"Blackface" Discussion

I was going to stay out of this topic, but I invite you to come to Belgium and call a black person "black", and see what happens...



See above, it's an insult in Dutch to call someone "black". It's a racist phrase. No one can know all these cultural differences. It's a very difficult matter.
I am not surprised, your main christmas event seems to evolve around crowding the streets in blackface and pretending to happily assist a white old man on a horse.
 
Are you speaking Dutch, or talking to Belgian black people?

Calling a black person coloured is very dated.

But if you’re having trouble between the two cultures, you can call us by our names too

Just saying that if you would know the Dutch word for black, and tell that to a black person in Belgium, it would be very upsetting. I too would use the term "coloured" instead. But ok, I'm glad to learn.

I am not surprised, your main christmas event seems to evolve around crowding the streets in blackface and pretending to happily assist a white old man on a horse.

Sinterklaas has nothing to do with Christmas. And what in hell has that got anything to do with my remarks? You are just being as ignorant as some of the anti-PC posters in here.
 
You’ve misconstrued my point here - which was simply about responsibility. I’m not trying to throw people in front of a firing squad here, and am not at odds with the bolded text.
Then let's move on to my point to see if we can agree on it or if we should just leave it in disagreement.

‘intention’ means feckal in this situation. It is your responsibility to be aware of historical context and connotations.
Saying intentions means feck all is telling me that you'd say that people with malicious intent and a lack of knowledge are the same evil.
I believe that to be wrong, as I believe intention is the difference between a racist (a horrible human being) and someone committing a racist action (a horrible action, but not necessarily done by a horrible human being).

Can we agree that it is wrong?
 
Then let's move on to my point to see if we can agree on it or if we should just leave it in disagreement.


Saying intentions means feck all is telling me that you'd say that people with malicious intent and a lack of knowledge are the same evil.
I believe that to be wrong, as I believe intention is the difference between a racist (a horrible human being) and someone committing a racist action (a horrible action, but not necessarily done by a horrible human being).

Can we agree that it is wrong?

To elaborate, what I meant by intention means feckal is that the consequence to the person hurt by it is the same - not necessarily the malicious nature of it. Sure, I agree, it’s nowhere near the same thing in terms of the intention of the perpetrator - but the victim suffers the same way though. So yeah that was my point too.
 
I know I said I was abandoning this thread but @RedTillI'mDead just keeps pulling new back in with his nuanced arguments on his right to say the n-word and how calling white people white people is racist.
I think this has probably run its course, mods.
Why? Are your favoured PC gone mad lot not fairing well enough against the SJW scourge? Why don't you do that weird thing you do where you bring up the Lukaku chant and pretend he was somehow forced to denounce it by the long hand of the left again? That should put things back on track. :lol:
 
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Look, Griezmann's act is not as innocent as so many have rushed to pronounce it - the comic look he's chosen is mockery at best, patronising and racist at worst; who would recognise it as a Globetrotters tribute if the kit were different?
 
To elaborate, what I meant by intention means feckal is that the consequence to the person hurt by it is the same - not necessarily the malicious nature of it. Sure, I agree, it’s nowhere near the same thing in terms of the intention of the perpetrator - but the victim suffers the same way though. So yeah that was my point too.
I completely agree that intention can mean feck all for the person offended when we're talking about hurt feelings, although the intention from the perpetrator means a lot in terms of if the offended will be apologized to and feel like there was a genuine error instead of a belief that they are lesser people in any way.

From my perspective, if someone calls me disabled (which i am) which feels hurtful for many reasons, I will have a easier time getting away from those negative feelings or hatred towards the perpetrator if the perpetrator didn't have malicious intent and is able to apologize and explain to me why they misunderstood rather than there being a negative look on disabled people.

It's not quite the same as racism of course, but hurt feelings by someone who is genuinely sorry or misinformed is much easier to get over in my experience.
 
Look, Griezmann's act is not as innocent as so many have rushed to pronounce it - the comic look he's chosen is mockery at best, patronising and racist at worst; who would recognise it as a Globetrotters tribute if the kit were different?

You said it several times without being acknowledged but you are right. The simple fact that he put more effort in the skin color than he did on the jersey should raise questions. An actual homage would have seen him purchase an actual jersey, they sell custom made ones.

Now, I do believe that like a lot of people he thought that it was an amusing thing, I don't think that he tried to hurt or upset anyone.
 
You said it several times without being acknowledged but you are right. The simple fact that he put more effort in the skin color than he did on the jersey should raise questions. An actual homage would have seen him purchase an actual jersey, they sell custom made ones.

