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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
An interesting situation is brewing in Philadelphia regarding this “lovely” image to the left.
It was given to a middle school algebra class on a math worksheet to illustrate an assignment question.
The image itself is hideous. The problem was exacerbated by the fact that the there is only one black student in the algebra class. And to make the situation worse, the student was teased by another student who asked was the man in the image his father.
Of course the black student's mother is livid over the entire situation.
But the real story to me is reading some of the ignorant comments left on a message board. Apparently some folks got angry because the mother dared to complain and dared to call the NAACP:
This is ridiculous!! Everyone has seen that picture online or in an email. The only people encouraging racism is the “subgroups” as this lady puts it. What ever happened to having fun. Enjoying life? Why make an issue out of every little thing? Some people just need to get a life!
Just another racist , hollering racism. How many white folk would have complained if it was a toothless old white man?Orientals if it was a toothless old oriental man?Indians? Get a life, lady . Every time a black , excuse me , must be politically correct, an African American, is shown in a less than desireable image, someone always screams racism. Ive got the solution, since everybody in the whole world , seems to be so damn sensitive nowdays, just outlaw showing photos of any race that may be less than flattering. Whoops , that may go against the right to free speech. Oh well , if it means we don't have to hear all the whining anymore , maybe it'll be worth it….NOT!!!!! GET A LIFE! Get rid of your antiquated way of thinking , we have a black President , do you really think that could happen in a predominately racist society.
Sometimes things are just what they are……….
just a question why is it always racist when ever something happens to a black???
gets arrested its racist
gets stopped driving its racist
brings home homework its racist
cuts in line at a store its racist
can't land a job its racist
only time i hear its racist is if something happens to a black person and they cry racist
I AM A DENTAL HYGIENIST AND TO BE QUITE HONEST 85% OF THE BLACK POPULATION ARE MISSING TEETH….I CONSIDER IT THE NORM….
It seems the Racist here is the mother. What is she teaching her son by keeping him home. She is waiting for Sharpton, Jackson and the others who come out of the woodwork for crap like this. When she files her lawsuit and makes her apperance on Oprah she will be to busy spending the money to worry about her son's feelings. Were they born in africa if not they are American. When you hyphenate your nationality it means you were born in that country. If you were born in the U.S.A. you are AMERICAN.
So sick of everyone calling everything racist. Get a life…
I don't see what's racist about the photo. If you had a picture in your hand of my toothless grandma (who is white) I would not call you racist. It's a goofy picture. I'm sure the man in the photo would think it's absurd of someone to call his picture a racist picture. It's a picture of a man being silly. Sometimes teachers add goofy pictures to assingments to keep the childs attention. Get over it.
Un-freaking-believable. People are just looking for something to get pissed about. Poor kid's going to grow up with the victim mentality his mother is choosing. Lighten up.
All you idiots that dont have anything better to do than play the RACE card at every available occasion..need to get a life. I saw the picture and it was not intended to offend anyone.You people need to stop wearing your feelings on your shoulder and get a LIFE!!! If that offends you……………then deal with it!!!!!!!
what has this country become but a bunch of whiners and jerks. its just stupid to get that upset over a picture. my grand-children are bi-racial, they get called zebra, oreo and they think its quite funny. if you say merry christmas your wrong, santa cant say ho ho ho anymore, and God has been around alot longer that all this politically correct crap. my child has to learn another laungage in order to graduate, why ,she lives in America, home of the free. now we cant talk right, we cant show pictures, where is it going to stop?
And just in case you are wondering, some of the most interesting comments (ones I omitted) had to do with Barack Obama. Also as you saw with one comment, the four magic words that are sure to conjure up white resentment – Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson - are mentioned.
It's interesting to me how some people can pick out reasons to demonize Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton even in situations that have nothing to do with them. It's like Pavlov's dogs with some folks. Just mention those names and watch how quickly the droll of white resentment comes dribbling out.
I can't say that I am amazed over these comments. It just brings home something that I've already known.
