[Cause]

https://www.politics...-nono-word--eff

https://citizen.co.z...n-word-critics/

So this blows my mind. A South African university chancellor, Adam habit (who is an Indian who fought apartheid) was told by a black student that a member of staff had said the n-word ( he pronounced it in full) and faced no consequences. So he responded that if a member of staff said the n-word (pronouncing it in full) there would be an investigation and he would face the consequences. He was immediately told that he wasn’t black and so he can’t use the word. He replied he was just saying the word and not insulting anyone and meant no offense. Now as I say this man is Indian, from South Africa who fought apartheid he is not a racist. Now his job has been suspended while they investigate the matter. This to me is friendly fire. Instead of investigating a possible actual racist professor we are now focused on this?

Now I have been called out on this myself on this forum, where I simply stated I heard the n-word (I typed it in full) being thrown around a lot in New York and I found it distasteful. I find having to tip around it like this a bit annoying when I’m not insulting anyone, I. Just describing the word by saying the word. However I was called out and I can make the change. Doesn’t hurt.

However again in this context I really can’t imagine how this can have been blown up so much so far.

[Malankazooie]

Apoplectic followers of Jeopardy! are in their feelz. I guess the current contestant did a no no when he made the OK gesture with his hand to signify he had won three in a row.



Have we reached a level of stupidity with this addiction to outrage yet? When I worked in construction I used to do the OK sign all the time. Hand signs go with, and are necessary, for the job. I think I'm going to provide approval when I interact with anyone in a public setting by using the OK gesture. Want to see if any Woke Wendys will say anything.

This post has been edited by Malankazooie: 30 April 2021 - 05:33 PM

[Malankazooie]

What's the deal with Ellie Kemper? I saw she was a trending topic but didn't look into the details. I'm guessing something from her past has come to light? Or has she joined the Taika Waititi throuple to make it a "fourple"? If that is the case then bro fist-bump to him.

[Aptorian]

Here you go. Took 5 seconds of googling and 10 seconds of skim reading.

https://www.latimes....-veiled-prophet

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Aptorian, on 02 June 2021 - 06:26 PM, said:

Here you go. Took 5 seconds of googling and 10 seconds of skim reading.

https://www.latimes....-veiled-prophet

That article contains a wildly misleading quote:

'Is the Order of the Veiled Prophet linked to the Klan?

Devin Thomas O'Shea, a journalist who has researched VP, said in a 2019 NPR interview, "That first Veiled Prophet is very clearly decipherable as a first-wave Ku Klux Klansman. ... Especially to Black St. Louisans, the symbology would not have been lost on them."'

According to historians:

'[This] comes specifically from an illustration that was printed in [...] 1878. [...] In 1878, white robes and pointy hats didn't mean the same thing that they mean in America today; the KKK didn't actually dress like that until the early 20th century. The Klan and the Veiled Prophet Organization are also not the only groups to wear white pointy hats. In Spain, for example, decidedly not racist celebrations of Holy Week often involve strikingly similar conical caps that read quite differently to Americans.'

https://slate.com/cu...-queen-kkk.html

The viral 1878 Veiled Prophet illustration that created the confusion:



Incidentally, here are the Spanish Holy Week outfits:

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 02 June 2021 - 06:47 PM

[Maark Abbott]

What is it with Kempers, I ask

[stone monkey]

Malankazooie, on 30 April 2021 - 05:15 PM, said:

Have we reached a level of stupidity with this addiction to outrage yet? When I worked in construction I used to do the OK sign all the time. Hand signs go with, and are necessary, for the job. I think I'm going to provide approval when I interact with anyone in a public setting by using the OK gesture. Want to see if any Woke Wendys will say anything.

Maybe you should take that one up with the White Supremecists who appropriated the gesture? They're the ones who made it so it could be misinterpreted after all.

Anyway... apparently systemic racism isn't a thing, according to some people. But the evidence keeps on piling up https://arstechnica....to-kidney-care/

[Malankazooie]

Mods, move this post to the appropriate thread if this isn't the correct one. I wasn't sure where to put it, and this one seemed to be the best fit.

<><><><><><><><><><><>

So the Superman latest. Triggering certain sensitives that have a 1950s image of him locked in their brains. Thoughts? more cancel culture distraction?

[Tiste Simeon]

Malankazooie, on 19 October 2021 - 07:39 PM, said:

Mods, move this post to the appropriate thread if this isn't the correct one. I wasn't sure where to put it, and this one seemed to be the best fit.

<><><><><><><><><><><>

So the Superman latest. Triggering certain sensitives that have a 1950s image of him locked in their brains. Thoughts? more cancel culture distraction?

As ever, it would be infinitely helpful if you could provide some more context rather than just assume everyone has read or knows the exact same things as you. I for one have no clue what you're on about!

[Malankazooie]

There is bing, but it has to do with changing the slogan "truth, justice and the American way" to "truth, justice and a better tomorrow."

