rolling "Is This Racist?" thread

(Also, to claim that 'Slavic' people are uncomplicatedly 'white' is to ignor some Very Important parts of 20th century history)

(Anyway, Onimo, I should apologise - I wasn't meaning to imply that your sports affiliation was clouding your judgement. I'm just drunkenly carrying on a drunken argument from the pub earlier, by proxy. I fear I didn't make myself understood then, as now. Anyway, four posts in a row, NAGL...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxpkEehUd88

The thread title popped into my head when I checked the "about" page on the ad agency's site and noticed every person shown is young and white which makes this feel a bit off to me.

4th rate sub-Putney Swope bullshit

makes me miss Putney Swope somehow

Are Skippyjon Jones books racist? I have read two and it didn't cross my mind that it was racist.

we stopped reading them for that reason

I re-read one tonight and still didn't find it offensive. Is the pov different because I am Latina? There were Spanish words used properly in the correct context, the rest seemed like word play.

Here's the first result for "Skippyjon Jones racist"

I am kinda bummed by the slam on my employer, TUSD, at the end – I work pretty hard to be an anti-racist teacher and I know a lot of others do, too. It's a district with over 3,500 employees, and I know we get nothing but bad press in the national media, but to think ALL of those employees are anti-Mexican/Mexican-American bigots is inaccurate!

Whoa, looks like *tera was googling this, too!

My gran (who is white) says that she prefers Asian taxi drivers to white taxi drivers because they are apparently more polite

I'm fairly sure that that is racist

That's definitely racist against white cab drivers

idk, it might be affirmation that certain cab drivers are more subservient

polite != subservient.

very true! but subservient does imply polite

Crabbits: In the context of a classroom setting, I am told, that Skippyjon books are racist.

Racism is complicated, so much so people would rather not touch the subject at all. I feel this doesn't help anything. If Skippyjon books are used in a classroom setting why not mention that these are real Spanish language words and these are words the author is playing with and not real words in Spanish. I am not talking about opening up dialogue with kindergarteners or first graders but second and third graders using the books? Is it against school policies these days to talk about racism? I really wouldn't know, not yet.

... how was the Skippyjon books not ALWAYS racist?

My friends and I must be a rare percentage of Hispanics that are not offended.

My kids love the Skippyjon books. I've always been a little worried that they veer a little too close to like that kind of English/Spanish hybrid thing that people try to do when they are worried that they won't be able to communicate with Spanish people. I don't know what that's called, but mostly ending words with "-o" as a suffix . It kinda goes in that direction. But if it doesn't bother you, that's reassuring to me.

It is actually more offensive to me when the image of the Virgen de Guadalupe is co-opeted and used insincerely. Though I am not religious, a very, very lapsed Catholic, the image is one that is deeply rooted in Mexican and Mexican-American culture. I do get offended seeing it worn or used as kitsch. I don't know if it racist or not but it is a lack of understanding.

Growing up with Speedy Gonzalez and Slowpoke Rodriguez and a mother from Mexico with a thick accent, grandparents with accents, as children we felt represented and loved catching the cartoons. As I got older, I still found the characters unoffensive. It's Looney Tunes, it offends all or none. It was a joke, we knew that and could laugh. We were aware of real racism at a young age. My dad told us what our grandparents and he endured. The fight scene in Giant was always referenced.

In" Skippyjon Jones Class Action", they play with French accents and words. I still like that so much of the stories use proper Spanish words correctly and introduce a child to Spanish. All the "-itos" and "-o's" are used in a sing-song way....even the font sets all the "-itos and o"s" apart.

I laugh at the maid character used in Family Guy, when I have caught that, maybe I am not militant enough. Racism is very real and to battle children's books that don't even come close to the circumstances, repercussions and damage real racism does to a child of color, is ridiculous to me.

Beverly Slapin, who is the author of the DeColores piece isn't even Hispanic, that I can find. If that is the case, I do take offense to a non-Hispanic speaking for me. I do find that racist.

This article was written by a Latina and because it was it is being referenced by all those who are anti Skippyjon. At the moment a teacher friend of mine who is White and never read the books is discussing the books on FB. I find it irritating that she feels I should be offended.
http://networkedblogs.com/WBB8x

yeah this is what I took issue with:

Indeed, the Skippyjon Jones “industry” is a model for how racist stereotypes are marketed to young children. If Judy Schachner is capable of any shame, now would be a good time to post a public apology, shut down her business and turn over all of her profits to the courageous young Mexican American students in Arizona who are fighting to liberate themselves from the racist “education” they are receiving at the hands of the Tucson Unified School District.

It seems like she's willing to speak for a lot of demographics that she isn't part of or familiar with (eg Tucsonenses)

putting all the blame on TUSD as opposed to the az state legislature seems pretty one-sided and unfair.

really groaned at that writer putting "education" in quote marks.

