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Minister in 'racist circumcision outrage' AKA let's all eat black people cake?

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H

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
jorma said:
The difference as i see it is that in america, blackface is always auto-racist while in Sweden blackface can be racist depending on the context of the presentation. The fact that a few people complain about it does not make it racist in itself. Everything would be racist if that was the case.
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Acheron said:
More or less.
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Let me give you some facts that will help you in life.

Blackface is racist. Period. The percentage of situations in which blackface would be appropriate is so small as to be statistically negligible. The fact that Sweden just happens to have fewer black people around to make their voices heard about it does not make it less racist.
 
A

akira28

Member
I never heard of her, so the news is the event itself, not that some minister of trains or clocks or whatever was involved.
 
Oppo

Oppo

Member
What in the name of fuck....

this is the definition of ill-considered, if I'm being super kind.
 
S

SmokyDave

Member
jorma said:
Why is the example given in the op racist in your opinion? Why do you think the (black) artist is trying to portray black people in a racist manner?
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Interesting, isn't it?

Is it racist? Is it racially insensitive? Are those two things mutually inclusive? How does the artist being black changes things? Does it change things? What if they'd called out his work as racist before displaying it? Would they be right? Would they be racist? What does blackface imagery mean to the artist?

I have many questions and no answers for this one.
 
P

PdotMichael

Banned
SmokyDave said:
Interesting, isn't it?

Is it racist? Is it racially insensitive? Are those two things mutually inclusive? How does the artist being black changes things? Does it change things? What if they'd called out his work as racist before displaying it? Would they be right? Would they be racist? What does blackface imagery mean to the artist?

I have many questions and no answers for this one.
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I think it says a lot about the people who complain more about the "racism" than female circumcision in africa.

But I see political correctness is more important than the reality.
 
S

Supermanisdead

Member
surly said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGPmi_Si1L0
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What is this? Because the character has a Greek name, the makeup is okay? It's still blackface.

PdotMichael said:
I think it says a lot about the people who complain more about the "racism" than female circumcision in africa.

But I see political correctness is more important than the reality.
Click to expand...

You can draw attention to female circumcision without blackface. I don't believe it's racist, but I think it's insensitive and not well thought out.
 
S

SmokyDave

Member
PdotMichael said:
I think it says a lot about the people who complain more about the "racism" than female circumcision in africa.

But I see political correctness is more important than the reality.
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Maybe that's the point. Maybe not. That's the irritating thing about art, it's all about interpretation. Given that he uses blackface in all of his pieces (from what I can see), it's almost a seperate issue to the cake itself and what that tells us about female circumcision. Fucked if I know. Doesn't help that prior to today, every word about the dude seems to be written in Swedish.
 
I

IceCold

Member
Racist or not, that's a terrible cake and a terrible way to bring awareness to the issue. The people that green lighted this idea are all retarded and should be fired.
 
P

Parallax

best seen in the classic "Shadow of the Beast"
we got some zwarte piet action in april? yeah!

but seriously, this is a horrible way to go about making a point.
 
B

BGBW

Maturity, bitches.
Cat Party said:
I'm sure people in America said the same thing decades ago when blackface was a popular comedy tool. It is fucked up at the most basic level.
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I guess the point he is trying to make is that Sweden doesn't have a history of Black and White minstrel shows, Golly Wogs and other offensive caricatures so for them the connotations do not exist. People still do hurdy gurdy gurdy impressions of Swedes based on the Swedish chef and no one bats an eye.
 
N

Nevasleep

Member
First impression I get is somebody from an African tribe.
Plus at least they made the point, female circumcision normally gets ignored, just like in this thread.
 
A

Al-ibn Kermit

Junior Member
jaxword said:
I wasn't saying it was or wasn't racist or that this was the best way to approach the issue; my original lament was about how threads tend to go on hot topic issues like this. It's all about how the original topic is presented, title and content.
Haha, a perfect example of something that, if put in the OP, would've changed the tone of the thread quite a bit.
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Honestly, the fact that it was the minister of culture doing this is what made me assume it's probably not meant as racism, it's just extremely clueless and stupid. It ruins the actual message of how abhorrent female circumcision is, by having it look like an African caricature, with stereotyped facial features and red lips and of course the exaggerated necklace. This would have made a little sense if it actually looked like an African woman.

It's the same as if somebody made a diorama of Jewish suffering in concentration camps, but used figurines that were hairy, hook-nosed, and had gold falling out of the pockets.

I just can't understand why you would do "satire" in such a way that totally messes the moral lesson you're trying to teach.
 
V

Vagabundo

Member
A load of people standing around laughing while one of them - a government minister - cuts the crotch out of a blackface woman cake. Laughing. Cutting.

How is this funny?
 
Stitch

Stitch

Gold Member
Supermanisdead said:
What is an example of non-racist blackface?
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VYO5Z.jpg
 
F

fierrotlepou

Member
Tacitus_ said:
That video certainly shocked me. I think he's doing a good job since female
and male
circumcision is a barbaric procedure.
The photo doesn't work since everyone is laughing at the minister feeding the cake to the artist.
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Ehm, there's a HUGE difference between male and female circumcision, good sir.
 
