Wombaticus Rex wrote:compared2what? wrote:You kind of lost me somewhere in there. What part of that is food for thought, and what thought is it food for?
"Googly Eyed" is supposed to be "racist" -- referring to black people. Yet the phrase is derived from, and refers to, something white people did. Created. Perpetuated. My point is that it's a weird loop, where it never actually referred to black people at any point, but today we're here calling it "racist" out of deference to -- what exactly?
It's like this. We have two basic set-ups. And they are:
(1) Al Jolsen wearing blackface. He is:
a white man depicting a man from a darker-skinned race as googly-eyed.(2) John D. Caucasian referring to an Arab Muslim as a "Googly-eyed Muslim." He is:
a white man depicting a man from a darker-skinned race as googly-eyed.Is that clear? Good.
Blackface performance in the United States became hugely popular around, let's say 1850, give or take a decade. And its memes, traditions, characters, and set-ups lasted in one hugely popular form of entertainment or another until the 1950s. In the U.S. mainstream. It's still done by amateurs for private entertainment.
Anyway. The classic minstrel-show tradition peaked in the 1890s or so. Before that, in the ante-bellum south, such shows were viewed as funny-because-they-were-a-true reason why slavery was really the only happy or safe condition in which black people (as depicted by white people with burnt cork on their faces, using made-up dialect and playing lying, lazy, imbeciles, who were also chicken-thieves and watermelon-eaters with no morals, subnormal intelligence, and a childlike love of singing, dancing, cotton-picking, and stepping and fetching it) could happily or safely live.
And I'd say that wasn't "supposed to be" racist. It was racist. Also, btw, there were some black blackface performers in that era. I mean, they were African-American performers. However, since they couldn't have performed anywhere unless they played minstrel-show stock characters in blackface, that's what they did. Starting roughly in the twenties or a little before, black entertainers began to play the same stock characters without blackface, eventually as less obviously cartoonish and degraded comical types -- ie, the sassy maid, the easily comically terrified malapropism-uttering job-shirking bellboy, and so forth. Some became stars that way, Steppin Fetchit being one example. Or Buckwheat and Farina, who were both classic pickanninies. As was less classically, Butterfly McQueen in
Gone With the Wind. In which Hattie McDaniel, the first black woman to win an Academy Award, was -- obviously, a Mammy.
McDaniel actually got her start in a black minstrel show act, before they died out. She was the target of criticism in the South, where it was felt she spoke too freely to her employer and in the North, where eventually the NAACP called her out for playing sassy-maid types. (Her response was that she would rather play a maid for $700 a week than be one for $7. And that's A-Okay with me, obviously, insofar as it's even my business. However, I do think it's a shame that those were her only choices, and I imagine that even though she made the best of it, so did she. She was a singer-songwriter originally and before all else. She just couldn't make a living in show business that way.)
In any event, not all of it was cut-and-dried "We Hate Niggers" racism at every juncture for every second. Al Jolson wasn't like that at all, in fact. Neither, exactly, were Amos 'N' Andy who basically did radio blackface up until the 1950s. Also, I think people of all races should decide for themselves where to draw their boundaries on these and, for that matter, all other issues, in accordance with their own good consciences. FWIW, I totally oppose the banning of all and any words, as words, including ones I find hateful. If I had to, I'd fight for the right of Nazis to march through Jewish neighborhoods in Skokie, Illinois. (
Wiki summary here for the kids who don't get that reference.)
Because they do have the same basic rights -- including freedom of assembly and freedom of speech, which either apply to nobody or to everybody -- that I have. And that I believe people need to have in order to be part of a free society. Which, by my lights, includes, among other things, being free to think for themselves and also to express their thoughts freely, using the words they believe best convey their intended meaning. And/or meanings.
Is that clear? Good.
The memory and feelings of Al Jolson and 10,000 other minstrel dipshits wearing blackface in Heaven right now?
The stereotypes that originated then have never died entirely. Some of them haven't even faded very much. The overwhelming majority of African-Americans still have to conform to various "Good Negro" standards, as defined by the dominant culture in whatever part of this very, very large country they call home, if they want -- for example, to work in one of the professions that are dominant-culture white. Which would be all of them, btw.*** And even then, they'll get followed by floorwalkers in stores and pulled over by cops for driving while black and, pretty much inevitably, have to routinely and frequently hear people of all races saying racist shit, or endorsing racist stereotypes, or whatever the fuck, both intentionally or unintentionally -- year in, year out, for the whole of their lives. Because this is a very racist society.
