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.
Hector Drummond on a Guardian feature that I’m shocked to have only now discovered exists.
The Week In Patriarchy? Has a certain Lowell Thomas Remembers sound to it. We are so blessed to be present at history when it happens. Ooh, it’s almost You Are There ain’t it? I suppose we’ll have to wait for the future for that one. Presuming there is one.
Toxic masculinity has been vanquished. And apparently some other bits.
Good grief. I’m not sure what percentage of fashion designers are gay men, but I’ve heard it’s large and that one of the chief reasons these designers prefer absurdly skinny female models is that they approximate what teenage boys look like.
…I’ve heard it’s large and that one of the chief reasons these designers prefer absurdly skinny female models is that they approximate what teenage boys look like.
Main reason for female catwalk models predominantly being built like walking coat hangers is that being their purpose: to show off the clothes. As for the homosexual angle, I don’t see gay male designers being any more or less attracted to certain female models according to body type. Plus most gay men, from what I’ve seen and heard, very much prefer men who, you know, look and act like men.
That’s not say an industry as absurd as high fashion is guaranteed to not be lousy with Dan Savages.
“…half his crew were black…”
1. How could he tell?
2. Which half?
the photograph of men in blackface was a threat to me and my face and voice
I don’t spend time with people like our Rashy – I don’t even read the Graun these days – but again, I wonder does he REALLY mean that? I find it hard to believe anyone could genuinely feel threatened by that photo.
If the photo had been of a bunch of chaps in Klan outfits, with the title ‘Ron and the boys stop for a beer after the lynchin’ and it was dated the previous Saturday, I would have some sympathy.
“A business’ photograph of men with blackened faces culturally says to me, “Whites Only.” It says people like me are not welcome.”
Mr. Thomas has it occurred to you that you misinterpret the message? Perhaps the owner is welcoming ordinary hardworking people – in this case he is letting miners represent the group he wants to welcome. I think it had not occurred to him that honorable people might view the picture as you want to. Since you told him what you see there, he, like the rest of the known universe, thinks that you are seeking attention and attacking a business owner simply because he is not cowed by someone trying to be a bully. ‘Fess up, you didn’t see white men in blackface, you saw an opportunity to intimidate someone. I think you are pretty bad at this bullying thing so I guess you have that going for you.
There needn’t be a discussion, because the amount of time is zero
Try wearing orange in Belfast on the twelfth of July and see how far that argument gets you.
Try wearing orange in Belfast on the twelfth of July and see how far that argument gets you.
Not the same thing. There has been plenty of discussion of problematic elements in old works of literature. When race fanatics say there is a need for “discussion” what they really mean is that we must shut up and all literature must be purged of anything that offends them–and in the end all that will be available to read will be Marxist propaganda.
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.
In a world where incentives matter, hallucinating racial oppression and gratuitously grandstanding (HaGG) are indulged, never discouraged, resulting in a near-infinite supply. And while price discovery is important, producers are literally giving the HaGGs away, as the cost to produce is zero, while any hint of demand is readily met with a new supply of HaGGs.
Apparently this is an example of Say’s Law: Supply creates its own demand. Meanwhile, the debate of the neoclassical synthesis continues…
Life imitates art, Godfrey Elfwick sometime in the past…
“Frequently, I enter art galleries and I am not represented in the art, which leads to uneducated curation for exhibitions”
Funny isn’t it, that he is happy to define himself solely by his racial identity, but if I were to concur with that view it would be unacceptable and demeaning. Imagine if a white member of staff saw him enter the gallery and directed him to the paintings by or of black people, how outraged he would be by that presumption. And yet that presumption would be entirely correct. And in any case he’s simply lying about artists of colour or work about race being excluded from galleries – most galleries are full of nothing but identity politics trash these days: his claim might have been true 25 years ago, but it’s not now, and hasn’t been for a while.
“Frequently, I enter art galleries and I am not represented in the art, which leads to uneducated curation for exhibitions”
Uh huh.
That’s all very nice for “you”, but I am quite aware of what I am doing, I also have two or three mirrors here and there at home that I can make use of at home, and I have neither interest or need to have me turn up in someone else’s mirror.
Frequently, I enter art galleries and I am not represented in the art, which leads to . . . letting me see what someone else is commenting on, doing, having to say, where the execution and presentation might be utter crap or pure genius or general Meh, but I get to see what that something else actually is . . . .
He’s at the coalface of the most lucrative resource-extraction industry of the 21st century, namely the guilt-mining of white societies.
Well, I suppose the idea is to use the shabby treatment of complete strangers, historically, to excuse one’s own shortcomings and charmless personality. It’s tedious and dishonest, of course. But if you’re vain and not very talented – say, a sub-par poet who struggles with grammar – then you can see the appeal of pretentious victimhood. It’s both a selling point and camouflage. It enables mediocrities to gain attention that, on grounds of talent alone, would otherwise be denied.
See also this.
