trump/alt right/nazi/BLM threads elsewhere on P&R
If you are Joe Public and don’t live in the world of the progressive left then you probably think “white people” means you and of course, what she looks bad. If you have been fighting in the Culture Wars for years then you shouldn’t be treating her posts at face value. You don’t think I would have been all over this back in the day in the identity politics or GG threads?
but is she biased to all whites? Will she judge relationships and interactions she has on a daily basis on a single glance at their skin colour?
No.
I’m confident any biases she has will come after learning their political orientation or witnessing their interaction with minorities.
Perfectly reasonable conclusion. Mine is “yes” after I looked at the same data. Neither of us can know of course, we dont know her in real life, or at least I dont, so we are both left to discern her intent by her words and yet reach opposite conclusions. Which brings us back to the thorny issue that people of similar politics and of goodwill can reach opposite conclusions about this.
Its one of the more interesting aspects of it that we are seeing in real time how we as a society treat social media posts and what our common norms are for culture and communication.
That specific chart of Jeong’s is in direct response to the famous (infamous?) article Andrew Sullivan published, The Bell Curve. It is mocking the pseudoscience used in that essay that claims black people are genetically less than white people. It was a tweet in direct response to Sullivan himself bringing that article up.
So it is easy for me to see how a badly drawn MS Paint graph is meant as a parody of the real ones from the article. The same is true of the others I’ve looked into. They all stem as some kind of response to a precipitating incident.
However Twitter is a terrible medium for that kind of responsive parody because it is waaayyyy too easy to strip out the context.
Forgive me, but I’m guessing that unless I find a tweet which is identical to Jeong’s and clearly labeled as parody, you’re not going to grant that a tweet like Jeong’s is parody. I mean, you can say ‘that’s not exactly the same’ pretty much forever.
You’re saying Mel Brooks was trying to say these things, or was not trying to say these things?
that white people are largely stupid and venal
that they will retreat into racism at the slightest opportunity
that they will only accept people of color when they are driven to it by exigency
that even then their acceptance will be grudging and, to them, shameful
that if a black man wants to succeed, he has to ignore their racism and make himself useful to them