That last part is my opinion. I base it on the best information available to me. Since not all information is available to me -- or, for that matter, to any individual -- it could be wrong. But I believe it to be right in good faith. And by my standards, inequality and injustice based on race, gender, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, political belief, et cetera are categorically unacceptable.
For a number of reasons. One of which is that perpetuating it is one of the principle means by which the handful of people who have been ruling the world since the year dot stay in power. Except that they don't perpetuate it, no matter what they fucking think. We do. Although we don't have to. Or at least I don't have to. So I don't, as best I can. As the hyper-sensitive Dr. King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Feel free to disagree. Because you are free to disagree.
Finally, to frankly exercise my right to speak freely, there's another part of your argument the logic of which I can't quite follow. And it's this:
I maintain that people should think about the racist connotations of using the word "googly-eyed" to describe bogeymen of dark-skinned racial heritage. Jeff has provided one citation that flatly and indisputably shows that it does have those connotations in that context. To which I could add any number of others, although for expediency's sake, here's a
[color]link[/color] to a brief YouTube montage that pretty much covers it.
As I understand it, your position is that your unfamiliarity with those connotations renders them meaningless. How do you fucking figure that? Exactly? Because for one thing, although you might have never have heard about them before, now you have. And for another, your never having heard about 100 years of very popular and widely known racist imagery doesn't actually mean that it doesn't exist or have connotations for a very large number of other people. Including not only racists, as I mentioned earlier, but -- PS -- virtually all American members of the race they hate. Not all of whom feel the same way about them, obvi-fucking-ously. But, you know, it's kind of self-evident that they're generally very fucking insulting, demeaning and dehumanizing. How would you feel?
If it's not a major issue to you, for whatever reason, that's fine. I wouldn't call you names -- ie, racist, hyper-insensitive, et cetera -- if so. I'd do what I fucking did. Which was ask people to think about the implications of the word (of which they're now aware if they're reading this) before they used it. After which, they'd be free to use it or not as many times as they felt like doing. Just as I'd be free to ask them to think about the implications, as many times as I felt like doing. Which I seriously doubt is going to be very frequently, if ever, btw. But either way, fundamentally, if your position had always been that it didn't strike you as a very big deal, I'd still know you were basically of like mind to me, in political terms, as well as an excellent writer and thinker in whose opinion I'm interested.
My point?Glad you asked.
I wouldn't fucking feel that you were imposing on me, threatening me or -- in short -- committing any offense against me or the world that justified the kind of "la-la-la, I can't hear you, yet I somehow know that you're overemotional in some way that calls your judgment-into question anyway, in addition to which, it's people like you who have ruined Christmas and the RI forum by freely speaking your opinion which differs from mine and therefore must be invalidated and denied" response that, in one form or another, I'm getting from you, elfismiles, Percival, xsicbastards, and possibly Norton Ash, although possibly not. It wasn't clear to me what his point was.
But that wasn't always your position. Apparently it is now, what with:
Wombaticus Rex wrote:But to be clear, Jeff's choice is Jeff's choice and I don't even care enough to check back into this thread after the post you're reading now. Said my piece, my piece didn't matter, no big deal.
Sorry. But to continue to speak frankly, frankly you'd already gone more than a little too far to walk it back to "but I don't really care about you or your point much one way or the other, though I do respect Jeff" when you were back at "too fucking stupid to actually BE racist." Or, as you put it, when you said your piece. In dismissive and insulting terms. Without making a case for it that had any substance beyond that (a) It was news to you; and (b) references to past racist caricatures by white people can't be racist because they're not really references to the racist caricatures but to the white people.
Which doesn't exactly do much to support that "what you say is too fucking stupid to take seriously" line of rebuttal. Frankly.
That said, you're under no obligation to respond. And I won't hold it against you if you don't. It's your judgment call. I'm sure that whichever way you make it, it will be because in your judgment, that's the right way. In the event that you decide not to reply, as I see it, basically:
I think you and others got your panties in a bunch and counterpunched when no punch had been thrown. I just made my case for that, and absent new and unaddressed points, I'm done. You and others think pretty much the same about me as I do about you. And you've also made and concluded your case for that. I still like all of you. Cheers.
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*** And yes, I'm including the NBA, or whatever similarly superficially non-dominated-by-white-people example someone may be thinking of bringing up. That I can think of, anyway. But, hey people! I'd be happy to be wrong, so if you know of an exception, ask yourself "Who owns it, who patronizes it, and who makes the rules for it ultimately?" and if it's still an exception, please pipe up.
by Wombaticus Rex » Sun Nov 15, 2009 4:18 pm 
