Are you an MD? If so, shame on you for diagnosing someone you have never met over the Internet. If not, take your concern driving trollies elsewhere. Whether or not the person is overweight is completely irrelevant to the discussion here.
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How so? Just that you think it’s a “right wing” problem or that it’s not a race issue? [quote=“failquail, post:97, topic:90944”]
entirely manufactured ‘problem’ by the right
[/quote]
I agree it’s a manufactured problem, but the implementation is deeply racial tinged. The fact that a black and white defendant can get vastly different sentences for the same crime, or that different drugs are treated differently (look at how differently we talk about crack vs. meth - crack was criminalized while meth has more often that not been treated as a public health issue) illustrates the point.
I agree. But you’re missing the point that the criminalization of the drug is what helped create the current criminal justice crisis, which again, disproportionately impacts POC. And let’s not forget the super predator language from the Clinton administration in the 90s, hoping to win the law and order votes. Nixon was the first administration to really create a large number of schedule one drugs, and there is little doubt that they used race as a wedge issue in the south. The party of Lincoln, under Nixon, undertook a racially charged campaign to pick off white voters unhappy with the Democrats new insistance on acknowledging racism and working to root it out of our institutions.
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For the former: mostly yes, solely, no.
Not sure if i came across well, but overall (entire post included) i do not disagree with you here…
It’s at times like this i wish i was better at debating…
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[quote=“LearnedCoward, post:38, topic:90944”]
I don’t think it promotes any kind of conversation…[detailed arguments about why you don’t agree with the artwork]. [/quote]
Can you not see your contradiction here?
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Sure. But I do think that there is a line of thinking that says racism is ONLY an individual problem, and that systems have nothing to do with it. Whether or not @failquail believes that, I don’t know. [quote=“Purplecat, post:98, topic:90944”]
thinks that systematic racism is an emergent property of individual racism and legal state enforced racism.
[/quote]
I do believe that’s correct.
Sure, but perhaps that is exactly what the artist is attempting to get people to wrestle with?[quote=“Purplecat, post:98, topic:90944”]
But its ability to do anything other than re-state its assumptions when applied to real-world problems is… limited.
[/quote]
I think we can see how language changes over time, because we can see how words change and shift meaning over time. The question comes down to whether or not the language we use shapes our reality or if our reality shapes our language. As a simple, country historian, I’d say that question is above my pay grade. But I do think that language can shape how we view the world.
I still think you have to look at how individuals are shaped by our society and our institutions, though. Wading through the muck of our ideological structures on race, which assumes much and becomes hard to see, it’s often hard to tease out the real heart of the problem. Going against the systemic tide can have consequences, making challenging structures hard on an individual level.
You’re just as much responsible for that as the rest of us, so pat yourself on the back as well.
We’re not having one here? Maybe the artist doesn’t care about the raging racist and is more concerned with people like us? Why do you think the intended conversant is some reactionary bigot rather than person in the artist’s own social world?
You’re doing well at defending your points, even if I don’t agree.
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Thank you kindly.
How awesome the internet would be if this was the rule, not the exception 
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Indeed. Sadly, much of the internet looks much meaner and more yelly… I mean, we do that here too, sometimes, but that usually comes from trollies or people here having a bad day or misunderstanding one another.
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Repeat after me.
“Think for yourself, question authority.”
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Re-reading the the thread here.
Just to clarify, i don’t consider this to not be a problem, just not the largest one. It’s not a non-issue, just one i think is more a consequence rather than the initial problem…
And as such, fixing the initial problem would be the best use of police resources…
"Both the US and the UK have a large (mostly elderly) population raised on horrifically biased rightwing media.
Whilst I don’t think for a minute that the media in either nation has gotten any less “right-wing” in the last 50 years, isn’t your example exactly how institutional/societal racism creates individual racists?
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Actually a good point.
But how much existed to start with and how much is promoted by the press?
I’ve seen it with my own eyes with my parents. Systematically refuting every single blame the leave group placed on the EU via the EU referendum (with actual facts) did nothing, 40+years of sustained media bias overruled their own son 
So in 8 hours, there’s been 111 (or 112 including this one) posts discussing many of the intricacies of racism and privilege. The discussion has been cordial, polite and interesting.
I’m pretty sure the artist has succeeded in their goal.
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I pointed out earlier how rare this is.
I think it’s more the general mindset of the boingboing community (or black magic 
) that enables this. 
Whatever the reason i’m very grateful 
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Something wrong with saying ‘plural you’, or didn’t it occur to you?
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I think you’ve identified the feedback loop. Individual racism undoubtedly plays a roll in creating societal racism and vice-versa.
The question then becomes, what to do you about it?
We can (and should) get upset about individual acts of racism; but fighting racism generally requires fighting the much more complex societal/institutional aspects of racism.
So with this piece of art, you can get upset thinking it in itself is racist (I disagree, I think calling it racist oversimplifies the issue); or you can engage with the art, have these discussions and then think about how you can act to address racism more generally.
Personally, and judging from the comfort of an anonymous couch, I feel like you’ve started by being upset, but quickly moved onto thinking more deeply about the issues. (I hope that comes across as a compliment, it was intended to).
*edited to include the last sentence within the brackets.
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That link is broken. If it was actually a thing I would not have put it in “quotes”.
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It was a link to a PDF of this paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/15820755_Laterality_and_Myth
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Yes, having a conversation about how there’s no conversation is a bit of a contradiction However I said no meaningful conversation, just a bunch of parallel circlejerks.
I don’t disagree with the work either. I just think circlejerking about it is just more of the same. If there’s some special meaning behind it, I’m not seeing it.
The more I think about it, the more I think it was just designed to make the fake moderates uncomfortable. It was made for a gay pride parade IIRC. It has a greater social justice message, but it’s really about having fun making Ma and Pa Kettle squirm.
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What kind of meaningful conversation would you prefer the piece kicked-off?
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Something that calls people out on their bigotry when they don’t even know they’re being bigoted