Linky if you're too stinky to search for yourself: https://variety.com/...ome-1235090712/

[Tiste Simeon]

All I had to search was "the superman latest" so I figured it was easier to ask for specifics. Thanks. I imagine the rampant nationalism in your country means many people wouldn't be happy with a minor modification of his famous slogan. The same people who cry "snowflake" when there is outrage over actual issues like racism get butthurt over fictional characters changing things. So it's not new.

[Aptorian]

I thought the bisexuality thing was more interesting, the slogan is just a rebranding.

Strangely, I'm one of those stubborn people who thinks that you can't just change a characters skin colour or gender just to be progressive, yet I don't really see a problem with changing Superboy's sexuality or at least exploring the range of it. Sexuality is fluid and young people experiment, seems perfectly normal.

[stone monkey]

This one managed to surprise even me. It took an age for the NFL to admit it was actually harming its players, but it seems they decided to chuck a few more hoops in the way for its black players to jump through in order for the NFL to admit that they - and very specifically they - had been harmed at all ... https://www.bbc.co.u...canada-58993679

I'm banging on my drum again, but its exactly this kind of shit that we talk about when we discuss White Privilege and systemic racism!

This post has been edited by stone monkey: 21 October 2021 - 11:41 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

stone monkey, on 21 October 2021 - 11:09 PM, said:

This one managed to surprise even me. It took an age for the NFL to admit it was actually harming its players, but it seems they decided to chuck a few more hoops in the way for its black players to jump through in order for the NFL to admit that they - and very specifically they - had been harmed at all ... https://www.bbc.co.u...canada-58993679

I'm banging on my drum again, but its exactly this kind of shit that we talk about when we discuss White Privilege and systemic racism!

Wow. I'm speechless. That's horrendous. Why is that still a thing?

[amphibian]

With the NFL, there's some level of active animus towards black people from the owners, general managers, coaches, and to some extent, the lower level staffers like team doctors. That is combining with the systemic presence of racism in which black people are often medically auto-assumed to have lower levels of cognitive function - this assumption ignores things like racist tests/questions, greater prevalence of poverty in black minority groups here in the US, significant distrust of the medical system/providers (with good reason), and more.

There's been a lot of press and publicity aimed at the Colin Kaepernick kneeling saga while this post-retirement healthcare accessibility and pension fund stuff has been going on with not nearly as much fanfare, yet both are continually ripping off the facade that the NFL/the sport of football/the USA is a wholesome place/game.

[stone monkey]

The people who make the tests that are expressly biased against Black Americans are often the same people who decide that because Black Americans do less well on those tests then they must be lesser beings... "It's some catch, that Catch 22"

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'Norman Mailer's long-time publisher [...] has canceled plans to publish a collection of his political writings to mark the centennial of his birth [...] The back-door apologies at Random House include as the proximate cause [...] a junior staffer's objection to the title of Mailer's 1957 essay, "The White Negro"[...] A Random House source also cites the objections of feminist and cultural gadfly Roxane Gay. Her name however may have been employed as merely a generic type of objector (as in, she or someone equally cause-minded who might object). Indeed, she protested in an email that she never voiced a view, that she knows "next to nothing about Norman Mailer," and that—already eliminating him from the modern canon — she has "never read" among the most consequential figures of that most consequential (yes, mostly white and male) post-war American literary generation.

[...]

With Random House having previously gobbled up most of the publishing industry (including with it many of Mailer's former publishers), and having most recently agreed to acquire Simon & Schuster, one of its few remaining rivals, there aren't many options left for a major new publication of the Mailer essays, many of which have helped reshape modern journalism.

[...] it isn't, in fact, the work that causes concern but rather the prospect of controversy itself that scares corporate entities away.

You live only until an objection scares the people whose job is more and more to avoid objections — that new, primary executive function. (A recent addition to the writer-editor-reader relationship is something called a "sensitivity reader," that is someone of diverse background who can advise on dicey cultural matters whom writers are now encouraged to consult. Needless to say, Mailer never had a sensitivity reader.) [...]

Controversy kills. Or, anyway, life is too short, the times too weird, and profit too fleeting, to suffer for it.

This has essentially become corporate policy throughout the creative industries, unspoken and unwritten. But hardly secret.

[...] A senior-most executive at a top-most television buyer recently wrote a senior-most agent who had proposed a project the executive labeled as "too contemporary," laying out what certainly sounds like clear policy. The network, he wrote, "remains resolutely committed to staying as far away from the politics and journalism business (in all its forms) as possible — not because we don't believe in it, but because we believe it is not our domain. We've dabbled there, but continue to believe that our best role is either to support fiction or to support a kind of retrospective 'true' narrative that has the benefit of enough time for the heat of political and cultural conflict to have dissipated and for an audience to be open to a more nuanced, broadly contextualized perspective." Twenty years out, the executive suggested, was the least time necessary before a controversial subject could be addressed.

[...] Weeks ago, the Justice Department sued Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster in an effort to prevent the two companies from completing their $2 billion merger. [...]

