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"ironic" racism is still racism

tathra

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First they came for Pepe: How "ironic" Nazism is taking over the internet
here is a scene in Roman Polanski?s critically-acclaimed World War Two film The Pianist in which the Jewish protagonist, played by Adrien Brody, puts on a German soldier?s coat to keep warm.

?Don?t shoot!? he tells the Polish troops who have come to liberate Warsaw. ?I?m Polish!? A soldier, realising his mistake, lowers his gun. With disdain on his face, he asks: ?Why the fucking coat??


It's safe to say that in normal circumstances, "Nazi coat" can be used as shorthand for "Nazi person". I found myself asking a similar question last month when I interviewed a ?Nazi furry?. The furry (ie. person who dresses as an animal, often for sexual reasons) likes to wear a red armband reminiscent of those worn by the Nazi party. ?It?s just a piece of cloth,? he said at the time, insisting he held no far-right views. Then why not choose another piece of cloth? I wondered to myself.

This furry is just one of hundreds of people online who flaunt the iconography of National Socialism whilst denying they hold any Nazi views. If that doesn?t make sense, it shouldn?t. ?Ironic? Nazism, ?satirical? Nazism, and ?just joking? Nazism have taken over the internet. Who is behind it, what are they doing, and how did it begin?


***

Unfortunately, it is probably Hillary Clinton?s fault. In September 2016, the presidential hopeful?s website declared popular internet meme Pepe the Frog to be a white supremacist symbol. If we ignore that this has now become a self-fulfilling prophecy (racists embraced Pepe after the Anti-Defamation League chimed in and officially declared the meme a hate symbol), this was a frankly ridiculous assertion.

?We've won folks... My God ...We've won,? read a post on r/TheDonald ? the Reddit hub for Donald Trump supporters ? after the news. They didn't hold back with their disdain. ?This makes her look absolutely retarded to anyone young enough to be on the internet,? read the top comment. Why? White supremacists were undoubtedly already using the meme ? many on the notoriously politically incorrect 4Chan board /pol/ had emblazoned the frog with swastikas. So why wasn?t it, in turn, a white supremacist symbol?


The answer to this is irony. Layers and layers of it slathered with thick, glutinous nonsense that form a Bruce Bogtrotter?s cake that is impossible to digest. You and I are what 4Chan would pejoratively call ?normies?, i.e. normal people. We can?t possibly hope to understand the difference between someone on 4Chan who holds sincere Nazi beliefs and someone who is shouting ?Death to all Jews? for the keks (see glossary), like a toddler who has just learnt the word ?poo?.

This doesn?t normally matter ? we can just ignore them ? but Clinton?s post gave them the legitimacy and media attention that they craved.

It also, I would argue, set off a new internet trend. Angry at liberals labelling everything (most notably, the alt-right) ?Nazis?, fringe internet communities decided to fight back. The logic ? if it can be called that ? went like this:

?Let?s dress like Nazis and act like Nazis so that liberals call us Nazis when we?re not! That will show just how stupid these liberals are!?

***

?The press, the media, does not deserve to have a consistent picture of reality presented to them.?

These are the words of Qu Qu, a man in his late twenties who considers himself the leader of the ?alt furry? movement, who is speaking to me over Twitter. Alt furries are furries who have embraced far-right messages and Nazi iconography on the social network. Some wear armbands, others write erotic Nazi literature, some tweet anti-Semitic jokes. When I spoke to some last month, I was shocked when only one of them actually admitted to holding Nazi views. Many claimed they were being ?ironic? or fighting back at what they consider to be left-wing intolerance.


?If the press becomes obsessed with a moral panic, such as the one about the resurgence of National Socialism, it is the duty of every subculture to feed that paranoia until its absurdity becomes plain for all to see.?

***

Earlier this week, the king of this logic died.

PewDiePie ? the most subscribed content creator on YouTube ? was dropped by Disney after the Wall Street Journal exposed an array of anti-Semitic comments in his videos. In the past, he has spoken out against the media for misrepresenting his ?jokes?, but this time he wrote a blog post in which he admitted: ?I understand that these jokes were ultimately offensive.? What changed?

What changed is that PewDiePie was confronted with a reality that anti-hate campaigners have long since known to be true. After his anti-Semitic videos, PewDiePie was embraced by the neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer, which is now calling itself ?The world?s #1 PewDiePie Fansite.? PewDiePie has learnt a truth that many of the ?just joking? brigade frequently try to deny ? that satire, irony, and jokes can validate and legitimise hate speech in a way that helps it to spread.


