Old Photo Seen, Umbrage Ensues
Via Darleen in the comments, a tale of coal dust and woe:
A few weeks ago, I attended a holiday party at a downtown Phoenix restaurant. I walked around to view the photographs on the wall. Then a photograph caught my attention.
This one here, since you ask.
Friends said, “It’s coal miners at a pub after work.” It was a photograph of coal miners with blackened faces. I asked a Latinx and white woman for their opinion. They said it looked like coal miners at a pub after work. Then they stepped back, frowned and said it’s men in blackface.
The author, incidentally, a “poet and essayist” named Rashaad Thomas, seems determined to racially categorise every person who features in his tiny drama. And so, we’re informed, pointedly, that this person is white, and this other person is not.
I spoke with a white restaurant owner. I explained to him why the photograph was offensive.
He was white, you see. Be careful not to trip over the implications.
Yet the photograph remained on the wall.
Feel his pain, you heathens.
My concern that the photograph of men in blackface was a threat to me and my face and voice were [sic] ignored.
For once, rather surprisingly, the world did not bend to the demands of a whiny, racially neurotic narcissist.
A business’ photograph of men with blackened faces culturally says to me, “Whites Only.” It says people like me are not welcome.
If we peel away the affectations of racial victimhood, clung to so tightly, and instead take “people like me” to denote something more specific – say, a poet of limited talent whose every other tweet mentions race, who refers, seemingly without irony, to “Amer’KKKa,” and who claims that an old photo of coal miners drinking beer threatens his wellbeing – then Mr Thomas may be onto something.
Feel his pain, you heathens.
Too busy laughing.
Glenn Reynolds has some thoughts:
There’s more.
I’ll just leave this here.
empowering people who are, let’s be clear again, pathetic attention-seeking idiots who don’t care about the facts and are desperate to find something to be offended about, is horribly destructive to society.
That.
“I asked a Latinx and white woman for their opinion. They said it looked like coal miners at a pub after work. Then they stepped back, frowned [allowed their long-nurtured prejudices to surface] and said it’s men in blackface.”
FTFY
A business’ photograph of men with blackened faces culturally says to me, “Whites Only.”
If you see an old photo of coal miners and the first thing you think of is ‘whites only’ you should see a psychiatrist.
If you see an old photo of coal miners and the first thing you think of is ‘whites only’ you should see a psychiatrist.
I suppose the question is whether Mr Thomas, our untalented but hypersensitive poet, really did hallucinate some racial oppression – a “threat” to his mental and physical wellbeing – or whether, as seems more likely, he simply saw an opportunity to grandstand and gratuitously impose on others, and thereby feel important.
Neither scenario suggests good company, or someone whose opinion should carry any weight.
” It was a photograph of coal miners with blackened faces.”
He’d have conniptions at the sight of these morris dancers from my home town:
This is what happens when your only achievement in life is to have dark skin. Well done to the Bar owner for not caving-in to this twit.
Slightly sad observation, but the Burton Ale sign means that it’s probably either Nottinghamshire or the Forest of Dean.
And it’s not ‘soot’, it’s coal dust. What a moron.
these morris dancers from my home town
I’d forgotten you hail from some heathen backwater.
[ Slides old newspaper under Oik’s chair. ]
Life imitates comedy.
https://youtu.be/T6WzwMeWeOY?t=105
Yessir if there were ever a priveliged group, it was the coal miners. Read Wigan Pier, dipshit
Life imitates comedy.
Heh. I hadn’t seen that.
Why is there no mention of the model KKK cross that this guy is obviously holding?
.
It says people like me are not welcome.
Correct!
You are an idiot, and idiots aren’t generally welcome at social gatherings.
From the other thread…
I breathlessly await his next hand-wringing exercise after he sees the Chimney sweep scene in Mary Poppins.
Ask and ye shall receive, ‘Mary Poppins,’ and a Nanny’s Shameful Flirting With Blackface.
Somewhat related to the Morris dancers, at the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia, a man is accused of blackface. Dude on the right below.
….some heathen backwater
Band name. Grungy, lo-fi Americana to be precise.
Band name.
I shall resume my clarinet practice. Kids like clarinet, right?
I’m amused that an early 20th Century English coal miner could be taken to represent “white privilege”.
Thomas is clearly a Poet and Essayist of Very Little Brain.
The context of the photograph is not the issue
Jesus wept.
Coal miners slaking their thirst with excellent British beers. My great grandfather was a coal miner as was my grandfather for several years before army service. No, people like you are not welcome in places with pictures like this hanging on the wall, because whining, ridiculous buffoons like you moaning about pictures of men who are clearly coal miners should mean that you are barred, matey. Barred! For utter stupidity and for being tediously annoying.
Makes me wonder… if it was hot, you were sweating, the wind and dust were blowing, you were out on the open platform tractor picking rocks on the back forty, and some top soil stuck to your face… Would that be black face too?
I suppose that would mean, that topsoil is racist? It invalidates people’s voices because their skin is not white?
Is clay also racist, because the best clay for making pottery is not black?
My Grandfather was coal miner for 50 years in Springhill and half of his crew were blacks
…who claims that an old photo of coal miners drinking beer threatens his wellbeing – then Mr Thomas may be onto something.
I think you meant, “…may be on something…”, but I digress. It is interesting to note, however, the two pictures on his twit header and his poem. It appears he is another whose whole existence and probably livelihood hinges upon clinging to the belief (real or ginned up*) that a past gone nigh a half century still exists. Easier than a real job, I suppose.
