Racist! Really?

Caracus2k said:
The principles at play are the same....


There is a lot of disengious people commenting here.....

Challenges have repeatedly been made to produce an 'acceptable' caricature of a black woman like Serena with no answer.

They will not outright state it but they know that the net effect of what they propose would make it impossible to satirise a black woman without accusations of racism automatically being levelled. They therefore advocate for preferential treatment based on race and gender (I. E literal racism and sexism) as they are not consistent enough to be against any satire (which will always include exaggeration of the subjects features including any features more typical in certain ethnicities)
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But you're making a hell of a leap going from 'they are getting upset when they shouldn't be' to 'they are trying to grab power and dominate society'. You've lost me at that point.
 
soundb0y said:
Well god dam that photo makes the cartoon look pretty spot on.
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You will also note that it undermines the claims that Osaka was 'whitewashed' for any other reason then maintaining relative consistency within the limitation of a print medium....

Serena's caricature is quite a bit lighter then she normally appears under tennis court lighting.

The reason is easy to see when you look at the black parts of her outfit.... They contain very little detail other then the white parts to show the outlines of her breasts and a little bit of muscle detail on her left upper arm.

Print media isn't very good at representing much detail in sections of darker print. So Serena's skin gets lightened for the purposes of the. caricature so the artist can retain a higher degree of shadow and highlight detail on the exposed areas of her skin. Consequently Osaka had to be depicted lighter and the umpire lighter still.
 
dl8860 said:
But you're making a hell of a leap going from 'they are getting upset when they shouldn't be' to 'they are trying to grab power and dominate society'. You've lost me at that point.
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If you are able to restrict or prevent satire of yourself then you possess considerable power. ...

Despots for millenia have tried to prevent unfavorable depictions of themselves or their actions being circulated.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
Everyone seems to have an agenda to be offended on the behalf of others. While I don't condone any forms hatred or abusive behaviour towards anyone, providing it's not a personal attack at an individual, I don't see any harm in it. All jokes one way or another could be misconstrued to be offensive one way or another if you scrutinise them enough... I put it down to sheer boredom.
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It's an interesting world we live in. I'm a white man who's also gay, and I've taken a lot of abuse and **** in my life, I was badly beaten when I was a kid, but I gritted my teeth and got on with it. Nowadays, when people tell casual homophobic jokes I'm more likely to laugh along with them, than get all bent-out-of-shape about it.

From what I've witnessed having spent a lot of time on the US west coast, there's a culture of protectionism that has become quite prevalent - the notion that we should immediately shield ourselves from anything we find upsetting or difficult to deal with, rather than confront it and absorb it - we want to block it out altogether. I think this is very dangerous.

I think exposure to harmful, offensive and difficult things is in some ways a good thing - because it helps build personal resilience and mental fortitude, down the line such a person is far more likely to be able to deal with negative or potentially offensive situations in a reasonable controlled way, that doesn't result in terrible breakdowns, depression or feelings of suicide. Or even worse, breakdowns which result in very serious events unfolding because a person has lost control and is unable to deal with their emotions.

There are people in the US (who I know) who would take the above paragraph and say things like " So you're saying, in order to build resilience and mental fortitude, you're saying people should allow themselves to be raped or beaten up". they say this, because US culture has become so extreme and polarised, they've thrown any sense of middle ground or reason out. when you say "We should allow people to express themselves freely" that's interpreted as "So you're saying everyone should be free to be racist and sexist" - I've personally seen these conversations take place in the last week.

