Things that make you go.......WTF?

[stui magpie]

[David]

[think positive]

I don't get why painting your face black is racist. Is painting your face white racist? She wanted to go as that stupid &*( who happens to be black, kinda hard to pick the character otherwise, although choosing that ditck probably says a lot about her character that ain't good anyway!

I'd have thought a klu klux klan outfit was more offensive. How does the gay or transgender community feel about people at fancy dress parties going in drag?

Yes I'm already winding up inside about the answer! Maybe I'm too sheltered, but I can't believe we haven't realised yet that people are just people, even umpires.

[David]

This might help explain it, TP:

https://www.quora.com/Why-is-blackface-offensive

[Member 7167]

[luvdids]

I don't get it either, if you're wanting to dress up as, say, Barack Obama, wouldn't you need to be blackened? Or Stevie Wonder, or any black person. I didn't get Harry Connick Jnr's overreaction when judging Red Faces on Hey Hey when there was a group of Michael Jackson impersonators on, with their faces painted black - how else do you impersonate a black person??

They weren't doing it as a 'let's be black and make fun of black people', they're dressing up as someone who happens to be black!

[David]

[Wokko]

Recklessness, i.e Drink driving, is a form of criminal intent. This dressing up as another racial group being offensive crap goes in the same rubbish bin as cultural appropriation.

[David]

Do you disagree though that black people have a good reason to be upset by blackface, minstrelsy and so on? Or do you think it was all just harmless fun back in the day?

[David]

One thing I will say though is that this Rob Thomas "drinking like a black Australian" thing has been pretty maliciously taken out of context. Until I watched the video, I (like presumably everyone else who'd read the same stories) thought he was making an incredibly insensitive remark about alcoholism in Indigenous communities. The video of what he actually said is here:

https://youtu.be/qUGOTH2uKDg

Media outlets could have cleared this up from the beginning as being an unfortunate misunderstanding, but instead they deliberately whipped up hysteria by omitting the 'punchline'. That's really despicable and manipulative.

Rob Thomas may be a shit musician, and he's clearly not much of a comedian. But his joke wasn't racist.

[think positive]

I read the link. Ok, I can see why someone aged 50 or over might get offended. Might I said. But those younger for the most part, since 1965? Should have been treated as exactly what they are: human beings on equal footing as everyone else, of every race, colour, religious denomination. (OK we won't include people brought up in the 'south' as they are still smarting over General Custer. )

Certainly those as young as the complaining team mate, I would have thought. But I guess that's where the boo conversation is too. When do we get past all that? Isn't having special days and rules simply causing more friction, more segragation instead of bringing everyone together?

I'm kind of hoping the gay/transgender thing gets there in another 30 years or so, if not sooner. When it just becomes the norm to accept this as the way people are born. Right now though, things like Caitlin Jenner winning a woman of the year award, does that highlight in a good or a bad way? Not sure what she may have done in the few months She had been a woman to earn that title, when there are so many other options to choose from, Angelina for a start, yes she has millions and lots of help, she also puts her hand up for many a good cause, she has adopted children from all over, and that's only the bits we see, and then there is putting her own health battles out there, that's brave, and how many women went and got health checks because of that story?

Basically what I'm saying is, at what point do we stop pointing out our differences, and just accept each other as just another person?

Certainly I have great respect for Martin Luther King, and my love for Oprah is well known, but its a different time.

Alough I can see how you'd be upset on behalf of your parents, say survivors of Auswitz getting upset about some tool dressed as Hitler. So maybe I've answered my own question. My grand dad died due to exposure from the bombs he used to deactivate, but I don't hate Germans. My mum and dad both served in Germany post war, and they love (d) Germans!

Though yeah, for me Hitler is a big no no. If I knew someone dressed like that I probably ask what made them pick that costume, if I didn't know them, a death stare would suffice! I wouldn't feel the need to share it all over Facebook. Physically it hurts no one. Is mental pain carried through generations?

However the publicity of the Kayne thing has certainly only been a bad thing for reconciliation. Maybe we blame the journos who let the story take flight.

[think positive]

[David]

Well that's the thing: history doesn't disappear the minute a progressive reform takes place. Even to have not experienced, say, the Holocaust, but to know that you would have been in the camps if you'd been there at the wrong place and time – and perhaps knowing that your grandparents suffered, or narrowly avoided suffering, that fate – is not necessarily something that one can just brush off.

In this case, though, we're not even talking about history. We're talking about discrimination and racism that still exist. Have you heard of the police shootings of unarmed African-Americans over in the US? This isn't ancient history, this is right now. Blackface may be a thing of the past, but it's all part of the same phenomenon. Perhaps it's hard for us as white Australians to understand, but then, it would be, wouldn't it? The best we can do is listen to what the people affected have to say.

[think positive]

[Wokko]

I would doubt that any significant number of those who feign offence at blackface would even know what a minstrel show is or be able to tell you who Al Jolsen was. They've been told that blackening your face is bad and that's all they need to hear.

I wouldn't think there'd be enough people left alive who'd even seen a minstrel show to get offended by it to bother with this as an issue.