*(I will preemptively denounce myself because this term may cause irreparable harm to his well being by invoking images of cotton gins)
He’s at the coalface of the most lucrative resource-extraction industry of the 21st century, namely the guilt-mining of white societies.
The seam he’s exposed in this exploratory dig may not be economically viable today, but could pay off in a few years.
When the miners of the 1960s were working the big guilt-fields like slavery, nobody could have imagined whites disavowing their ancestors for blackface minstrel shows. So it shouldn’t be so farfetched to imagine whites in 2030 or so paying up for Implicit Racism training because a photo of a chimney sweep is like Fred Astaire doing Mr Bojangles, which is like slavery.
Ah..so after futzing with the difference between a closing double quote and a standard double quote on the href in my last comment on the previous thread, I see that we have over here established an entirely new thread dedicated to the idiocy of this clown journalist whathaveyou. Far be it from me to refrain from repeating myself…heh…refrain, repeating myself…damn if that ain’t another one…
I think, just like “literally” and “ironic” and “nonplussed” (though I still contend in the case of “nonplussed” it gets the savaging it deserves) we will soon need to add “fact” to the list of Janus words. Well that and the rest of the whole damn dictionary.
What is it with Arizona? It’s becoming a horrifying admix of California and Florida.
Jesus I can’t stop laughing while reading this.
To use the sort of rhetoric that the “poet” employs, that “poet” seeks to erase the lived experiences of real people, people who labored and suffered far more than he ever will. He is, in effect, denying their humanity.
And since we’re confessing our white privilege, I shall now cop to the inherited sin of also having a grandfather who was a coal miner. The shame. The dreadful shame.
So relieved: Toxic masculinity has been vanquished. And apparently some other bits.
https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/1090305370860355584
What is it with Arizona? It’s becoming a horrifying admix of California and Florida.
Californians fleeing the mess they made in California and infecting the place with the mess they left behind. Florida’s similar problem is, of course, the damn yankees and snowbirds.
What is it with Arizona?
Invading hordes of California ex-pats. Like the Mongols, but without all the toxic masculinity.
Toxic masculinity has been vanquished. And apparently some other bits.
Oh dear oh dear.
‘Mary Poppins,’ and a Nanny’s Shameful Flirting With Blackface.
Look, in all fairness they’re right about the books. A lot of early 20th century literature is offensively racist even by sensible people’s standards in 2019. The movie completely excises all of those references, though, so the real question ought to be how many people have ever actually read the books, and whether the movie’s sootface scenes ought to be considered in poor taste given that they’ve been completely shorn of their original connotations.
This is really nothing more than the “Confederate flag on the General Lee” issue all over again. There’s a discussion that needs to be had over how much time has to pass before we can use certain symbols and tropes without handwringing, but we’re not having it.
Louis Armstrong wore blackface when he was King of Zulu at 1949 Mardi Gras
https://afropunk.com/2014/03/feature-the-curious-case-of-the-new-orleans-zulu-club-black-people-in-blackface/
Your concern deserved to be ignored because…
When one encounters a three year old, laying on the floor, throwing a tantrum; one doesn’t lay down and join him.
Jonathan | January 30, 2019 at 10:21:
It could also be Derbyshire, there used to be plenty of mines and Burton Ale.
It could also be Derbyshire,
Wales, apparently.
There’s a discussion that needs to be had over how much time has to pass before we can use certain symbols and tropes without handwringing, but we’re not having it.
There needn’t be a discussion, because the amount of time is zero, and no more ground needs to be ceded to the legion of perpetually outraged. Sensible people are capable of viewing history as history and realizing a symbol used in the past doesn’t mean whatever evil associated with it is either happening now, or going to happen.
Pearl Harbor, 2008.
“A poet who reads his verse in public may have other nasty habits.” – Robert Heinlein
I spoke with a white restaurant owner.
Any particular restaurant there sunshine? If it was the one with the unholy picture on the wall shouldn’t it have been, “I spoke with the white owner of the restaurant”?
poet and essayist
Well, at least he’s not claiming to be reporter, or God help us, a journalist.
When one encounters a three year old, laying on the floor, throwing a tantrum; one doesn’t lay down and join him.
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t tempted to try it now.
What? You’re not the boss of me!
“…half his crew were black…”
1. How could he tell?
2. Which half?
If it’s not racism then it means Mr. Thomas is an incompetent.
And we wouldn’t that to get bruited about would we?
Phoenix? An unusual name for a town in the coalfields. Usually it’s something like Grimeley or Soothaven. I assume then this restaurant was in the small town of Phoenix halfway between Barnsley and Grubforth, though there is no record of anyone ‘eating out’ in such places, unless of course you chawed the beer mats between pints.
Unsoaked beermats, mind you. These people aren’t pussies who require wet beermats for food.
[ Writes down “Beer mats = bar snacks.” ]
Toxic masculinity has been vanquished
Urrkkk…
I wonder if the mortified and self-centred Mr Thomas gave consideration to the fact that many of those coal-besmirched miners died of respiratory diseases or were killed underground in accidents at the coal-face. “Coal face” is, colloquially, a term used to indicate where people work, usually very hard, but I doubt this wandering fool knows what hard and dangerous work is.
Thomas seeks to contrive an argument and create dissent where he has no right. He is self-serving and vain and just another example [along with Alexandria Ocassional-Cortex] of Nature making an exception: I learned at school that Nature abhors a vacuum, but Thomas and the toothy Ocassional-Cortex are clear examples of human vacuums.
Oh dear oh dear.
That was unpleasant.