?Pushing out anti-Semitic tropes has consequences in the real world,? says a spokesperson for anti-racism organisation Hope Not Hate. ?PewDiePie may or may not believe this stuff himself, but he does need to understand that he has an effect on the world, and that racists and haters can sometimes act on the words and memes that are shared so readily on social channels, and ? with soaring hate crime rates ? already have.?

***

Then they came for Trash Dove.

The head-banging purple pigeon is a Facebook sticker (a picture users can post in the social network?s comment sections) that went viral this week. In response, 4Chan started ?Operation Nazi Bird?, a satirical campaign to turn the meme into a Nazi symbol. The aim was to trick the left.


This started to work when a self-described philosopher known as Quincy Frey wrote a satirical Medium post (which has since been removed after a copyright claim) declaring Trash Dove to be an ?alt-right? symbol. When people began to fall for this, 4Chan won. Yet so too ? as Hope Not Hate argue ? did actual white supremacists.

?What started as irony will now actually spread and this will become a ?Nazi hate? symbol whether we like it or not,? Quincy Frey tells me. ?The alt-righters from 4Chan work in a funny way; it always starts ironic but they seem to take irony to the next level and then these idiots become brainwashed? eventually their sickness will spread.?

***

Which leaves us with a question that regrettably summarises today?s state of affairs: are ironic Nazis as dangerous as real Nazis?

Simon Johnson, the chief executive of the Jewish Leadership Council, seems to think so. ?It is difficult to understand how people can use Holocaust language, imagery or comments and think that it is a joke,? he says. ?The French comedian Dieudonne uses the Quenelle gesture and other supposedly humorous Holocaust imagery, as well as dressing cast members in concentration camp uniforms, as part of his act." The Quenelle gesture was an originally jokey gesture which has grown to be considered anti-Semitic after individuals posed in front of Jewish institutions holding the stance. In December 2013, French President Fran?ois Hollande reacted to the gesture, saying: "We will fight against the sarcasm of those who purport to be humorists but are actually professional anti-Semites.?

Johnson agrees it is important to tackle this alleged comedy. "For many this demeans the Holocaust and would be considered anti-Semitism. Allowing these acts to continue perpetuates myths and often leads prejudice against the Jewish community.?

It is also important to note that many who claim to be ?satirical? Nazis are simply hiding behind a thin veil of plausible deniability. The word ?irony? ? however incorrectly it?s being used ? allows them to spread Nazi messages and iconography whilst denying culpability. It also leaves many on the left unsure where they stand. What?s more important: combatting hate speech or protecting free speech?

Kassie is a 31-year-old graduate student who reached out to me after being mocked for taking Trash Dove seriously as an alt-right symbol - proving that online trends can have real-world consequences. ?My friend is liberal but thinks I'm overreacting and don't understand satire,? she tells me. ?But I don't get why I have to call Nazi jokes satire.


?The most frustrating part is that my concern is immediately written off as stupid because I don't belong to the community. If we get past that part, then I'm overreacting or dumb because I don't get that it's ironic or I don't understand that it's a joke. But I get that on some level people are saying that it's a joke, and some are ?just joking? and I still think that a joke can be racist and misogynist and alt-right or whatever.

?I'm just left with feeling like I've fallen down a hole of ironic devils advocates who use that as an excuse to say ?funny? racist and misogynistic things.?

***

When Prince Harry donned a Nazi uniform for a fancy dress party in 2005, no one thought he was actually a fan of Hitler. If ironic Nazis had emerged twelve years ago, they might have been given the same benefit of the doubt by being considered poor taste but not ultimately racist. Yet context is key. In an era when the President of the United States wants a registry of Muslim citizens, and fascism appears to be on the rise across Europe, no one who is ?just joking? ? not furries, YouTubers, or 4Channers ? can be annoyed if the media labels them Nazis.

I do agree that fundamentally it is important to combat the left?s tendency to label everything right-wing ?Nazi? or ?racist?. Internet subcultures are not wrong to attempt to challenge this and other examples of left-wing extremes. Yet if this is what they really want, then one - very pressing - question remains. Why the fucking coat?
 
