Race and Pirates

[oyceter]

I ended up buying Beverly Tatum's "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?", despite already having borrowed it from the library because a) I wanted something to read in line while I waited to get a seat for Pirates of the Caribbean 2 and b) I want to financially support books like these and authors who tackle the subject of

Comments

[mneiai]

When looking at a movie like this, where all of the "people of color" look stereotypical, I look at the other side: Are all the white people stereotypes, as well? And, especially in this sort of movie, there really wasn't a single case where I could go "no, that person isn't just a blatant stereotype."

Plus, there's the added fact that back in the seven/eighteenth centuries that most people would have accents. And among pirates it would make sense that most of the people of color were recent immigrants to the Americas or from a lower class setting originally

[mneiai]

I think saying only racism means that when people think of such things, they think of racism first, even though there are TONS more problems in the world than skin color. There's homophobia, there's anti-Semitism, etc, etc. Tons of things that have gotten people killed over all of human history. By focusing only on racism you can't help anyone--until people can think of all forms of prejudice as bad then there's always going to be racism

[rachelmanija]

Re: feminism: this was mentioned in the original post, as I quote below.

I have difficulties just typing "The movie is incredibly racist," and I have to keep thinking about how I routinely notice the portrayal of women in nearly everything I read and watch (the movie is not as deeply sexist as it is racist; thankfully, Elizabeth gets to do stuff. But it is still very male). I have to keep thinking that for me, noticing sexism is ok, that pointing it out in my LJ is standard. And I have to keep thinking that I need to do the same about race, even though posting things like this frighten me because of the reaction to the Great Cultural Appropriation Debate of DOOM.

As noted above, the representation of women could have been discussed, but was not as that was not the subject of the post. The subject of the post was the representation of race.

You write:

I think saying only racism means that when people think of such things, they think of racism first, even though there are TONS more problems in the world than skin color. There's

[mneiai]

Note that in this thread of comments we have, I had assumed, gone past simply racism as I mentioned that "It's institutional prejudice against all people who are different in some way. Saying racism, in my mind, is deluding people into thinking there's just one category of prejudice--the skin color kind." This was said while on the topic of institutionalized racism.

When you make a post, the comments won't follow your post to the letter. They will divurge. Your post, as well as the comments following, did. That, of course, is the nature of making any high profile post on livejournal.

We got off topic pretty early on in this thread, I was never talking solely about racism, because in my mind all prejudice is one. In my mind, separating them into categories hurts humanity just as much as having racism can, because it means that you can tell someone one type of prejudice isn't as bad as the other

[trinker]

I've read the rest of what you've said, and...

Look. One of the ways that people try to squish those who attempt to call out racism is to say, "oh, it must have been some OTHER prejudice". (i.e. "you were an asshole, you were dressed wrong you you you you" when it's about someone who acted on racial prejudice.)

Is it okay to bash gay white males, because hey, they're white and male? Of course not. But it's also not okay for gay white males to be assholes to non-white folk, of any orientation, simply because "hey, I'm a *gay* white male, and thus discriminated against, so fuck your problems with racism".

Playing agony-poker with various sorts of discrimination isn't usually productive.

On the other hand, calling out when something *is* a stereotype is really the only way to get it to end. Everyone pretending that it's *normal*, that wouldn't solve anything, would it?

[sabonasi]

If there was a black "main" character just so there would be a black character, how would that make it any better?

Yeah, but how things are now, the main character of a story is white often for no reason other than that it's assumed that the main character will be white.

[oyceter]

Exactly!