[...] a lack of competition among gatekeepers leads to less choice and more limits and a narrowing of risk, taste, and sensibility, and, when the winds are harsh, greater shelter for the cowardly.'

https://theankler.co...CVFsnJh-RUyE8oY

'I Can't Brook the Idea of Banning "Negro"

Both Random House and the agent representing Mailer's estate have contested this account. But if it's true, it would represent another example of the word "Negro," once quite respectable, becoming the target of overzealous revisionists.

Not the N-word, but "Negro."

I wrote recently that [...] "Negro Folk Symphony" is "smashing," one of the most stirring pieces of classical music I know. But I hear from an experienced conductor that several orchestras have turned down his requests to perform or record it with them, out of wariness of the word "Negro" in its title. In 2020, in the Princeton Summer Journal (part of a summer journalism program for high school students), a student wrote an essay titled "White Teachers: Stop Saying 'Negro.'" I know of two cases in the past two years of white college professors having complaints filed against them by students for using the word "Negro" in class when quoting older texts. [...]

Never mind that "Negro" was what Black Americans readily and often proudly called ourselves throughout much of the 20th century, until the preference evolved to "Black" during the civil rights era. And never mind that the issue in these instances isn't Black people being referred to as "Negroes" today — that would be offensive — but utterances or written reproductions of the word when referring to older texts and titles. The new idea seems to be that saying or writing "Negro" is not simply archaic, but a contemptuous insult in all contexts.

[...] If that's so, then we're at a point where, presumably, the filmmakers who titled the well-received James Baldwin documentary "I Am Not Your Negro," will have to revise the title. The title's purpose was to elide the N-word in the Baldwin quote that it was based on. [...]

[...] I'm not saying we should revert to everyday use of "Negro" — it is indeed out of date. But does Black America need yet another word to take umbrage at and police the usage of? Do we, in Black America, need fellow travelers — sorry, allies — to join us in this new quest, eager to assist in the surveillance out of some misguided sense that this is "doing the work"?

One also wonders how many Black people, beyond a certain anointed cohort, really find the reading aloud of the word "Negro" from an old text offensive. In the Vermont controversy, for instance, the state librarian at the time, Jason Broughton, who is Black, pushed back on the contention that the word "Negro" in itself is racist.'

https://www.nytimes....-word-dont.html

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 08 January 2022 - 09:17 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

White women wearing balaclavas are committing cultural misappropriation / microaggressions because brown-skinned Islamic women are discriminated against for wearing hijabs, which look sort of similar.... #HereWeGoDowntheSlipperySlope

'The balaclava resembles a hijab, a religious head scarf worn by Muslim women. Head scarves are typically worn to maintain modesty or serve as religious symbols, but can hold different meanings depending on the wearer. Wearing a hijab is often a deeply personal experience.

[...] while people wearing balaclavas today are perceived as fashionable, Muslim women wearing hijabs are often discriminated against or are viewed as backward.


[...]

"You can take off a balaclava and abandon the trend, but race, religion and gender are things that somebody can't just wake up and abandon," she said. "People are able to wear a balaclava and be perceived as trendy or cool, but a hijab can be seen as a symbol of oppression or political."

[...]

"White people are considered unthreatening in the U.S. and Western Europe, and so they are given much more freedom to wear whatever they wish," [...] "In the context of the balaclava fad, it's not just whiteness — it's the white femininity that is read as nonthreatening." [...] though the balaclava trend has been embraced by people of all racial backgrounds, "it is the whiteness of some wearers that makes it mainstream, conventional."

[...]

To see the balaclava become so popular now invokes "a feeling of 'well, damn, it's so simple to wear it as a costume," she said. "So to just put it on and take it off, I definitely feel some kind of slight betrayal."'

https://www.nytimes....omen-hijab.html

Can't just 'wake up and abandon' religion?... Maybe not if familial or other social pressures would make it difficult. Or perhaps it's a matter of abandoning habits, beliefs, etc. Doubt they mean that (as with race and gender) other people will perceive you as having a certain religion unless you radically alter or hide your body---though I guess it's possible if they mean 'brown skin + balaclava' is assumed to be 'Muslim with hijab', that's almost certainly not what they mean (and I don't think most balaclava look all that much like hijab).

Granted, the article doesn't specifically invoke cultural appropriation or microaggressions....

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 14 January 2022 - 12:40 AM

[Tsundoku]

Why TF would anyone wear a balaclava for any reason except that it's cold AF outside, or they're about to rob a convenience store?

Or play ninjas ...

Faaaarshun ...

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 14 January 2022 - 03:54 AM

[Maark Abbott]

Tsundoku, on 14 January 2022 - 03:47 AM, said:

Why TF would anyone wear a balaclava for any reason except that it's cold AF outside, or they're about to rob a convenience store?

Or play ninjas ...

Faaaarshun ...

They are under the bridge in DE_Dust perhaps?