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A Complete Guide to 'Hipster Racism'
There's been a lot of talk these last couple of weeks about "hipster racism" or "ironic racism"—or, as I like to call it, racism. It's, you know, introducing your black friend as "my black friend"—as a joke!!!—to show everybody how totally not preoccupied you are with your black friend's blackness. It's the gentler, more clueless, and more insidious cousin of a hick in a hood; the domain of educated, middle-class white people (like me—to be clear, I am one of those) who believe that not wanting to be racist makes it okay for them to be totally racist. "But I went to college — I can't be racist!" Turns out, you can.

People benefit from racism—hell, I benefit from it every day—and things that benefit powerful people don't just suddenly get "fixed" and disappear because Halle Berry won an Oscar or whatever. Modern racism lives in entrenched de facto inequalities, in coded language about "work ethic" and "states' rights," in silent negative spaces like absence and invisibility, and in Newt Gingrich's hair. And in irony.

When people are trying to be sensitive about race but they don't know what to say, they usually go with, "Well, race is a complicated issue." Except, no, it's not. Race is one of the least complicated issues that there is, because it's made up. It's arbitrary. It's as complicated as goddamn Santa Claus. Oh, that guy's mom was half-black, which makes his skin slightly more pigmented than mine, which therefore means that he's inherently 12.5% lazier than me? Science! Um, no. What's actually complicated is our country's relationship with race, and our utter ineptitude at talking about it. We suck. I mean, I work on it every day, and I'm still a total fuck-up. But this new scheme someone came up with—where we prove we're not racist by acting as casually racist as possible? Not our best, white people. Not our best.

Racism is like a wily little bacterium. It doesn't just roll over and die once we swallow our antibiotics—it mutates and evolves and hides itself in plain sight, and then all of a sudden, fuck, my arm fell off. Dickhead bacteria. (Sidenote: arm for sale!)

A long time ago (not really!), it was socially acceptable to own people. Then it wasn't, but it was socially acceptable to murder people if they looked at your wife. Then it wasn't! Yay! But it was still okay to say that people whose skin color you didn't like weren't allowed to be around you. And so on. Eventually we arrived at the point (now) where it's socially unacceptable in mainstream culture for white people to say denigrating things about people of other races. But just because the behavior has been suppressed, that doesn't mean people's prejudices have simply disappeared. And white people haaaaaate being told what to do in our own country (fun fact: not actually "ours")!

So racism went underground. Sure, you can't say racist things anymore, but you can pretend to say them! Which, it turns out, is pretty much the exact same thing. There are a couple of strains of "ironic racism" making the rounds right now, and a couple of typical defenses.

1. "Tee-Hee, Aren't I Adorable?"
This category includes things like wide-eyed acoustic covers of hip-hop songs, suburban white girls flashing gang signs, and this Tweet from Zooey Deschanel: "Haha. :) RT @Sarabareilles: Home from tour and first things first: New Girl episodes I missed. #thuglife." See, it's hilarious, because we aren't thugs—we are darling girls, and real thugs are black people who do crime! Oh, hey, can I call you back? I need to sew more ric-rac on my apron. I hope a black person didn't get into my ric-rac Kaboodle and steal all of it! JK, LOL. RIP, Whitney.

(Now, I'm obv not saying that Zooey Deschanel is some terrible racist. I don't know her, although I did sit next to her at a restaurant once, and she ordered "olives." She seemed lovely, and she didn't call anyone the n-word for the entire meal. But I'm saying that we are all kind of bizarrely cavalier and careless these days, throwing our most deeply-considered morals under the bus for the sake of a few cheap jokes. It's weird, and we owe the world a little more critical thinking.)

2. "Recreational Slumming."
Wherein privileged people descend for a visit inside the strange, foreign spaces of othered groups. Like, I don't know, IHOP. Or that "scary" bar in the south end. Then they go home again. Catchphrase: "It's soooooo ghetto, but I actually totally like it!"

3. "Ummm, I'm a Writer and I'm Trying to Write in Here!"
This is Lesley Arfin crowing about the majestic power of the n-word, and white kids whining that it's "unfair" that black people "get" to use "it". You know, because words are powerful and words are Arfin's craft and would you take the color red away from the best painter on Twitter??? And besides, don't you just find Arfin to be so RAW and DELICIOUSLY NAUGHTY? It's all tied up with the deliberately obtuse people who conflate "freedom of speech" with "immunity from criticism." You "can" say the n-word. Go ahead and say it if you want, Skrillex. And I will go ahead and give you the world's most sidewaysiest eyeball forever. Because it hurts people. Why do you want to hurt people?

