the silence became so very clear

[overloved]

yeeeah, i vote no.

i will not. i'm no longer livid with rage at robert downey jr in blackface, but the plot still hinges around a bunch of americans in the jungle fighting asian people.

fuck that shit.

pretty much why i didn't like 'iron man' much.

Comments

[itealaich]

I thought people stopped doing blackface in the 1950s. Like, to the point where I was shocked when I saw Fred Astaire in blackface.

Really, really not cool. I don't think it's ever excusable.

[cakeface]

A lot of people today don't know or don't get the significance, or don't understand its implications to the extent that they think "we're over it" now.

I'm not saying it's any less wrong, or any more excusable, but it's not so much the people who are at fault and as our public education system and a society that more often than not fails to realize that just because time has passed doesn't mean issues have gone away.

[overloved]

i saw a comment in a blog about this exact point. i think his exact words were "we should stop being so sensitive about race because no one alive today owned slaves." and once i picked my brain up off the floor, i decided that was the final straw.

[cakeface]

My all-white Social Studies class once had a discussion about whether we should continue to care about race because four generations ago our ancestors owned slaves, and when our parents were born, segregation was still an accepted way of life, fiercely defended, for millions of people just like us. The general consensus was that it wasn't our fault, so why should we care anymore. Even at 16, I was stunned.

People are very stupid, Saabirah.

[degruy]

Not really caring for this Thunder movie due to it's going to be awful blackface or no my question to you would be this -

If blackface is wrong was it ok for Eddie Murphy on SNL to have used makeup to become a white person? Or the Wayan brothers to do a whole movie in same make up called White Chicks?

[overloved]

it's an interesting point, because for something to be racist, per se, there needs to be a power structure in place that favors the one acting.

white chicks was inane, and full of offensive, stupid jokes, but not racist. it was most assuredly sexist.

eddie murphy going undercover as a white man, while smarter, and probably also offensive, wasn't racist either.

it doesn't make either of those things okay, necessarily. but they are different, imo. downey, jr in blackface can not be seen as an isolated incident, but has to be weighed against a cultural history of black people being demeaned and ridiculed for their skin color, language and mannerisms.

[ellie_nor]

Wow, clearest and simplest explanation of power in racism(/sexism/homophobia/ablism/agism/.../delete as applicable) ever! Thank you.

[overloved]

:)

it's just what i believe and learned in school. racism & et al is prejudice + power.

[ellie_nor]

O.O wtf?! Just... what?! NO!

[overloved]

i vote no. i doubt gerard would approve.