Now, I do believe that like a lot of people he thought that it was an amusing thing, I don't think that he tried to hurt or upset anyone.
His Clarkson-style 'apology' didn't help either.
 
I completely agree that intention can mean feck all for the person offended when we're talking about hurt feelings, although the intention from the perpetrator means a lot in terms of if the offended will be apologized to and feel like there was a genuine error instead of a belief that they are lesser people in any way.

From my perspective, if someone calls me disabled (which i am) which feels hurtful for many reasons, I will have a easier time getting away from those negative feelings or hatred towards the perpetrator if the perpetrator didn't have malicious intent and is able to apologize and explain to me why they misunderstood rather than there being a negative look on disabled people.

It's not quite the same as racism of course, but hurt feelings by someone who is genuinely sorry or misinformed is much easier to get over in my experience.

Totally with you mate :)

Wheyyyyyy this discussion came to an understanding woohoooooo :lol:

Going bed now methinks
 
Look, Griezmann's act is not as innocent as so many have rushed to pronounce it - the comic look he's chosen is mockery at best, patronising and racist at worst; who would recognise it as a Globetrotters tribute if the kit were different?

I agree, the poster who mentioned him going as Larry Bird, if he didn’t paint his skin really struck a cord with me.

Most of his effort went into painting his skin and putting on a comical Afro wig - which at the heights of the Globetrotter fame, none of them had any Afro like that.

Plus, everyone saying he has all these black friends, yet didn’t think to ask any beforehand.
Nor did he bother to even get an actual Globetrotter jersey.

The more I think, it’s incredibly lazy on his part but there’s actually an element of intentional humiliation.
There’s no way he thought he looked like a Harlem Globetrotter, unless he believes black people look like that.
 
I agree, the poster who mentioned him going as Larry Bird, if he didn’t paint his skin really struck a cord with me.

Most of his effort went into painting his skin and putting on a comical Afro wig - which at the heights of the Globetrotter fame, none of them had any Afro like that.

Plus, everyone saying he has all these black friends, yet didn’t think to ask any beforehand.
Nor did he bother to even get an actual Globetrotter jersey.

The more I think, it’s incredibly lazy on his part but there’s actually an element of intentional humiliation.
There’s no way he thought he looked like a Harlem Globetrotter, unless he believes black people look like that.
Yeah in retrospect it is a bit suspect...
 
Yeah in retrospect it is a bit suspect...

Even if he got the outfit from a costume place, he still needed to get the black skin, that’s a conscious decision and would have taken a large amount of time to do.

He didn’t actually care to look like a specific Harlem Globetrotter, if he did - Larry Bird, or get the jersey of one of them.

He intentionally wanted to be appear black.
 
It’s quite odd, as we actually had a discussion thread about Black Pete on here 4 years ago, and a poster who was either Dutch or lived there claimed it was a very prominent talking point at the time, and that the likes of Kluivert and Davids had come out against it, and it’d even been used as an insult to black players...
So the idea they’re just blissfully and innocently ignorant of its potential offence seems wilfully disingenuous.

Aye, I've posted quite a bit about this over the years, with some posts probably being better than other ones.

If I remember correctly, last year the discussion in the PC gone mad thread pretty much stopped when I explained that in the former Dutch colonies with a predominantly black population, the Sinterklaas celebration including blackface is more popular than ever. Actual black people enjoying the act of blackfacing themselves is a bit of a mindfeck I guess.




I also remember posting an article last year, it might give some insight to the people who can't for the life of them understand how a society can indulge in something so clearly wrong without realising they're being racist.

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/opinion/why-i-changed-my-mind-about-black-pete.html

And there are countless of similar experiences and accounts from intelligent and well educated Dutch black people struggling with the same. It's not until they move to the States and meet the (older) people who've witnessed extreme oppression and suppression in the flesh and are exposed to a culture where it's more normal to really fight for black people's rights, that they lose their appreciation for the Sinterklaas celebration.
 
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I don’t buy this " I've got black friends nonsense " as it's always, always followed by a "BUT! ".
Ignorance in this day and age is a very poor and lazy excuse, infomation if needed is all over the place with a couple of clicks ( shouldn't be needed in this day and age though ). I never say i have white friends so why the hell should i make a point and say I've got black friends? I've just got friends, pure and simple, all different in their own way but colour doesn’t even come into the equation. It's 2017 ffs.
 