4. "God, Don't White People Suck?"
Okay, I get what you're trying to do here—having some fun at the expense of the oppressors while setting yourself up as one of the "cool" white people—but mainly what you end up doing is implying that black people don't like informative radio or TED talks. Stuff White People Like: having the best brains! Isn't it great that we can make fun of ourselves while still reminding you that we're better than you?

And the thing is, when these things get called out, there really is no defense. But they try:

"No, don't you see? I'm just showing how I'm so down with [minority group] that it's totally cool for me to make jokes at their expense. Because we are just that kind of tight bros now."
No. You cannot unlock some secret double-not-racist achievement by just being regular racist. Otherwise Bill O'Reilly would be president of the NAACP.

"But it's a JOOOOOKE."
Here's the thing about jokes. They only work when they're aiming up. I wrote this in another piece recently, but I'm just going to plagiarize myself: People in positions of power simply cannot make jokes at the expense of the powerless. That's why, at a company party, you never have a roast where the CEO is roasting the janitor ("Isn't it funny how Steve can barely feed his family? This guy knows what I'm talking about!" [points to other janitor]). Because that would be GROSS, and both janitors would have to work late to clean up everyone's barf. Open-mic comedians, I know you think you're part of some fresh vanguard in alternative comedy who just discovered that a lot of black ladies don't like it when you touch their hair, but pleeeeeeease just stick to stuff about how your stupid girlfriend is a bitch. (Just kidding. Please never speak again.)

"So I'm not allowed to have a genuine interest in another culture?!!?!??!"
First of all, privileged dickweeds wearing Urban Outfitters "Navajo" panties, I didn't realize that you excavated those in your anthropological field work. My bad. Carry on. And second of all, again, you "can" do whatever the fuck you want. You "can" wear whatever you want, say whatever you want, and think whatever you want about whatever you want. All the time! Yaaay! But if a group of people comes to you and says, "This thing that you are doing is hurting us," and you keep doing it for fun, then you are a dickweed! Like, you know we had an actual genocide here, right? A deliberate extermination of human beings? Right where your house is? So maybe just err on the side of sensitivity.

"Yeah, but we have a black president! Isn't racism over?"
Okay. That's probably the most racist thing you've said all day, imaginary amalgam of all the careless hipsters in the world. You know how you can tell that black people are still oppressed? Because black people are still oppressed. If you claim that you are not a racist person (or, at least, that you're committed to working your ass off not to be one—which is really the best that any of us can promise), then you must believe that people are fundamentally born equal. So if that's true, then in a vacuum, factors like skin color should have no effect on anyone's success. Right? And therefore, if you really believe that all people are created equal, then when you see that drastic racial inequalities exist in the real world, the only thing that you could possibly conclude is that some external force is holding certain people back. Like...racism. Right? So congratulations! You believe in racism! Unless you don't actually think that people are born equal. And if you don't believe that people are born equal, then you're a fucking racist.

But you know what? At least that's sincere. And at least sincere racism isn't running around Brooklyn wearing artisanal suspenders and masquerading as enlightenment. Give me sincere racism or give me no racism at all, but enough with this weaselly shit.
 
Fashionable Bigotry 101 – A Crash Course on Hipster Racism
“Wong Brothers Laundry Service—Two Wongs Can Make It White” and “Wok-N-Bowl—Let the Good Times Roll—Chinese Food & Bowling.” were a couple of T-shirts that were released and dramatically recalled by Abercrombie & Fitch a decade ago. Years later, Urban Outfitters had a similar scandal when they carried an “ironic” form of monopoly called Ghettopoly “which rewards players for building crack houses and pimpin’ hoes” on the premise that because of the numerous ethnic groups depicted in the game, it isn’t racist. “Ironically” mispronouncing l’s as r’s to your Asian friends or introducing your black friends as “your black friends” for jokes, as blogger Lindy West notes, to show everybody how totally not preoccupied you are with your “colored” friend’s “coloredness”, is becoming part and parcel of the lifestyle of the young, privileged and progressive. Hipster racism, ironic “racism” or as I like to call it, plain old racism, is quickly emerging as the newest manifestation of palatable racism among educated elites in the US.

