6:39 pm • 3 October 2011 • 206 notes
A few days ago, I posted this picture of a facebook friend of mine who was dressed in blackface. Below are pictures of (1) the comment I then wrote under the picture (at the bottom of the first photo) and (2) the long message he sent me in response, defending his racist behavior. And for those wondering, my facebook friend is the one on the left, and the girl in the middle is in fact black (according to him, at least).
In the spirit of objectivity and me being too exhausted to explain why I think this message is full of racism, I’m going to leave it up to the reader (you) to play a little game I like to call spot the ignorance.
Let the games begin.
summed up:
“Hi, I’m racist, let me tell you how I’m racist. See? I’m not racist.”
holy shit.
(Note: I’m going to type up the text for screenreaders in a sec but I am REBLOGGING IN A MEETING LOL)
lol. not only are they wearing racist costumes, i really don’t know of any african tribesmen wearing fake ass appropriative grass skirts.
this isn’t a meme, but this post is a two-fer. hard to pass up.
IT’S OKAY GUISE HE ASKED HIS WHITE PARENTS. IT’S ALRIGHT!
The problem is that they don’t want to understand. “we asked out parents”. They’re obviously dumb asses too. Smh. “we know the roots of black face”. That right there should’ve made them stop. All they cared about was appearing “cool”.
They did something stupid and ill-advised, but I wouldn’t go so far as to brand them a racist because they did something stupid while in college (haven’t we all?). Just from reading his explanation as to why he thought he was justified I felt sad for him more than I felt anger at him walking around in blackface. “Our parents saidi t was okay” pretty much tells you everything you need to know. They’re woefully ignorant and misguided…. but I don’t think they’re racist based on this alone.
College kids do dumb shit sometimes.
You stay klassy Rutgers.
Sorry guys but I am going with gamerecognlzegame on this. It’s just dumb. Please don’t confuse being stupid and being racist.
How does his being dumb negate the fact that he’s being racist? Ignorance isn’t a defense.
“They did something stupid and ill-advised, but I wouldn’t go so far as to brand them a racist because they did something stupid while in college”
Nobody’s branding them racist for doing something stupid. They’ve branded themselves racists by doing something racist.
How are these logical syllogisms evading people?
Isn’t it widely established that ignorance isn’t an excuse for breaking the law? I think the same can be said for racism. Especially since he knew it had the potential to be racist, he should have just fucking streered clear. But nope he was like, “nah people would understand, how they could not? I’m white!”
Also his argument boils down to, “we thought doing a realistic lion costume would be too far-fetched so we decided to dress up as people of a different color from a part of the world we’ve never been to based likely on, I don’t know, Disney cartoons, because this is more realistic. How could you think this is wrong?”
And fuck his narrowminded view of Africa! For fucks sake, there is more to Africa than lions, poachers, and “tribesmen”.
This is why determining whether someone is or isn’t racist is a waste of time - it derails and distracts from ACTUAL RACIST BEHAVIOR. It doesn’t matter whether they “are” or “aren’t”, it matters that they did something racist and that is something worth discussing. Feel like it’s good to be as careful with the languageh ere as possible if only to avoid the stupid and irrelevant “they’re just dumb and in college” conversation.