One of the problems with the internet and social media in particular, especially twitter - is that you're able to customise all the information you receive to agree with your viewpoint and remove all arguments against it. People create personal echo-chambers that they become entrenched in, and I think it's very mentally unhealthy, to the point where criticism of someones position - in some cases a healthy disagreement on a viewpoint, is actually offensive to someone - because they don't have the mental resilience to take it on - and mental stress, anger and hatred kick in.
 
aardvark said:
Some people want to be treated equally irrespective of their skin colour but also want the colour of their skin to be considered all the time - racism will never go away because some people don't really seem to want it to.
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It's an interesting time at the moment. On the one hand you have had real strides in recent years towards greater equality, you have the start of a process whereby in a few generations there might not be a gap between the races anymore in terms of equality and attainment. However on the other side of that segregation, strong racial tensions and the civil rights movement are actually living memory, there are people alive today who, for instance were forced to use segregated bathrooms, and another few generations who grew up being told about how their close relatives were oppressed. Now stuck in the middle you have a group of people who have greater equality than ever before, but a social memory of how recently that came about and what life was like before, on top of that the equality of circumstances hasn't naturally caught up yet e.g. due to previous inequality they are coming from poorer backgrounds, or are surrounded by criminality due to their parents not being able to take advantage of social mobility, fewer black board members or politicians because of the age and the level of experience at the top of business or politics required to reach that level.

I suppose what I'm saying is that society has changed, and there is now expectation of equality, but the reality hasn't caught up yet. It will though, and that's when things will start to quiet down in terms of the race issue.
 

This would be more considered racist than that cartoon, and the weird thing about it is the backstory on this cartoon was it was to introduce minority characters into cartoons. It has plenty of eyebrow raising moments besides the obvious drawing style, one of which being "So White" gets released from the car after "favours" were done with the amount of lipstick on the gangsters faces.

In 1942, during the height of anti-Japanese sentiment during World War II, I was approached in Hollywood by the cast of an all-black musical off-broadway production called Jump For Joy while they were doing some special performances in Los Angeles. They asked me why there weren't any Warner's cartoons with black characters and I didn't have any good answer for that question. So we sat down together and came up with a parody of Disney's "Snow White" and "Coal Black" was the result. They did all the voices for that cartoon, even though Mel Blanc's contract with Warners gave him sole voice credit for all Warners cartoons by then. There was nothing racist or disrespectful toward blacks intended in that film at all, nor in Tin Pan Alley Cats which is just a parody of jazz piano great Fats Waller, who was always hamming into the camera during his musical films. Everybody, including blacks had a good time when these cartoons first came out. All the controversy about these two cartoons has developed in later years merely because of changing attitudes toward black civil rights that have happened since then.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_Black_and_de_Sebben_Dwarfs
 
FortuitousFluke said:
It's an interesting time at the moment. On the one hand you have had real strides in recent years towards greater equality, you have the start of a process whereby in a few generations there might not be a gap between the races anymore in terms of equality and attainment. However on the other side of that segregation, strong racial tensions and the civil rights movement are actually living memory, there are people alive today who, for instance were forced to use segregated bathrooms, and another few generations who grew up being told about how their close relatives were oppressed. Now stuck in the middle you have a group of people who have greater equality than ever before, but a social memory of how recently that came about and what life was like before, on top of that the equality of circumstances hasn't naturally caught up yet e.g. due to previous inequality they are coming from poorer backgrounds, or are surrounded by criminality due to their parents not being able to take advantage of social mobility, fewer black board members or politicians because of the age and the level of experience at the top of business or politics required to reach that level.

I suppose what I'm saying is that society has changed, and there is now expectation of equality, but the reality hasn't caught up yet. It will though, and that's when things will start to quiet down in terms of the race issue.
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Well said, and this is the reason why there is understandably still sensitivity around things like the illustration in question.
 
Jono8 said:
That is simply conjecture. If it was far more obviously Osaka, the white washing aspect of the criticism wouldn't be there.
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That is simply conjecture. The only inaccurate aspect of the depiction of Osaka is her physique, which is barely being mentioned. People who assume racism will see it (or pretend to see it) anywhere they want to.

What an odd argument. Human history and the enslavement, perscution and ridicule of black people for centuries is precisely why we are having this debate and why the illustration is seen as contentious.

Quite frankly, the artist can draw what he wants (within the law). Freedom of speech and expression doesn't mean freedom from consequence or criticism though. If the artist doesnt want his work to be seen as racist, he could take a few minutes to step back and look at how it might be perceived and how he might change it to remove any possible misunderstandings or perceived insensitivity. If he doesn't care, then.. *shrugs*
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Nice victim-blaming there. He's being unfairly targetted by other people and you're blaming him for not predicting every possible line of attack they might possibly use and avoiding all of them.