As an Afro-Jamaican male, the first thing that my parents warned me about before coming to Amherst College wasn’t illegal drugs, the rigorous academic environment or even the often immobilizing winters that plague the North-East, but the perils of simply being a black man in the United States. Although both of my parents currently live in Jamaica, their colorful experiences in the US with overt racism rightfully scared the living shit out of them. My mother recounts the story of me as toddler somehow getting lost in a South Florida grocery store and her subsequently overhearing the store employee who ultimately found me, describe me as a “little monkey”. Or my father, who like myself was also fortunate enough to study in the United States, but at Yale, was subject to frequent disrespect by students and professors alike despite the progressive reputation of the school in the 1970’s. My eldest sister (Class of ’92) paints a similar portrait during her time at Amherst College during the late 80’s and early 90’s as a woman of color. However, despite their cautionary tales about this country and its people, in my nearly two years here, I have not experienced an instance of overt racism. On the other hand, my experience with racism at Amherst is masked by “irony”, “sarcasm” and “comedy”. When I think back on the times I’ve been most offended on this campus I reflect on the saddening frequency of off-color jokes that have come my way. From fried chicken to watermelon, I’ve gotten them all—of course, only in the context of “irony”. My national identity is also subject to similar fashionable bigotry. Dance and track stereotypes, and the movie Cool Runnings, generally comprise the subject matter for these non-jokes.

In my opinion, racism at Amherst College is manifested in two main ways: institutionalized racism and ironic racism. Institutionalized Racism is the process of purposeful or in many cases, inadvertent discrimination against certain minority groups through biased attitudes, rules or practices. In my experience this type of discrimination is so subtle that both its existence and impact often go unnoticed. A prominent example of this at Amherst is the student body and administrative ambivalence that left the Multicultural Resource Center in the basement for years. Ironic racism on the other hand is manifested in more overt ways, in many cases so overtly, that its effects are hidden in plain sight. Ironic racism at Amherst is frequently displayed by making a joke using a racist archetype that is supposed to be witty and modern, but actually supports racism by dehumanizing a particular race for a laugh.

Remember the “satirical” Autoclave Poster sponsored by the Biology department until last academic year. The poster, entitled “A gift from Lord Jeffrey Amherst,” depicts Lord Jeffery offering a pile of blankets to an American Indian man donned in leather and fringe, with feathers attached to a headpiece. An American Indian woman and child are in the background and a baby is strapped to a cradleboard. The caption reads, “Thank you. Have these been autoclaved?” Jeffery Amherst is known by numerous historical accounts as a pioneer in biological warfare. He is accredited with requesting that smallpox-infected blankets be sent to the American Indians, starting the epidemic among them. Apparently the Biology department was unaware of how insulting their lighthearted reference to genocide was until Danielle Trevino ‘14, Choctaw, sent a biting letter to the biology department, calling the poster “truly hurtful and alienating.”

In March that year, Amherst student publication, “The Indicator,” published another such “satirical” cartoon depicting the campus housing shortage. The cartoon showed three tipis in a clearing, along with the caption, “Housing Crisis Solution: Lord Jeff Approved.” This is an excerpt from a letter written by two students at the University of Massachusetts expressing outrage at the image.


Recently, your school news journal, The Indicator (Volume XXXIII, Issue 2, page 19), ran a cartoon depicting the “Lord Jeff approved” housing solution in the form of tipis. We find this incredibly insensitive, and ultimately, racist. Let us be clear, the person who drew the cartoon (Tricia Lipton), the editors who approved it (Nadirah Porter-Kasbati and Laurence Pevsner), and the student body, faculty, and staff of Amherst College who subsequently read it and perhaps even laughed are not necessarily racists. They have, however, participated in racist behavior, unintentionally or not.


The letter went on to state that the image was racist because it promotes stereotypes by inaccurately depicting American Indian housing as substandard to European housing; appropriates a cultural object of many Native American tribes and makes it the butt of a joke, referencing Lord Jeffery’s smallpox genocide.

This type of “comedy” is becoming increasingly socially acceptable because of the prominence of the “hipster” culture. Rachel Fudge suggests that “hipster misidentified irony” is the cause, where many liberals have a “nothing should be taken seriously” attitude while demanding protection from condemnation because “they’re being, you know, ironic”; the same justification that allows a joke comparing defecation to “taking Obama to the White House”. OMG you get it right? It’s “funny” because the president has brown skin, and brown is the color of shit. Yay. The Amherst College hipster attempts to mediate a lack of meaningful individuality by continuously searching for the anti-mainstream. Whether it be appropriating Aztec and Native American patterns and clothing or posting the newest “racist” memes on Reddit or 4chan ironically on Facebook, the Amherst College hipster is a “walking citation” that uses irony as the main way to cope with daily life. Wampole notes that almost every manifestation of contemporary existence (advertising, politics, fashion, television, social media) reveals this “will to irony”.

