All humans are apes. However, in the US (and apparently France), this is used to specifically dehumanize black people.
Is this racist?
- Thread starter Hotdog
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All humans are apes. However, in the US (and apparently France), this is used to specifically dehumanize black people.
Black people, being fully human, also engage in racism, to their own detriment.
Sexual Favors
Well-Known Member
I don't deny that. I was positing two scenarios for what kind of racism it could have been. People of all races can be racist toward their own race. 8'm sure the tweet was light-hearted, but that doesn't mean he wasn't aware of the implied racism, and making fun of it as well.
carolinajazz
Well-Known Member
...speak for yourself, Brow! From the standpoint of evolution, the obvious gulf between man and ape today is strange. Evolutionary theory holds that as animals progressed up the evolutionary scale, they became more capable of surviving. Why, then, is the “inferior” ape family still in existence, but not a single one of the presumed intermediate forms, which were supposed to be more advanced in evolution? Today we see chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans, but no “ape-men.” Does it seem likely that every one of the more recent and supposedly more advanced “links” between apelike creatures and modern man should have become extinct, but not the lower apes?
The evidence is clear that belief in “ape-men” is unfounded. Instead, humans have all the earmarks of being created—separate and distinct from any animal. Humans reproduce only after their own kind. They do so today and have always done so in the past. Any apelike creatures that lived in the past were just that—apes, or monkeys—not humans. And fossils of ancient humans that differ slightly from humans of today simply demonstrate variety within the human family, just as today we have many varieties living side by side. There are seven-foot humans and there are pygmies, with varying sizes and shapes of skeletons. But all belong to the same human “kind,” not animal “kind.”
Hantlers
Well-Known Member
I don't think I can post the video, since there's lots of cursing and I don't Colton and his merry band of assholes to ban me again, but I would suggest you youtube the woman who freaks out over some McDonalds chicken mcnuggets. She's definitely not "advanced in evolution".
carolinajazz
Well-Known Member
“If enough monkeys pecked away at typewriters long enough,” the argument of evolutionists goes, “they could eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare.” Up to now they felt safe enough passing out this “scientific” pronouncement. Who could disprove it? But now this straw that they have been grasping at for so long has been demolished.
Dr. William Bennett, a professor of physics at Yale University, specializes in designing computer programs to solve unusual scientific problems. He has applied the rules of probability to the typing monkeys, and programmed computers to simulate their pecking of the keys. The report in the New York “Times,” gives the computer’s verdict. Dr. Bennett calculates that “if a trillion monkeys were to type 10 randomly chosen characters a second it would take, on the average, more than a trillion times as long as the universe has been in existence just to produce the sentence: ‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’”
The answer from the computer is, “It is not to be.”
Isn't Rudy black? Why the assumption of underlying racial tones? Lots of characteristics can make someone look similar to a monkey and race is the least of them. If you're suggesting that Rush could be considered ape-like because of his race, in absence of evidence of that actually being interjected into this interaction, then that, to me, seems rather racist.
Do you think only black people can look like primates? If so, that's pretty disgusting and goes pretty far to expose a lot of your unconscious attitudes.
carolinajazz
Well-Known Member
......I watched the video....and it had nothing to do with "de-evolution!" However, I suspect she was subconsciously freaking out over the number of "forced shots" taken by her local NBA team?....or maybe the amount she paid to actually attend an NBA game?....or the fact no one will hire her because of the neck "tattoo's" that she sports?
Responded to in the appropriate thread.
Oh, what fun. Another person pretending that there is no history, no context, no culture behind any such comments, that they all just come at random from some neutral space.
The answer to your questions was clearly implied in the posts, and spelled out in greater detail later on. In particular, in response to "I don't know enough about the French culture to say whether being compared to non-human primates was a common way to depict black people as sub-human", you seemed to think that I had an "assumption of underlying racial tones". RTFP.
I don't know what RTFP means. You stated that if Favors said it, it would be racist. George W. Bush has often been compared to a primate, as has Steven Tyler and many others. What you're suggesting is that under a cultural context one black male could only liken another black male to a primate because of his skin color. Your unconscious mental association of black people with primates has been noted and certainly reflects beliefs so engrained in culture that you're unable to recognize it. We have a word for that. We call it racism.
This thread has gone full retard, move to General Discussion.
Read the freaking post.
Yawn. It's difficult to take this seriously. I'm sure you're smarter than this.
What I'm saying is that, given the cultural context, equating a black man with a non-human primate carries with it the meaning of that association in generations past, inextricably including its usage to depict people as subhuman, regardless of the intent of the speaker. Favors using such imagery does not remove the cultural baggage. Pretending that this baggage does not exist, or that it applies equally to white and black people, is an great example of white privilege. It's not racist to say any given white person looks like a monkey, because white people as a group have never had the term "monkey" used to deny their humanity. It's racist to say any given black person looks like a monkey, because black people as a group have had the term "monkey" used to deny their humanity.
What I find offensive is the idea that if Favors says it, then it's racist, because these events must be interpreted through your lens, which states that comparisons to primates is reserved for the black man. You must feel pretty strongly that an inappropriate idea must be applied on the situation because you can't seem to desynonymize primates with black men. It is ironic that you invoke white privilege as it is conveniently what's kept you from having any insight into your own feelings on black people and primate comparison, despite your professed distaste for it.
If anything, this should support many of your conclusions as evidence that the most advanced thinker on race among us still suffers from deeply embedded thoughts of dehumanization of the black people. The lack of insight should be quietly reassuring to the cause.
tl;dr One black man likening another to a primate must be a statement on race because it would be unacceptable to desynonymize blacks from primates. It is apparently the black man's station in life to be always associated with primates.
fishonjazz
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Anything and everything said about black people can and is deemed racist
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Favors or any other American. What does "reserved for the black man" mean here? I was talking about actual usage, not reservations.
Again, the only way I can see this is as some sort of trolling.
tl;dr Infection thinks that statements can exist in vacuums, devoid of cultural contexts, and also has problems reading English.
Statements have cultural context, which is not a point I've challenged or disputed. Jokes about black people being likened unto primates is another point I have not disputed. The idea I've disputed is at which point an arbitrary cultural context enters into, or rather is superimposed upon, a given situation. There are many reasons someone could be likened unto a primate, with the cultural context of black people being demeaningly labeled as such being among some of those reasons. What you're suggesting is that this being a racial slur is inescapable, regardless of intent of the communicating party and regardless of interpretation of the receiving party. You are suggesting, in essence, the inescapability of the comparison of the black man to a primate -- a reminder, if you will -- despite neither party apparently intending it as such. Your demand, rather, is to continue to persist -- nay, insist -- that the demeaning cultural context continue to prevail as the predominate cultural context. Of this, you are absolutely oblivious. This is racism.