Perhaps it’s my White Privilege™ showing here but I didn’t see anything inherently racist at first until it was pointed out. Now, I can totally see the subliminal racism at play here.
I’m willing to give some benefit of the doubt here that the designers didn’t purposefully say, “hey let’s design this poster where vaugely/overtly POCs are doing bad stuff while the lilly white are the good guys” so much as it ended up that way – either from unconscious bias or through coincidence.
Seriously, thank you! Exactly the point!
You’ve got it backward: Italian heritage is NOW considered white in the U.S. You must be pretty young (and not paid attention in history class) to not know that Mediterranean heritage used to be known as “swarthy” and considered not-white.
But as for that particular kid, the hair is black and straight and the skin tone seems more East Asian than Mediterranean to me.
Besides, the point isn’t to nail down exactly where on the color wheel each limb of each child happens to fall…it’s clear that the darker skinned children are labeled “not cool” to a much higher degree (close to or actually 100%) than the lighter skinned children.
This is America…speak American!
Social progress is all about people not noticing things until they are brought to their attention; as a species we are extremely good at selective ignorance.
Sorry, I was went to grab lunch. You don’t have to wait anymore, I answered. Hopefully you weren’t actually as anxious as your Judge Smails gif suggested.
I just have a problem with calling it “super” racist. I was all geared up to be offended and thought “meh, just borderline” when I actually looked at it.
Too many white kids involved in poor behavior, plenty of darker skin kids not doing anything wrong, only two examples of cool. Yes a little more thought might have gone into it, but let’s save the click baity superlatives for things that actually deserve it. Otherwise we are stuck with “super duper, this really is extra racist racist thing” when describing racist stuff. And there is plenty of racist stuff.
At least you can acknowledge it once the subtlety is pointed out to you, though.
You’re not glibly making excuses or trying to deflect the course of the conversation.
That’s the difference, and believe me; it matters.
The basis for a LOT of subconscious bigotry is the very unwillingness to even admit that bigoted ideology permeates the very fabric of our society; right down to stupid little safety illustrations for the local swimming pool.
Agreed; it’s just standard, run-of-the-mill subconscious racial bigotry, not any different than what people of color have to contend with on a daily basis.
Or people bothered by this poster can just try to suss out its imagery and have a discussion about it.
I see you spend time swimming in right-wing discourse, over on the side of the rope where people supposedly don’t get “outraged” on a regular basis. Isn’t that less fun, playing in the shallow end?
To be fair, “super racist” was a quote from the linked article (which is probably why it was in quotes in the title of @frauenfelder’s post. This isn’t a case where BB is simply going for the clickbait title.
For context, this tweet was in the linked article:
https://twitter.com/JSawyer330/status/745075509047005184
I’m 43. Is that young? I sure as hell feel old. Regardless, I did pretty well in high school history. Never once was the word “swarthy” used in that class.
I’ve made plenty of poor judgements in the past (and I know I will in the future). I at least try to learn from them and not repeat them. I try to be honest about this. I don’t think I’m inherently an -ist/-phobic person but that doesn’t mean I won’t make mistakes. At least I try to own up to them. You never know when some deeply rooted prejudice/ignorance/fear will come into play and cloud things.
I’m pretty sure his point was that when you say you looked at that kid and read him as non-caucasian you are being a lying liar telling lies.
Setting Cool = 1, Uncool = -1, Unlabeled = 0 the correlation between brightness and coolness is 0.5
Average brightness of “Cool” skin = 173, Average brightness of “Uncool” skin = 129
Well, all I know is that we’d better get this right!!! Let’s form a sub-committee to discuss what adjectives are rightly applied to what levels of racism. We can’t let the general adjective arms race that has infected the rest of the internet affect an issue this important.
Obviously I can’t be trusted. But he can. How do we know? He said so! /case-closed
Yes!
You had only one class of history in high school? That’s not a great basis to understand this material.
And again, that’s what makes a huge difference; your willingness to listen the concerns of the people who don’t share your privilege, rather than just dismissing them out of hand because you cannot personally relate.
Dammit woman, I think I fluv you.
I am not right wing. We are discussing a poster that does not just “show some evidence of bias” but is considered “super racist” (the person who originally complained also used the word “horrifying”). When I first moved to the US, if you had told me that you saw something “super racist”, I would assume that you were referring to a Klan rally or something like that. Now we are trying to determine what proportion of cartoon characters belong to different races, to determine if a majority of those breaking the rules belong to protected classes. I assume the next step will be to locate and identify the artist, so that they might confess and atone.
But I like the pool analogy.
We had one history class every year. (American history, world history, art history, and Quaker history - it was a Friends school). To reiterate, the word “swarthy” was used in none of them.
