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ScotchMalone t1_jb61obv wrote

I understand that historically there have been social aspects that have been co-opted away from the black community, but at a certain point I feel confused about what the goal is supposed to be with pointing it out in forms like this. It's a meme based on Oprah's facial expressions. If we have to not do anything that was/is from a different culture that our own then we're going to find ourselves with some very troubling implications. Should only those with British heritage speak English? Should only those who are Arabic use numbers? Of course these are absurd questions but I really don't see how complaining about people using a meme does anything to push against real harm caused by actual malicious racism

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goatAlmighty t1_jb67pdn wrote

What you describe is the big elephant in the room nobody of these fools want to address. If we take their own rules and use them on everything then we could make an arguments like:

  • No non-european human being is allowed to play classical music from a few hundred years ago because it was invented there, not in Africa, not in Asia, not on the American continent.

  • Should people not originating from a certain continent be prohibited to wear clothes that were invented on another continent? What about the usage of computers, which weren't invented in Africa but in Europa and the USA, basically?

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Normal-Flower4437 t1_jb6cl1t wrote

In practice, I’ve found the rules usually end up becoming:

  1. There is a hierarchy of race, from most marginalized on top to least marginalized in bottom.

  2. Culture from most marginalized is best; culture from least marginalized is bad and ought to be replaced or allowed to die out.

  3. People from the top of the marginalization hierarchy have the right to participate in all genres and modes of expression. People from the bottom of the marginalization hierarchy must “stick to their own” while also acceding to all demands from point two.

  4. You can only borrow from below you in the marginalization hierarchy.

  5. Race trumps personal experience. A white person who grew up in poverty in a black neighborhood has no right to participate in hip hop or street slang; a black person who grew up in Brentwood has every right to adopt hip hop mannerisms and gangsta rap.

And so on.

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ScotchMalone t1_jb6jckq wrote

Interestingly I saw a video recently where a group of black men and one white guy were blindfolded and they were trying to ask questions to figure out who was the odd one out. Ironically they failed and it turned out the white guy had been adopted by a black woman and grew up in Compton (a predominantly black community) so he "identified" with a lot of the aspects of life even those on the panel viewed as "the black experience"

Of course that's not to dismiss the very real difficulties that many people face but it does show how malleable our sense of culture can be. I don't know what the answer is these questions should be but I find it difficult to believe that it's healthy for anyone's sense of self worth to focus on how marginalized they have been. Absolutely, recognize the difficulties you have experienced but seek to grow and overcome them through action and connecting with other people who can provide support.

Racism sucks but putting up barriers to meaningful conversation isn't going to make things better

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goatAlmighty t1_jb6gvpg wrote

That sounds about right. In any case, the very first point alone is basically racism. Any kind of opinion along the lines of "one race has more rights than another" is.

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Normal-Flower4437 t1_jb6htq9 wrote

I forgot to add “if we determine you look like or are associated with the least marginalized, you are the least marginalized. And Vice versa.”

Which is how my brown Morrocan Jewish friend became “white” in the eyes of his progressive coworkers for being Jewish. And how immigrant children of genocides got “white privilege.” And how a blonde-haired Palestinian became “brown”, but a Christian Arab from Syria became “white”.

It’s so fucking stupid. I even witnessed a movement to categorize black men as “white-adjacent” because so many black men were getting tired of the arbitrary rules and how often they’d get points for blackness but negative points for maleness. So a bunch of super-progressive WOC on TikTok, tired of men of their own race pushing back on the ideology, started on “men of color are white-adjacent due to their maleness.”

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goatAlmighty t1_jb6o8w4 wrote

That's wild.

The method they choose doesn't really matter though. As soon as somebodies' rights or their position in society are based on what race they are, that's racist by definition.

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[deleted] t1_jb5w0sh wrote

[removed]

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BernardJOrtcutt t1_jb66p16 wrote

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[deleted] t1_jb5z7qr wrote

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BernardJOrtcutt t1_jb66ovt wrote

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NDGOROGR t1_jb5xydg wrote

Division among communities cultures and demographics are always the best answer for equality and acceptance

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[deleted] t1_jb5zyt2 wrote

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BernardJOrtcutt t1_jb66op8 wrote

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ambisinister_gecko t1_jc1z7l0 wrote

I don't like the isolationist idea that people shouldn't use memes of each other, or even the mannerisms of each other. We live in a pluralistic society. Some of the greatest riches of my life are explicitly because of cultural exchange - black people consuming white media, interacting with it, reinterpreting it, and spitting something new out, and the reverse as well, and all the permutations of the above with all other racial or sub cultural groups.

Cultural exchange enriches us all. The implications here, though, suggest that cultural exchange should be one-way only.

That's just impossible. It's too much to ask. You can't expect a white child living on a street with black neighbors to not have mutual exchange of ideas, games, dancers, manners of speech.

And if you did expect that, and if you got what you wanted, the end result would be the isolation of the black neighbors. Because who wants to take part in a one sided relationship, where there are strict rules that apply to you but not to the other party? It's too dangerous to be a part of a relationship like that. One party assumes all the risk while the other takes advantage of all the liberty and is able to extract all the value.

And, importantly, it will just never happen. White people will never, ever, stop interacting with black people, exchanging ideas and ways of living and speaking. Why would anybody want them to?

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BernardJOrtcutt t1_jb5vq6e wrote

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No-Equal-2690 t1_jdtcqqj wrote

There’s an article on CNN regarding digital blackface, it is very well researched and the author has steadily and thoroughly walked down the wrong path. Absurd. White people posting memes that contain black people is just normal behavior. Much like black people may post memes containing white people. #overwoke

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tootoo_mcgoo t1_jdtfajz wrote

I read the new CNN piece on this and I do actually empathize to some extent with the author's main point, at least as I understood it. Interestingly, the author started out with a particularly broad interpretation of digital blackface (the implications of which are the most absurd), but gradually wound their way down to a much, much more narrow and nuanced interpretation of the term. It was hard to believe it was all written by the same person.

The main idea was that white people wanting to meme a strong emotion go straight to black representations of that emotion, as they think it will be exaggerated, funny, or something to that effect. Frankly, this probably is true in some cases. However, that this phenomena exists isn't a very compelling reason to completely prohibit (intellectually/socially) white people from using a meme with a black person if the meme expressed a strong emotion. There are also countless examples of people using white faces for this - the Vince McMahon faces meme, anyone? Possibly -the- most popular example used for exaggerated facial expressions. So if a white person uses a black face to express some strong emotion in a meme format - is that blanket banned across the board? What about if the use of a black-faced meme isn't being driven by the dynamic above (i.e., "I need a face that expressed exaggerated emotion --> black people are cray and always have the most extreme faces")?

All in all, it reads as an absurd idea to me with absurd implications that wouldn't be good for anyone. As it always does, the pendulum can and will swing too far on its return journey.

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