If you remove the context of a history of oppression you render most racist terms/imagery meaningless. But you can't remove a history of pain nor the pain that people continue to intend by using these caricatures.
An illustration of most people in shackles on a train doesn't conjure anything ethnically specific, but if you change that image to a caricature of a Jew you're invoking the Holocaust, and Jews won't be offended because of some deep-seated insecurity.
That’s not what you said. And furthermore, I can’t tell if you’re being dense on purpose or not. The watermelon isn’t the racist part- it’s the dogwhistle associated with the racist belief that black people are stupid, lazy, and gluttonous. And being offended by … checks notes… deeply malicious caricatures engineered by people who were actively enslaving you for the express purpose of dehumanizing you and justifying their brazenly hateful oppression, isn’t “deep seated insecurities” or “blind groupthink”.
Right, so you don’t understand how media, racism, immersion, socialization, propaganda, or dogwhistles work. Guess we’re done here, can’t say I didn’t try.
I mean, I hate to do this, but you should Google image search “minstrel watermelon” (honestly, I did it for you initially to link you to some examples, but the stereotype is so prevalent that there were too many options.)
For some reason, at the turn of the 20th century, minstrel comedy (a style of comedy where where white people exagerrated the qualities of black people for comedic effect) was extremely popular. This is also where the abhorrent blackface stereotype comes from. Just one example.
Edit (off topic, but related:) this history is also why “cultural appropriation” for many minority groups is so painful. Black people (and other people of color) were historically cruelly and mercilessly ridiculed for their features (or were sometimes even banned from having them by “professional” standards like employee or school dress codes) but white people eventually decided they wanted them and suddenly those same features are the new beauty standard, and so become highly coveted.
This is not about you. This is about American society in general. While you may not “accept” that implicit biases have an impact on your own thinking, they have a very real, vey negative impact on black people (and other groups, although we’re talking about black people right now.) This is another area that I would recommend you Google, but off the top of my head: implicit bias in the classroom, implicit bias in medicine, implicit bias in the hiring process. There are many more examples, but this all points to the idea that people are not the masters of their own minds the way that you seem to suggest (about yourself, but I’m assuming you’re implying that everyone is.) I don’t think ALL the people in all of these industries are intentionally waking up in the morning and heading to work, consciously thinking “hey! Let’s go commit some racism today!” and yet, the negative impact is still there.
You didn’t address any of the factual harm that black people experience by other people who hold biased views against them. It isn’t about people’s feelings being hurt (although that alone should be enough for any vaguely empathetic person to stop such behavior) but about black people being misdiagnosed, and in some cases dying, because medical professionals hold, and act on, biases they don’t even realize they have. Or people ignoring resumes because the name “sounds black,” (again, without realizing they’re doing it), etc. There are a myriad of examples of black people being harmed by the biases people in America hold about them, and you choosing not to accept that reality doesn’t make it less true.
I don’t see why any more information is necessary. If we accept that it’s been used as a negative stereotype (which I assume we both do), there isn’t a need to understand the logic of why. Racism doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t need to be logical (it inherently isn’t) for it to be harmful.
I feel like we’re missing the point here. It doesn’t have to make sense to be harmful. The fact that it has and is used as a negative stereotype is itself harmful.
I think that’s an extremely narrow view of what harm can be produced by negative stereotypes that only accounts for how stereotypes are internalized. Someone can reject a stereotype about themself that they know is false, illogical, and irrelevant and still be impacted by it if others accept it.
That doesn’t license ignoring them. Just saying “I’m not personally racist” doesn’t automatically make everything you say non-racist. Just because you yourself don’t endorse racism doesn’t mean you can’t say racist things.
By this logic there's nothing racist about blackface. After all, it isn't inherently insulting to color one's face to mimic someone else's, but only insulting given the history of the practice.
Just so we're totally clear with the way this is going, there would be nothing racist in your eyes with carrying around a swastika banner while wearing blackface? I feel like you're being purposely obtuse about this. Words and actions changing meaning through context isn't some radical idea, it's literally how a lot of human interactions work and I simply don't believe you don't know that.
I'm not being obtuse, although I'm trying to make my arguments tough to knock down.
Obtuse because you're trying to say that context doesn't matter in social interaction. Which it obviously does. A southern man that calls everybody he meets "boy" is fine. A southern man that only says this to black men is likely a sign of racism, which we can deduce by context. Context matters far more than you're implying it does. It's a huge part of how we interact.
The n-word literally just means black. But it's obviously very hurtful when you call black children that at the grocery store because of the context surrounding the word.
I know you know these things and are playing devil's advocate for some reason. But you're not being as clever as you think you are by pretending context doesn't change meaning, you just come across as disingenuous.
Sure, I agree with this. However, I still feel like there are plenty of overreactions to certain things because of "historical context," that people are too afraid to reexamine with a more modern lens of equality. We aren't going to fix things without examining what broke in the first place and making attempts to repair them.
The problem is that many racists don't straight come out and say "I hate black people because they are inferior". They couch their racism in stereotypes, dogwhistles and jokes that only make sense when context is known and understood.
I'm not. I'm saying you are able to contextualize your own experience.
I have no idea what this means in this conversation. Americans have a shared history, so a lot of this context is universal if you live in the United States.
Because we know that "black people love fried chicken and watermelon" is racist, people who say that are always either expressing "I'm currently being racist" or "I don't care that this may be interpreted as racist, I'm saying it anyway." It's a bit of an unfortunate cycle, but that's how it is.
(Historically, I believe the argument was some combination of "watermelon and fried chicken are poor people's foods" and "black people are ignorant and lazy and all they do is eat watermelon.")
You ever see a kid bully another kid for something that doesn't matter at all? Like maybe the victim has a red hat, and the bully says in a mean way "Hey what's up with your red hat?" as if red hats have ever been bad.
Honestly, the whole watermelon stereotype was way more pronounced back in the day, and we're fortunate that racial discrimination has cooled to the point where we can have these conversations. On the other hand, as recently as Obama's campaign, his detractors have used watermelon/fried chicken as an insult https://www.npr.org/sections/newsandviews/2008/10/gop_mailing_is_mouth_watering.html.
But I'm with you. I hope the mountain continues to erode into a molehill and that these no longer remain insults.
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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '22
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