These individuals are self-professed post-racial, with supposedly enough education to simply be above racism. They are so post-racial in fact, that they have complete license to say extraordinarily offensive things in a normalized way. Commenting on the fact that Hispanic heritage month starts on September 15th, a sombrero clad Stephen Colbert “joked” that “Yes, even their heritage month jumps a border”. There was no controversy over that statement because he was making fun of the “real” racists at FOX News. But whether the racist or the “racist” is using them, these “jokes” only become funny because of the normalization of racial stereotypes. Joking about racism in this way does nothing to improve the condition of the marginalized subject of the joke. Often, it further alienates and dehumanizes.

Ironic living is seemingly unassailable. It makes fun of itself, recognizing its inability to produce anything useful, while enticing others to laugh at it. No attack can be successfully launched against it because surmounts itself. It allows the perpetrator to avoid personal responsibility while hiding in public. “I have plenty of black friends who are cool with me saying the N-Word—so when I use the N-Word to say a joke, you know I don’t mean it in a bad way” or as HBO’s Girls writer Lesley Arfin unapologetically puts it, “’Nigger’ is a great word. It just packs so much punch. The two g’s next to each other are like literal two G’s, broin’ out, tough as nails, them against the world”. Through fear and pre-emptive shame, ironic bigotry reflects a culture of ambivalence and submission that often surrounds the overt bigotry on our campus (see the racial and homophobic epithets of this year).

For every protest against hipster bigotry comes a defensive yet beleaguered response of, “It’s just a joke, stop being so sensitive”. These comments come from white and minority bigots alike. Another generic response is, “Why do they take everything so seriously?” A thin line separates comedy and tragedy in these contexts. “Ironic” bigots need to ask themselves the following questions moving forward. What exactly is being laughed at through these jokes? Why are they being said in the first place? Is it an attempt to claim a contemporary political discourse? If that’s the case, then why has it emerged in this form? In the context of race, just because overt racism has decreased in comparison to our parents’ generation doesn’t mean that racism has ended. It survives in more benign forms, like ironic racism and institutional racism. Whether or not the hipster racist wholeheartedly believes in his comedy is beside the point. What makes the hipster “racist” a racist is the awareness that they know better but choose not to care.

Undoubtedly satire pre-Generation Y often provided meaningful political outlets for unsaid societal tensions. But what makes fashionable bigotry different is the fact that the “satire” of our generation has left the political domain and spread into life itself. For most of us who indulge in that mode of existence, life has become “an endless series of sarcastic jokes and pop references, a competition to see who can care the least (or, at minimum, a performance of such a competition)” (Wampole, 2012). Millennial satirical racism and bigotry often dehumanizes its subjects just as much as the commentary from the intentional racist or bigot.

Another question that should be raised as we appraise ourselves for such unintentional bigotry is “What’s the aim?” How much usefulness is derived from unintentional racism and bigotry? In my opinion that’s the factor that separates “Chappelle Show” and “The Boondocks” from the racist jokes about people of color that pervades our campus and larger society. For the unintentional racist, what does pointing out a racist trope accomplish? Pointing out stereotypes like Black men committing crime, Asians getting good grades or Jewish people being stingy provides no other commentary besides “LOOK HERE, RACISM” and does nothing for the racial group besides further propagating misinformation. To the ironic racist, I leave a quote from Lindy West, “You cannot unlock some secret double-not-racist achievement just by being a regular racist. Otherwise Bill O’Reilly would be president of the NAACP.”
 
Tldr, the social justice movement is low energy and is losing. I just hope you guys don’t go after 4chna tbh. But I can appreciate your opinion tathra since you can recognize esgelord sarcasm/jokes. I’m not racist and I ahbore it, but I will make ironic changes can comments bc they amuse me. I know they upset the mayos but why should I have to placate them.
 
Making fun of nazis using a pepe meme is still just a meme, anything can be skewed any way that seems fit for a purpose, labelling a person as racist just to remove said target s as glaringly obvious as the backpedalling done to cover it up.