I am sure everyone knows about the Confederate flag mess here in South Carolina but very few talk about the statue of Ben Tillman that also adorns the State House.
Tillman was a governor of the South Carolina and he served in the United States Senate.
And he was one of the most virulent racists in the history of this country.
In 1901 when President Theodore Roosevelt invited black educator Booker T. Washington to the White House, Tillman said:
“The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again.”
He was responsible for the 1895 state Constitutional Convention that disenfranchised South Carolina's African-American citizens and even bragged about it in 1900:
“We have done our level best [to prevent blacks from voting]…we have scratched our heads to find out how we could eliminate the last one of them. We stuffed ballot boxes. We shot them. We are not ashamed of it.”
So basically we are talking about a man who openly advocates murder and brags about breaking other laws.
But yet when black South Carolinians complained about the presence of his statue on the State House grounds, we were accused of being overly sensitive, politically correct, and playing the “race card.”
We were told to “forget the past” or “move on.”
But in order to “move on,” we would have to live with this man's presence on our State House grounds – which we also pay for, sugarcoat his history to our children if we ever take them to tour the grounds,
or somehow explain to them why such an ugly racist has an honored place in South Carolina.
So basically when some folks say “why can't black people get over it,” they usually mean “why can those ni&^!@ shut up and stop ruining our fantasy that this country solely belongs to us.”
It probably never occurred to them that black people can't “get over racism” because it's thrown in our faces so often.
14 Comments
UghI love how these idiots complain that the mother is the one being overly “sensitive”, yet they are wasting minutes of their precious life writing overly long screeds about this on an internet forum.
And in my experience, people do this every single time an issue like this hits the news.
So, assuming my limited personal experience represents reality (hey why not, it’s only fair that I get to since most of these comments do), I can reasonably conclude that were something to happen that really was fueled by racism, these commenters would all deny it, because they refuse to see racism anywhere at any time.
And how many of these imbeciles…bothered to stand behind their bs words with their real names?
Some people will just never get it.
WTF?Okay,
So the math teacher says he chose it because the image has the caption ‘NO WAI’. I still don’t really see how that syncs up with solving equations. Regardless, it is incredibly inappropriate, especially if the instructor has only one black student in his class.
I teach college freshman at a school that is predominantly white, upper-middle, and upper class students. I have a class with one black student in it. I wish I had more, because I can sometimes see the disconnect between that student’s experiences and those of her peers. I wish I had more, because maybe then another voice and perspective could have equal time and teach others, including myself.
As an instructor, I find it incredibly challenging because I feel that it is always a balancing act. There is always the danger that you err on the side of saying something incredibly clueless, or that you err on the side of being over-solicitous when it comes to how you treat minority students. I tend to err on the latter rather than the former, but even that can be perceived by some students as a sign that I don’t get it. My White, liberal guilt can be equally off-putting.
Complicating matters is the fact that many whites seem to be terrified of talking about race, at least openly. Certainly, our social studies curricula and multi-cultural emphasis in schools has taught kids the major milestones in American racism, from the plantation to Jim Crow, but I think it has also instilled in them a false sense of progress.
There is a distance between ‘then’ and ‘now,’ which is observed with either a solemn silence or a vocal protest. The effects of both are pernicious, because they evolve either into full-blown racism or into that covert, ‘polite’ racism that happens behind closed doors or within gated suburban enclaves. Both seem to be a response to the discomforting fact that we are anything but a ‘post-racial’ society, and likely won’t be anytime soon.
I often think that this response is the expression of a resentment that we haven’t ‘moved on,’ as much as it is one of wishing to ‘go back.’ It is a resentment that our moral obligation to make things right didn’t end with the Emancipation Proclamation, or Brown v. Board, etc., etc.
It is perhaps no surprise that so many who express their resentment vocally also dovetail with the TEA party and ‘birther’ set. Like race, setting right the wrongs of economic inequality seems to be an unbearable weight for some.