His auditory performance of Mexicanness, what Reina Prado considers “sonic brownface,” reeks of white privilege as he code-switches from cat/white/English to dog/brown/”Spanish.”

I don't have any of the books with me at the moment, but for some reason I've always felt that Skippyjon coded as black.

he is siamese, if you please

indee-eed

this sentence seems to take things a bit too far:

But more important, they prepare young children to accept immigrant-bashing, stop-and-frisk searches, the forced breakup of Mexican families, the impoverishment of farmworkers, and the racist campaign against the Mexican American students in Arizona.

not familiar with this stuff but I always loved Speedy Gonzales when growing up and I knew that the character was clearly a joke. my wife is Mexican and that's her favorite character, I mean she was thrilled that I was even familiar with it. probably doesn't add much to the discussion but if this is like that and we're saying it's making kids okay with the Arizona immigration laws I'd say that's putting very little faith in the kids

It takes a joke and creates an insult where there wasn't one before.

Had someone approached me at 8 years old and told me that Speedy Gonzalez was bad, that he was mocking me and my family, that it was not a joke but something I should take offense with, I would have cried. A little older and I would have been angered and insulted.

iirc Speedy Gonzales cartoons have alternately been pulled and put back in circulation as latino groups have praised him as a good character

I think all the marijuana smoking refs have been pulled, though

Are you guys making the argument that because you liked Speedy Gonzales, it's not still an awful racist stereotype and caricature?

I mean, shit, I "liked" Hong Kong Phooey as a kid too, it was still a terrible idea

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/03/speedy-gonzales-hispanic_n_4039787.html

FWIW this was how I viewed Speedy -- he was clever, heroic, funny and amiable. I'm not going to tell anyone what to find offensive, but I can certainly understand why a hispanic person might *not* find him offensive.

It's a little more complicated than a handful of people!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speedy_Gonzales#Censorship

Despite such controversy over potentially offensive characterizations, Speedy Gonzales remains a popular character in Latin America. The Hispanic-American rights organization League of United Latin American Citizens called Speedy a "cultural icon", and thousands of users registered their support of the character on the hispaniconline.com message boards. Fan campaigns to put Speedy back on the air resulted in the return of the animated shorts to Cartoon Network in 2002.

Is Eddie Murphy as the old Jewish man in Coming to America offensive? Because that's one of my favorite screen characters of all time in spite of the yiddish caricature.

Are you guys making the argument that because you liked Speedy Gonzales, it's not still an awful racist stereotype and caricature?

obviously I'm not trying to say what is or isn't offensive, but that the character isn't pure negative stereotype (he was always the quickest/smartest/most cunning of the bunch) and that going from that to "accepting the forced breakup of Mexican families" is a pretty massive stretch

hah, fair point

Does anyone feel like the whole joke of speedy gonzales is that he is fast/smart &c *unlike other Mexicans*?

I have never ever gotten that impression.

me neither

the joke is that he's hyperactively fast

I have never ever gotten that impression.

I have had that impression in the past

i'm hispanic and i'm not crazy about speedy gonzales, primarily b/c it because it was used by white kids i grew up with as nicknames/slurs for hispanic people

i hate the band name "speedy ortiz", too, especially since none of the members are hispanic

re: gonzales, i generally operate on the notion that stereotyping marginalized groups of people in cartoon form isn't a good practice. i understand though that some latinos are okay w/ speedy.

If nothing else he gave us a great joke on Futurama: "That guy makes Speedy Gonzales look like Regular Gonzales!"

I thought Speedy Gonzales was cool when I was a kid, and I didn't really know much about Mexican stereotypes or know many Mexican people. If someone had told me they were Mexican when I was age 7, I don't know that it would have really registered for me that "that's what Speedy Gonzalez is" tbh. Not trying to pull some "I don't see color" bs, I just think my kid brain didn't really process Speedy Gonzalez as anything other than a cool cartoon mouse.

the sombrero and thick accent didn't tip you off eh

xp to hurting -- i get it that as a 7 year old you might not know that speedy gonzales = mexican. but the character is obviously coded as such and at some point speedy is going to enter kids' consciousness as a mexican stereotype. it wasn't 7 year old white kids calling hispanic people "speedy gonzales" when i was growing up, it was white teenagers clearly aware of speedy's mexican tropes who grew up watching looney tunes.

right though white teenagers are gonna be shitty no matter what, as a Jew I got a ton of the Eric Cartman stuff growing up. though had South Park never existed I'm sure it just would've been something else.

there's always something

Kinda on-topic - I walked into my son's preschool classroom recently and did a doubletake at one of their art projects.

http://i.imgur.com/DNqoLtc.jpg