Either way this thread was worth it for the post about political correctness being societies attempt to purge itself of outsdated concepts and ideas. Was an interesting point and changed the way I look at it....

Will go over the heads of the PC gone mad crowd tho...
 
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Interesting how the narrative in these threads is wilfully skewed from the start: we began by assuming that Griezmann is not a racist and his offence was unintentional. Now, his personal history and sheer common sense dictates that he likely isn't a racist from day-to-day but the obvious first step in the debate was gleefully skipped over; this is an example of how debates about race are often organised...until we get to the stage where the culprit somehow becomes cast as the victim.
 
I think this thread was worth it, a few people have come in and mentioned they weren’t aware of what blackface was or indeed the offence it causes and said they learned a few things.
Hopefully a few more who have lurked and thought the same previously, have come to a similar conclusion.

Also, a number of people have made very poor attempts at arguing otherwise and hopefully, people can see how ridiculous it comes across also.

Plus that one guy who got banned?
And penises cause rape?
Yeah it’s been worth it :lol:
 
Something just struck me...
Black Pete... Is that a card game?
We have a game in Norway called svarteper (black Per). My grandmother showed me and my brother the game when we were kids, always thought the svarteper-card was of a chimney-cleaner?

Maybe it's completely unrelated to the topic?
@Samid @niMic
Any of you have a clue if I'm way off base here?
 
Either way this thread was worth it for the post about political correctness being societies attempt to purge itself of outsdated concepts and ideas. Was an interesting point and changed the way I look at it....

Will go over the heads of the PC gone mad crowd tho...
And penises have caused rape.
 
I know I said I was abandoning this thread but @RedTillI'mDead just keeps pulling new back in with his nuanced arguments on his right to say the n-word and how calling white people white people is racist.

Why? Are your favoured PC gone mad lot not fairing well enough against the SJW scourge? Why don't you do that weird thing you do where you bring up the Lukaku chant and pretend he was somehow forced to denounce it by the long hand of the left again? That should put things back on track. :lol:
Think you've got me confused with someone else
 
And penises cause rape?

And penises have caused rape.

The next anti-rape campaign by the government already has it's slogan.

Something just struck me...
Black Pete... Is that a card game?
We have a game in Norway called svarteper (black Per). My grandmother showed me and my brother the game when we were kids, always thought the svarteper-card was of a chimney-cleaner?

It probably is. We were always taught that Black Pete was black because he visited our house through the chimney, to leave presents.
 
Something just struck me...
Black Pete... Is that a card game?
We have a game in Norway called svarteper (black Per). My grandmother showed me and my brother the game when we were kids, always thought the svarteper-card was of a chimney-cleaner?

Maybe it's completely unrelated to the topic?
@Samid @niMic
Any of you have a clue if I'm way off base here?

We went over this on this thread. It exists in Germany too as Schwarzer Peter. It's the Germanic version of the Old Maid card game originating in England/Scotland, but down the years it somehow got infused with the Zwarte Piet story and got the name associated with it. Feck knows how.

By the time I played it in the 80s-90s, the kid was a white kid with a sooted up face from being a chimney sweeper. Earlier versions were a bit more "iffy" though.
 
We went over this on this thread. It exists in Germany too as Schwarzer Peter. It's the Germanic version of the Old Maid card game originating in England/Scotland, but down the years it somehow got infused with the Zwarte Piet story and got the name associated with it. Feck knows how.

By the time I played it in the 80s-90s, the kid was a white kid with a sooted up face from being a chimney sweeper. Earlier versions were a bit more "iffy" though.
Ahh. So it's not just my drugs and lack of sleep mixing these two things, it's something you sane people do as well. :lol:
 
We went over this on this thread. It exists in Germany too as Schwarzer Peter. It's the Germanic version of the Old Maid card game originating in England/Scotland, but down the years it somehow got infused with the Zwarte Piet story and got the name associated with it. Feck knows how.

By the time I played it in the 80s-90s, the kid was a white kid with a sooted up face from being a chimney sweeper. Earlier versions were a bit more "iffy" though.

In France that game is named "Le Pouilleux" and it seems that it has never been anything worse than a white kid. I still checked and found nothing special but then I stumbled on that ad about washing powder:

"Housewive washing powder, it would whiten a negro."1910

41-03-image.jpg
 
In France that game is named "Le Pouilleux" and it seems that it has never been anything worse than a white kid. I still checked and found nothing special but then I stumbled on that ad about washing powder:

"Housewive washing powder, it would whiten a negro."1910

41-03-image.jpg

A lot of early 20th century advertising is rooted in beauty = white skin/hair/lighter eyes etc.
How you can go from being ugly/dirty/poor when you are darker, and if you are lighter you’re suddenly more beautiful, desirable and human

Even now, almost every beauty advert features white people as the default.
 