S

starchild excalibur

Member
I thought the article was pretty fucked already, but then the video really blew that away. Racist *and* insensitive to females that suffer through forced circumcision. Way to go.
 
D

Dreams-Visions

Member
Devolution said:
So he's trying to bring awareness to genital mutilation by making a blackface cake and the first thing that happens is the crotch is cut out?

Fuck everyone involved.
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But...now everyone in Sweden knows about genital mutilation...thanks to delicious cake & party!

right?

ugh. :-(
 
D

Devolution

Member
Nevasleep said:
First impression I get is somebody from an African tribe.
Plus at least they made the point, female circumcision normally gets ignored, just like in this thread.
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Obviously we need more crotches to be cut out of cakes as we laugh indirectly at the plight of female circumcision. To be honest I found that part more offensive than Swedish people not really giving a damn about blackface.


Dreams-Visions said:
But...now everyone in Sweden knows about genital mutilation...thanks to delicious cake & party!

right?

ugh. :-(
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All they know now is that crotch cake is delicious and hilarious.
 
A

Alucrid

Banned
Devolution said:
Obviously we need more crotches to be cut out of cakes as we laugh indirectly at the plight of female circumcision. To be honest I found that part more offensive than Swedish people not really giving a damn about blackface.




All they know now is that crotch cake is delicious and hilarious.
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from the smirk on their faces you would have thought that with that cake they had somehow wiped out female genital mutilation.
 
P

Parallax

best seen in the classic "Shadow of the Beast"
Devolution said:
Obviously we need more crotches to be cut out of cakes as we laugh indirectly at the plight of female circumcision. To be honest I found that part more offensive than Swedish people not really giving a damn about blackface.
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pretty much. i dont understand the goal of this, but i would assume you would want to take something like this seriously, not make a damn mockery of it.
 
K

KAOz

Short bus special
Devolution said:
To be honest I found that part more offensive than Swedish people not really giving a damn about blackface.
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Well, to be fair, we don't really give a damn about anything at all when we are out in public.

It's when we get home and nobody can hear us that we let everything air out.
 
staticneuron

staticneuron

Member
nyong said:
The racism cry is dumb, though. Figures they'd position the artist off-camera so that it looks like a room full of cackling white people laughing and pointing at a cake in the shape of a black woman. The cake 1) was created by a black artist, 2) uses the black artist's actual head (i.e. "black-face" wtf?...black is now a caricature of black?), 3) had absolutely no ill-intent behind it or the event.

If she had refused to attend the event until the black artist changed the black art to be more palatable to her white tastes, what then?

The cake might be tasteless and gross, but racist it is most definitely not. Whoever wrote that article should be fired.
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Racist no? Racially insensitive? Yes. Blackface is blackface. It is offensive because of its origin. Even black people back in the era wore blackface. It didn't make things better.

320px-Bert_Williams_blackface_2.jpg

Bert Williams

No matter how you try to spin it, always offensive
Bamboozled-2000-posterimg.jpg


akira28 said:
The artist is black, but it still looks like hell. It almost doesn't change it, it sort of becomes a footnote. Makes you wonder what he was thinking.

nyong: he is wearing 'blacked up' makeup. Maybe that's his thing, but the giant red lips and coal black skin is the traditional "blackface". He uses it to make a statement in his art, I can see. But what statement is being made here? I mean shit..if they wanted to talk about the issue of the barbarism of cutting a little girl's clitoris off, I don't think acts of dessert cannibalsm over wine and sparkling water quite approach the subject. Except in the most ivory tower sort of way.
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That is the issue here. This is the worst way to talk about the issue and it is racially insensitive. Doesn't matter the race of the people involved.
 
Y

YoungHav

Banned
Even taking the racial component out, this is absurd for reasons pointed out. Imagine if they did a child sex trafficking awareness cake? How fuckin' dumb.
 
D

Dreams-Visions

Member
staticneuron said:
That is the issue here. This is the worst way to talk about the issue and it is racially insensitive. Doesn't matter the race of the people involved.
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Sums it up. Doing it with images of racism past is a flawless insult to injury.

Everything about this was wrong.


YoungHav said:
Even taking the racial component out, this is absurd for reasons pointed out. Imagine if they did a child sex trafficking awareness cake? How fuckin' dumb.
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Fortunately, he seems to only enjoy creating shitty artwork with historically anti-black stylings.
 
Forsete

Forsete

Gold Member
Just saw it on Kulturnyheterna.

It was disturbing more than anything else IMO.

And now I will eat this Swedish pastry.
SbwNs.jpg

Can you guess what this is called? :)
 
S

Steelrain

Member
Forsete said:
Just saw it on Kulturnyheterna.

It was disturbing more than anything else IMO.

And now I will eat this Swedish pastry.
http://i.imgur.com/SbwNs.jpg[/IM]
Can you guess what this is called? :)[/QUOTE]

No, I can't guess.

It looks like a ball of dogshit with glass in it though.
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