Sad.
 
I know they upset the mayos but why should I have to placate them.

it boils down to not doing things that harm people. even if its not intended, we still hold people responsible when their actions result in somebody's death, be it due to accident or negligence. actions can cause harm even when its not intended, and when you know that your actions are causing harm and keep doing them anyway, then you're just a selfish prick. "ironic racism" is just as harmful as "real racism", and functionally there's little difference between the 2, even moreso when people who aren't "in" on the joke see it and take it as a sign that their bigoted nonsense is both accepted and welcome (see poe's law), which happens everywhere that "ironic racism" becomes normalized.
 
Anyone ever realize that saying “I’m not racist” actually demonstrates the opposite?

...

That’s the trouble with privilege - it makes understand ones racism really hard to see.
 
Generally speaking, absolutely. Rape is a little harder to ignore in some ways, but at least as far as sexism and patriarchy go, absolutely.
 
If you speak of and promote diversity you're kinda racist.
Not only do you assume that everyone is racist, but you feel you have the authority to separate people by race and make changes based on skin color.
 
...
And the thing is, when these things get called out, there really is no defense. But they try:

"No, don't you see? I'm just showing how I'm so down with [minority group] that it's totally cool for me to make jokes at their expense. Because we are just that kind of tight bros now."
No. You cannot unlock some secret double-not-racist achievement by just being regular racist. Otherwise Bill O'Reilly would be president of the NAACP.

"But it's a JOOOOOKE."
Here's the thing about jokes. They only work when they're aiming up. I wrote this in another piece recently, but I'm just going to plagiarize myself: People in positions of power simply cannot make jokes at the expense of the powerless. That's why, at a company party, you never have a roast where the CEO is roasting the janitor ("Isn't it funny how Steve can barely feed his family? This guy knows what I'm talking about!" [points to other janitor]). Because that would be GROSS, and both janitors would have to work late to clean up everyone's barf. Open-mic comedians, I know you think you're part of some fresh vanguard in alternative comedy who just discovered that a lot of black ladies don't like it when you touch their hair, but pleeeeeeease just stick to stuff about how your stupid girlfriend is a bitch. (Just kidding. Please never speak again.)

"So I'm not allowed to have a genuine interest in another culture?!!?!??!"
First of all, privileged dickweeds wearing Urban Outfitters "Navajo" panties, I didn't realize that you excavated those in your anthropological field work. My bad. Carry on. And second of all, again, you "can" do whatever the fuck you want. You "can" wear whatever you want, say whatever you want, and think whatever you want about whatever you want. All the time! Yaaay! But if a group of people comes to you and says, "This thing that you are doing is hurting us," and you keep doing it for fun, then you are a dickweed! Like, you know we had an actual genocide here, right? A deliberate extermination of human beings? Right where your house is? So maybe just err on the side of sensitivity.
 
@sj

I think he's trying to say that those who recognize the social and economic disparities between races are themselves racist. Because we are classifying people based on their skin color.

Ridiculous, of course, but there it is.
 
Like...how giving women the vote was sexist, because it acknowledged glaring gender equality?

I see.

It's that kind of disingenuous nonsense that gets so many impressionable people sucked into anti-semitic conspiracy theories and other bullshit peddled by the far-right online these days.
 
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Like...how giving women the vote was sexist, because it acknowledged glaring gender equality?

More like Senor Trudeau staffing his cabinet with 50% women even though they make up a much smaller % of qualified candidates.
 
And yet they make up roughly 50% of the population. Part of the privilege there is the fact that so few women compared to men are even considered "qualified candidates".

Saying a group has privilege is just acknowledging that they have advantages over other groups that are built into society, simply because of the way they were born. Race isn't the only way this happens but it's certainly one of them. And certainly some people get carried away with the whole concept. Attacking someone because they didn't realize they have privilege over others isn't cool, but it's an important topic to discuss. When I refer to someone having privilege, I don't mean it as a dig against them. You can't help it if you're born, say, white, and male.
 
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White males get shot by police in larger numbers. One of the highest risk for suicide etc. Anyone can be a victim
As for women, they are currently outperforming men in tertiary education, but maybe there are simply less of them that desire to get into politics?

This was a pretty interesting experiment re: Starbucks being racist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FvwMsb9CRg

Laura Ingraham interviews Hotep Jesus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO-gJw8SVsg
 
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