In France that game is named "Le Pouilleux" and it seems that it has never been anything worse than a white kid. I still checked and found nothing special but then I stumbled on that ad about washing powder:

"Housewive washing powder, it would whiten a negro."1910

41-03-image.jpg

I'd be very surprised if a version of the bad joke about using soap on black people did not exist in every European nation at some point. Like i said, go back 100 years and racial discrimination and stereotyping based on colour was sadly par for the course round these parts. Finding people with not even a small amount of bigotry back then would have been very very rare.

Thank feck we've (mostly) moved on form that. Though no doubt some people still think it's funny today and how dare the PC-brigade find problems with such an innocent joke ffs.
 
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The problem I have with this whole thing is, in Portugal blackface doesn't have the same historical context as in other parts of the world. If I painted my face black, I wouldn't be offending any other portuguese around so what's so wrong about me using blackface in Portugal to dress up as LeBron James for Carnaval?
 
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The problem I have with this whole thing is, in Portugal blackface doesn't have the same historical context as in other parts of the world. If I painted my face black, I wouldn't be offending any other portuguese around so what's so wrong about me using blackface in Portugal to dress up as LeBron James for Carnaval?
We apparently now all have to live by the US's view of the world.
 
The problem I have with this whole thing is, in Portugal blackface doesn't have the same historical context as in other parts of the world. If I painted my face black, I wouldn't be offending any other portuguese around so what's so wrong about me using blackface in Portugal to dress up as LeBron James for Carnaval?
His mistake was sharing it on twitter. By doing that you're going beyond your little party/France and inviting everyone to look.
 
The problem I have with this whole thing is, in Portugal blackface doesn't have the same historical context as in other parts of the world. If I painted my face black, I wouldn't be offending any other portuguese around so what's so wrong about me using blackface in Portugal to dress up as LeBron James for Carnaval?

If there was some place in the world where fireworks were seen as a racist gesture for example it's not like the americans would stop with the fireworks on the 4th of July.

If you're 100% certain that black Portuguese people have no problem, then what can I say. Like I said, in many countries the historic lack of black people allowed certain customs and behaviours to go unchallenged. If these groups are consulted and feel fine with it, I don't think anyone can take offence on their behalf. So long as they are actually OK with it and it's not just native white Portuguese people going "Eh, they'll be fine, we've doing this for decades..." etc.
 
The problem I have with this whole thing is, in Portugal blackface doesn't have the same historical context as in other parts of the world. If I painted my face black, I wouldn't be offending any other portuguese around so what's so wrong about me using blackface in Portugal to dress up as LeBron James for Carnaval?
How do you know black people in Portugal are not offended?
 
The problem I have with this whole thing is, in Portugal blackface doesn't have the same historical context as in other parts of the world. If I painted my face black, I wouldn't be offending any other portuguese around so what's so wrong about me using blackface in Portugal to dress up as LeBron James for Carnaval?

Well now you know, so you can’t feign ignorance.
Regardless of whether it’s relevant in Portugal or not, if your point is to try and look like a black person, and black people are telling you not to paint your skin black.
Why would you do it?

Why can’t you wear a jersey with his name, a head band and fake muscles if you want to be Lebron?

Also Portugal has a very violent history of colonial oppression, how can you be so sure that black Portuguese people aren’t offended by don’t feel comfortable speaking up?
 
His mistake was sharing it on twitter. By doing that you're going beyond your little party/France and inviting everyone to look.

If you're 100% certain that black Portuguese people have no problem, then what can I say. Like I said, in many countries the historic lack of black people allowed certain customs and behaviours to go unchallenged. If these groups are consulted and feel fine with it, I don't think anyone can take offence on their behalf. So long as they are actually OK with it and it's not just native white Portuguese people going "Eh, they'll be fine, we've doing this for decades..." etc.

That's fair.
 
How do you know black people in Portugal are not offended?

Until yesterday I didn't even know it was offensive anywhere else so I don't know. Especially because I can't know what all black people in Portugal think.

My point is that the historical context isn't there. Unless I was mocking black people they wouldn't have any reason to be upset because that blackface cultural background isn't there, just like if a black guy dressed as Cristiano Ronaldo with some white paint there wouldn't be any reason for me to be upset by it.