I did a google image search and apparently this image pops up on a lot of gamer forums, where it seems to be part of a collection of various ‘odd’ images that people send to each other, such as a cucumber dildo, owls saying NO WAI. One user on a EU playstation forum has this picture as his profile avatar. A further search revealed that it seems to be part of a internet form of banter or badinage between friends, and is usually meant to be ironic.
While I can’t say for sure what this indicates about the user or the forum, I am inclined to believe that it is a lamentable expression of the fact that despite all of educators’ best efforts, racial ignorance persists because people have no real sense of history. Some people refuse to. Others just seem to lack the ability to put two and two together.
I don’t know what that teacher was thinking. In fact, I am afraid that he wasn’t thinking at all. That is very disturbing because it is an indicator that as he was putting together his assignment, it was essentially as if his black student didn’t exist, or worse, need not be acknowledged.
The comments of the posters are worse. An anonymous forum allows them to spew racist vitriol with impunity, and their comments are devoid of any empathy for a student’s humiliation. An Associated Content article actually features a comment from one of Curran’s former students which basically justifies Curran by saying that the black student’s ‘bad behavior’ voids his right to take offense at the image. It is disturbing to see that the same mindset which was used to justify slavery and to defer abolition–
that the ‘darkies’ had to earn their freedom–is alive and well in the 21st century.
They love their little “inside” racist slurThey hate getting caught doing it.
btw I was going to political cesspool after commenting on the klan folks at Old MissI was commenting what those f*ckwads look like under their sheets….(which Huffington Post wouldn’t publish.)
There was a nasty story about Anti Defamation Leage which they said created anti-semetism since the 1920′s, and a story on Black folks tweeting at night that tickled them.
Isn’t our post-racial society wonderful?
It seems so magicalI have to pinch myself every day to know it really happened.
Wow. I just relived some of the trauma of my youth.. and some of my adulthood, still.When worlds collide … The feeling that you might have about this, which most people who would be on site would have, is mine, too. But this isn’t the only situation that conjures it for me.
So does “National Coming Out Day” for me. I grew up in this kind of environment where lots of parts of me are never going to be ‘okay.’
We in the LGBT community at large have some of our own blind spots. Fortunately, many have not had to live through outright disregard as a standard-bearer. Others of us have.
So just remember that knowing what’s right and being able to say it is not a privilege — even when it’s called a right — that everyone has.
This Mom knows what she has to do, and I hope she does it. Others of us who cannot come out on the celebratory day of “Come out, come out, whoever you are” live in a world more like the one this incident represents and is.
Ben Tillman oddnessThis article talks about Ben Tillman and his brother objecting to the one-drop rule, which you’d think would be odd for someone as actively racist as Pitchfork Ben. Or maybe not so odd…typical. Most bigots are horribly conflicted inside the narrow confines of that thing they call a brain.
I can’t wait until we invent some sort of consciousness downloading* process that can be used as punishment to sentence bigots to live as the people (in the appropriate bodies and/or with the appropriate behaviors) they actively hate so much. Sentence length will vary according to severity, of course.
*Cylonesque, I suppose.
Unbelievable.One poster’s grandkids think it’s funny to be called zebra and oreo. I imagine there will come a time when they don’t think it’s so funny. Humor is a great cover for pain, until the pain swells up and breaks through that cover. Or maybe they just can’t talk to white grandma about how it feels. Maybe they love you, Grandma, but they have figured out that you’ll tell them not to play the race card so they talk to their black Grandma about what goes on at school, or their parents, or keep it bottled up inside.
And why does your kid have to learn a foreign language to graduate? So he or she learns that we’re not alone on this planet and that other people have interesting lives and cultures and value too, not just you.
everyone?
Really? I haven’t, but then, my family doesn’t send me racist emails and i don’t read RW websites…….
Reading the comments posted on that board made me feel sick.
…a false sense of progress. ???Having grown up in the 1950′s, I have to disagree.
In 1957, my father and I were driving up Rte 17 in New Jersey north of NYC, to the business he owned and ran. Being a nascent equal rights supporter, I glanced at my father and ask how come he hadn’t hired any Negros at his wholesale paper business.
