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Or rather, youâd have to ask the âcosplayerâ whether they give a shit about the effect that their âfunâ has on those around them. Actually, no, you probably donât have to, itâs pretty obvious.
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the effect that their âfunâ has on those around them
Are you kidding me? You think this guys costume is going to be offend the other Redskins fans at the game?
Donât tell the HuffPo about Zwarte Piet / Knecht Ruprecht. Might cause a collective heart attack for their US readers.
Do these two editorial cartoons make any sense to you? How do you interpret their mesasges?
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If your definition of âthose around youâ is limited to âmy friends at the football gameâ Iâd say that pretty accurately describes the problemâŚ
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Heâs not just self-harming with the mascot-minstrelsy act.
Yes, because racism is exclusive to the United States, and the existence of one means that the other country can rest easy in ignorance and hostility? What a dumb statement.
Sure, if you enjoy making things up out of whole cloth. Are you that absolutely desperate to find a false equivalence?
J4J are also culturally appropriating, but hardly wearing fake noses and payot.
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I think you are making assumptions about where I stand on the issue. Just because I think the most correct name (currently) for the Washington NFL team is âRedskinsâ doesnât mean I support them continuing to use that name.
FWIW, the Redskins definitely need to find a new name. As do the Cleveland Indians, FSU Seminoles, Edmonton Eskimos, etc⌠Notre Dame calling themselves the Fighting Irish with the leprechaun image is pushing it too.
I had a similar conversation with my middle school aged daughter earlier this year about offensive words. I told her she could write a paper for school about the word âfuckâ and it could be 100% inoffensive. The word is just a symbol, itâs what you are communicating that matters.
Color me unsurprised that you had to squeeze that old canard in there. As if a lot of (any?) Irish or Irish American people regularly and vociferously object to that team name and mascot. As if Irish Americans are a currently persecuted minority.
Interesting too that you avoided my request to interpret those two cartoons. And again, unsurprising. I do hope, though, that you show them to your daughter.
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âIâm not saying that I support racial epithets, but by golly, I believe that they are appropriate and called for, because Iâm loyal to my team!â
Itâs a shame that you would actively teach your kid that this behavior is contextually okay.
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I canât blame you for finding that group offensive, but itâs also not like American sports fandom is filled with people wearing fake hook-noses and novelty yarmukles emblazoned with team logos. Cultural appropriation of Native Americans is in a league of its own, as it were.
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âItâs cool, all the other people here are culturally insensitive assholes too. Weâve made sure of that by creating an environment that would only appeal to culturally insensitive assholes.â
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Earlier I posted a link to a LinkedIn page for a guy named John Redskin that works at Kohlâs. Assuming thatâs his legal name, do you find that offensive? Would you refuse to hire the guy if he sent you his resume? I might be uncomfortable with it, but I would fight my preconceived notions.
What Iâm teaching my kids is that a map is not the territory. Context is everything. I also am trying to get them to not jump to conclusions. I have no idea what the motives of the guy in the picture are and neither do you. He might be a raging racist, a clueless idiot, a performance artist, or some kind of activist trying to provoke a response.
When native American groups filed suit in court, were you offended that they used the word âRedskinsâ in their court documents? Of course not because in that context it isnât offensive.
Yeah, Iâve thought about it more and I have no idea what that guy is up to. He very well might be a culturally insensitive asshole but who knows.
Are you talking to yourself, here?
Because you may not have observed, but a sports team is not a Native American human being.
You discuss âcontextâ but appear to be utterly bewildered by the actual practice of what is and is not okay.
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âGood news, everybody! We can name our sports team âthe Canterbury Kikesâ after all!â
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Aside from their relative obscurity(they focus on Jews, so if you arenât Jewish yourself they rank pretty far down the list of Christians-pushing-salvation-goods-on-you); I imagine that they find some shelter in the fact that âJewishâ has both an ethnic and a religious component; and there is little to gain and more to lose by attacking the authenticity of somebodyâs claims about their religious status; unless you have some definite goal in mind. I know that, in my capacity as a WASP of vivid stripe; it would be seen as pretty seriously transgressive and more than a bit weird were I to go accusing a self-proclaimed jew of inauthentic jewishness.
It doesnât make the specific tactics of the âJews for Jesusâ any more tasteful or honest; but itâs a pretty substantial barrier to actually calling them out on it for anyone who doesnât have authentic jew-cred themselves.
Itâd be like if, for some reason or other, there were people from Spain claiming to be âhispanicâ and to share a category with people from latin America. In principle I might agree that such a scheme is dishonest and sneaky; but am I seriously going to touch gringosplaining what latino authenticity is in my capacity as Mr. anglo white guy? That would lead nowhere good.
It needs to be fairly clear-cut appropriation before it is blatant enough that people from an outgroup can safely make an issue of it. In subtler cases, accusing people of inauthenticity is just a no win.
(In that sense, the Jews for Jesus are actually being pretty clever, in a low-cunning-of-the-criminal-type sort of way. They get some of the same effects as the anti-choicers who set up âclinicsâ designed to catch those looking for Planned Parenthood; but they also get cover. If memory serves, the part of christian(maybe just catholic? not 100% up on the various protestant flavors) liturgy calling âfor the conversion of the jewsâ is treated as âcontroversialâ; but, as @dobby mentions, âJews for Jesusâ largely fly under the radar; because they must be some kind of jew with some theological differences over the status of jesus, just talking to other jews about it, right, and why would I butt in?)
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Is it wrong for the word âRedskinsâ to appear in a court document?
If your answer is yes, then we just disagree on this. If not, then we agree that context matters.