What he did was to treat people equally, without sexism or racism. Of course sexists and racist hate that and blame him for it and of course they use the most effective weapon they have against him - accusing him of being like them.

And no, it's not an odd argument to disagree with the idea that an artist should only be allowed to draw caricatures of people of certain sexes and "races" because otherwise fashionable sexists and racists might use local stereotypes from thousands of miles away a lifetime ago as a weapon against the artist.
 
Angilion said:
That is simply conjecture. The only inaccurate aspect of the depiction of Osaka is her physique, which is barely being mentioned.
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It isn't the only inaccurate aspect though. That is simply false. Her hair is drawn as all completely blonde, very long and straight. Osaka's hair is far more like Serena's (frizzy/afro) just with more blonde dye on the ends. We know the artist can draw this style of hair, because he has done so on Serena. That is why it is quite obvious the artist has made pretty much zero attempt at depicting Osaka.

He has drawn a very skinny ( as you point out) caucasian woman with long straight blonde hair.

Look, here it is again. Everyone needs to stop convincing themselves that he has even attempted to draw Osaka here because it is ludicrous. -


woman.jpg



Angilion said:
And no, it's not an odd argument to disagree with the idea that an artist should only be allowed to draw caricatures of people of certain sexes and "races" because otherwise fashionable sexists and racists might use local stereotypes from thousands of miles away a lifetime ago as a weapon against the artist.
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It is an odd argument. We are talking recent history here, with people still alive who lived through it. The civil rights movement in America was only ~60 years ago for goodness sake. Also, 1000 miles away? As if that is an excuse in this day and age :confused:. Also, Serena is an American and the artist will have known the cartoon will likely be seen by a worldwide audience so that excuse just doesn't fly.

To just right off (the very recent) history of persecution and ridicule against people of colour in relation to this utterly absurd. So is the notion that it can't possibly be offensive or racist, simply because the artist isn't old enough and lives in Australia :confused:
 
Of course this is racist. Foucault uses the term ‘prestructuralist semantic theory’ to denote the economy of substructuralist art, something the artist of this racist trope simply wouldnt consciously recognise. Many materialisms concerning racist caricatures may be found in pretextual theory, but it states that the law is elitist, and cannot differentiate between what newscorp post on twitter and what the Artist truly means. The figure/ground distinction which is a central theme of this racist trope is something that Derrida unpicks and unravels in his magnus opum. Its disgusting tbh.
 
Jono8 said:
It isn't the only inaccurate aspect though. That is simply false. Her hair is drawn as all completely blonde, very long and straight. Osaka's hair is far more like Serena's (frizzy/afro) just with more blonde dye on the ends. We know the artist can draw this style of hair, because he has done so on Serena. That is why it is quite obvious the artist has made pretty much zero attempt at depicting Osaka.
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The cartoon is about Serena's behaviour. The other 2 are background characters and drawn that way as not to distract from the main object of the cartoon.
 
Jono8 said:
[..]
He has drawn a very skinny ( as you point out) caucasian woman with long straight blonde hair. [..]
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As has already been pointed out in laborious detail, that is not true. But if you repeat it often enough it may well become the Allowed Truth.

No point in me replying further.

VincentHanna said:
Yes, it's definitely the people that recognise potentially offense/racist things that are the real racists....
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Yes, it's definitely the people who claim to see racist things everywhere and use that as an excuse to rationalise the racism they want who are some of the real racists.

You're talking about people who are extremely overt in their demands for sexist, racist double-standards. So yes, they defintely are sexist and racist. And proud of it. They see it as righteous.
 
Jono8 said:
Look, here it is again. Everyone needs to stop convincing themselves that he has even attempted to draw Osaka here because it is ludicrous. -


woman.jpg
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Yes, it's a background sketch of her. It's not detailed. And that's the point. Part of the point being made is that despite the fact that Osaka thrashed Serena in straight sets and won the Open, the story is all about Serena. The satirical point being made depends on the diminutive showing of Osaka.
 
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