He glanced back and without pause said, “If I did, I’d lose half my customers.”
It only took an instant to know he was right, perhaps not half, but enough to drive him out of business. So much for a 15 year old’s attempt to express my early equal rights proclivities. Even the most liberal business owner couldn’t hire a black person for anything other than raking leaves or picking up trash.
The civil rights act of 1965 changed that. It made it illegal to discriminate based on race when it came to lodging and employment. Those who would have liked to hire blacks all along but felt that they couldn’t do so for financial reasons, could now do so. If someone complained they could be reminded that everyone else in the business had to do the same thing, changing suppliers wouldn’t work, and if that failed, they could blame it on “the Gubment.” Unfortunately, the latter got the anti-government ball rolling, and we see the effects of that today.
That and the voting rights act a year earlier were seminal moments in civil rights history, as was MLK’s leading civil rights supporters across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma AL, which I witnessed. Add all the other positive developments and we see that progress is not false, it is real.
Some years back, when my youngest daughter was starting college, we were discussing all the career choices she had. I interrupted to remind her that it had not always been that way for women. When my mother was graduated in 1926, women could basically only be teachers or nurses.
I explained all the work that I and others had done in the 1960′s and 1970′s to allow her all the rights she so glibly assumes as a woman today. She gave me a condescending “yes, dad,” and quickly returned to jabbering about are plans for the future. She has no sense nor cares about what happened 20 years before she was born. The present and future are what matter to her.
So I’m wondering about the boy who asked if that were a picture of the black kid’s daddy. His 15 years of experience with people of other races were nothing like what happened 40 years ago. How would he know that what he said was so big of a deal? Like my daughter, why should what happened decades ago have any meaning to him? To him, he was just teasing a friend.
I recall as a youngster watching “Amos & Andy.” I was delighted and amused by the various cons the Kingfish tried to pull. As we would wish any con artist’s schemes to do, I was pleased how these attempts inevitably failed in the end, to hilarious effect. The idea that there were racial undertones totally escaped me. After all, Sgt Bilco (Phil Silvers) was a con artist too. In fact, I was pleased that a TV show with predominately black characters was on the air way back then.
Can’t we stop looking for boogiemen under the bed who aren’t really there? Can’t we let a boy in good nature tease his friend? Can’t we all enjoy an episode of “Amos & Andy” and enjoy the Kingfish’s marvelous misadventures without having a hernia just because he is black?
Like my daughter, we all live in the present. We do best when we invest our energy in planning how to achieve great things in the future. Living in the past serves no one well.
What do an Oreo and a Zebra have in Common?I hope those kids never stop thinking how funny those terms are. Good for them.
I remember when I first heard the term “Honky” in reference to a white guy like me. I just had to laugh out loud. How apropos. I’m well aware that those of other races have voices much more melodious than mine. Honk. Honk. What a riot. I still have to grin whenever I hear it. I haven’t heard it lately though. Perhaps when most just laughed about it, users realized it didn’t have the intended effect, so they gave up using it. Oh, well.
On some blogs I post at, supporting LGBT issues, someone eventually comes out and asks, “Are you gay?” I’ll ignore this the first time and the second as well. The third time I’m asked I respond, “No, I’m not gay, but thanks for the compliment.”
It absolutely drives them nuts. They think that calling someone gay or queer or, well, you know the other term they use is an insult. My response tells them that I don’t think that at all. In fact some things gays do are admirable, as far as I know, so if that’s what they are refering to, I consider it a compliment. LOL If it’s possible to stutter or trip over your words in a written blog post, I’ve certainly seen examples of that.
Words can only hurt you if you let them. Let them call me gay or worse as much as they like, thinking it’s an insult. It just proves how stupid they are. I just find it humorous how they want to show off their stupidity in public, isn’t it? It’s funny because they don’t even realize what they are doing.
So let them call people zebras and oreos all they want. We’ll just laugh and point and let them know how stupid they are. Wonderful just how funny these nitwits can be, don’t you think?