josher71: Wow, this doesn't seem particularly vehement at all in terms I've some things I've seen go down in these MeFi halls.I would like to say that, although I disagree with his position, this is largely thanks to Luc keeping his cool even though he is the main voice on the other side of this argument. Props to him for that.
In recent articles American historian Ann Laura Stoler has introduced the concept of ‘aphasia’ for describing metaphorically the cultural ‘inability to recognize things in the world and assign proper names to them’, especially in matters relating to the colonial past in Western societies. Taking this concept as a lead, the author analyzes an incident in the Netherlands in November 2011, when two young black Dutchmen were arrested for wearing a T-shirt on which the phrase ‘Zwarte Piet is racism’ was printed. Zwarte Piet [Black Peter] is the imaginary character in blackface acting as the helper of Sinterklaas, the central figure in the Dutch ritual of gift-giving thas has its apex on 5 December. For some decades now, there has been a debate in the Netherlands as to the precise nature of this blackface. By and large the Dutch deny, as was again the case in the aftermath of this arrest, any relation to a portrayal in caricature of a black person, producing instead associations that are difficult to grasp. After presenting the arguments of opponents of Zwarte Piet that there is such a connection, termed racist, the author focuses on the performance context of Zwarte Piet’s presence, in order to try to understand why Dutchmen generally fail to make this connection. In an epilogue the author makes a plea for going beyond the mere conclusion that Zwarte Piet is contested. Sharing himself the protesters’ perception of Zwarte Piet being racist, in his view the metaphor of cultural aphasia obliges professional ethnologists to re-associate this connection as well, and to make this known to the general public.posted by Kattullus at 4:17 PM on November 14, 2012 [23 favorites]
Pepé's voice, provided by Mel Blanc, was based on Charles Boyer's Pépé le Moko from Algiers (1938), a remake of the 1937 French film Pépé le Moko.posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 5:10 PM on November 14, 2012 [2 favorites]
I always thought Pepé was an honorific - it's what my sister and I used to call our Québecois great-grandfather.
They killed a few white people last century and have now transcended race.You know there were people writing in earnest that because the US had elected Obama it is now post-racial? I mean, talk about a fucking joke.
I think it's entirely possible to espouse an unconsciously racist belief/idea/whatevs without being an actual racist, though.Yeah, to me there's a big difference between "doing/thinking something that is racist in some way" and "being a racist". The latter is explicitly identifying you as a Bad Person, the former is just saying "we all fail sometimes to live up to our own high standards". Or that's how my personal connotations go, anyway.
jfuller: Nobody who is actually aware of and ashamed of his own unconquered racism could say it. He would be too busy fixing himself to have any time left over for fixing others.I think somebody who is personally hurt by racism could say it though, yes? You may not have realized, but anansi is black.
To try and give an example, last year I visited a hotel in Switzerland which had a painting which included a representation of both a black person and a water melon. If you look on TripAdvisor then there are various complaints from American guests that this was racist, but do these images together signify the same lazy stereotype in Switzerland that they do in the US? The issue is not simply a difference in point of view but that the cultural signifiers can be significantly different and that this can make it difficult for the outsider to talk to and properly understand the person inside the culture.
Sitting yonder with their beautiful muzzles up to the ears in pumpkins, imbibing sweet pulps and juices; the grinder and incisor teeth ready for every new work, and the pumpkins cheap as grass in those rich climates: while the sugar-crops rot round them uncut, because labour cannot be hired, so cheap are the pumpkins;—and at home we are but required to rasp from the breakfast loaves of our own English labourers some slight ‘differential sugar-duties,’ and lend a poor half-million or a few poor millions now and then, to keep that beautiful state of matters going on.(Though I suppose it could just be an English-speaking thing, for all I know.)
Indeed, perhaps one of the more interesting things for me in the thread was that when the topic of thanksgiving as a potential US corollary to ZP was introduced, the responses tended to focus on the fact that Americans no longer dress up as native americans and pilgrims, when the issue that was raised was whether the whole thing related to the whitewashing of genocide. Thanksgiving was defended as now being currently associated with family togetherness rather than as being a historical remnant relating to a dark colonial history, but there was little attempt to engage with the idea that the meaning of the Dutch celebration might be different from its percieved meaning from the US perspective. It seems clear that there are people within the Netherlands who experience ZP as racist (and that how it looks to me) but the same seems likely to be true of some people in the US as regards Thanksgiving, but because this is accepted as a national event within the US, and its celebration is within the norm for many Americans, then the same standards were not applied.I think this is the first time I've seen a Metafilter thread be accused of insufficient derailing toward US issues:P
It may be worth considering the possibility that Zwarte Piet -- and blackface in general -- isn't widely seen as racist in Dutch the way it is in America is not because of a historical difference but a demographic one. The African-American population is 13 percent. The percentage of Dutch people who are black is about 400 people total, according to the Afro-Europe blog.Wait, you're looking to speak about racism in the Netherlands, yet when you read a figure that says there are "400 black people in the Netherlands", you think "sounds about right"! I mean this seriously, do you even have the first clue? Are you not ashamed that you're commenting on something, and can't even tell that a figure is wrong by three orders of magnitude?
Regarding the black people/watermelon stereotype - someone referenced this on a forum I use a little while ago, and not a single one of the ~60% of us who were not from the US had any fucking clue what they were on about, and needed it explained to us. That some Scot once said something about something similiar a few hundred years ago doesn't mean much.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 12:33 PM on November 14, 2012 [25 favorites]