[ Added: ]
It seems to work in much the same way that, say, Laurie Penny or Melissa Fabello dismiss criticism of their idiocy by instantly and invariably framing their critics as sexist, misogynist, etc. The claim being that mockery and rebuttals are driven by some alleged fear or hatred of women, an urge to dominate, rather the more obvious explanation. I.e., that their opinions are factually incorrect, often delusional, and reliably self-flattering. They behave as if being held to any kind of standard – coherence, realism, truthfulness – were some dark, patriarchal conspiracy and terribly unfair.
It’s the psychology of an overindulged child.
The level of projection involved in the comment that inspired this post is epic. These folk have got racism on the brain, and I suspect they use their alleged hatred of it as a prop to fill a void in their lives. If you haven’t a lot of talent, playing the “I’m offended!” card the whole time is how you can get by.
The guys in that photo worked their nuts off for long hours to dig up coal and heat homes. They deserve better than the rage of people who haven’t done a stroke of hard work in their lives.
Rant over.
His next column will be, “White Supremacists Attack Me Over Racist Photo in Bar. I Now Fear For My Life.”
Just wait and see.
Main reason for female catwalk models predominantly being built like walking coat hangers is that being their purpose: to show off the clothes.
This is surely a circular argument. It’s perfectly possible to design clothes for women with busts and hips, and fashion houses would then choose models with that sort of shape. Indeed, that’s what they did until the 1960s. Models had to be tall and slim, but that was ‘slim’ by the standards of the time. Check out pictures of 1940s or 1950s models. (I’d provide a link, but have never mastered the technique of embedding.) Why everything changed in the 1960s could be the subject of a whole book (there are almost certainly several hundred out there already), and probably had multiple causes – but there’s no inevitability about the fashion for models with no discernable secondary sexual characteristics.
In other fashion news, your prairie dress is racist, transphobic, and sexist, because of course it is.
OTOH, it could just be a dress, but I am not a lecturer in history* as our author is.
Meanwhile, some blue on blue action; Transgender Activism Is a ‘Men’s Rights Movement’.
I think a pay-per-view cage match is in order to settle this.
* This silly nitwit actually had a Fellowship at West Point. Sad.
† No, that is cultural appropriation, WOLF is Warrant Officer Liberation Front, always has been.
Not the same thing.
White hood in Alabama any day of the year, then? Or perhaps wearing a Nazi officer’s uniform to a fancy dress party. I can wear a full set of lorica segmentata or a chainmail coif to any costume event I please without Brits bitching about genocidal invaders, so clearly there’s a point somewhere between 900 years and 75 years where the problem begins.
As an aside, the Call of Duty/Battlefield franchises have been making money hand over fist, revisting WWII (and now WWI) over and over again. Curiously, they only did one Battlefield Vietnam.
Why everything changed in the 1960s … no inevitability about the fashion for models with no discernable secondary sexual characteristics.
See for example, Mary Quant, the inventor of the miniskirt, making the argument in this 1966 interview for young adolescent girls as an ideal of modern femininity. It wasn’t all about the ephebophile male gaze.
“Frequently, I enter art galleries and I am not represented in the art, which leads to uneducated curation for exhibitions”
The great concern for any curator of say Florentine Renaissance art should be “where the black people at?”. If they’re not there, they must have been systematically excluded. Any rare black face is probably depicted as “exotic”, which is bad, or as reinforcing white supremacy. And there might be a peasant or two with a muddy face… let’s not start with that again.
If the coalminers were able to wash before going to the pub, he’d have resented it because ancestral Welshman looked more like Dylan Thomas than Rashaad Thomas.
In a world where incentives matter, hallucinating racial oppression and gratuitously grandstanding (HaGG) are indulged, never discouraged, resulting in a near-infinite supply. And while price discovery is important, producers are literally giving the HaGGs away, as the cost to produce is zero, while any hint of demand is readily met with a new supply of HaGGs.
The media does a very good job of imposing the personal costs not on the race hustlers but on the whites who are targeted by the race hustlers. Given that whites are always in the wrong and should always concede and pay up, we can work backwards from there and find reasons for offense, but why should protected groups have to enact the emotional and intellectual labor of justifying themselves on a case by case basis? Racial justice demands that the white business should pay reparations, the coalminer story is a tedious supporting fiction, like when getting divorced required you to enact the tedious supporting fiction of booking into a hotel with a friend and tipping the maid to testify about your “adultery”.
The determination of the media to endorse and amplify low-effort hate hoaxes, and the damage done to the target even when the case collapses, these are features and not bugs, all the better to humiliate and intimidate.
White hood in Alabama any day of the year, then?
I live in South Flyoverlandia, one of my slightly curmudgeonly neighbors, being fed up with the hand wringing over the Confederate battle flag brouhaha, hung one next to his American flag. None of our black neighbors (yes, we live together down here despite what the media likes to portray), including the guy across the street, was hand wringing. A guy in a hood would be looked at as a nutter. Somehow I don’t think these people think they are going to be forced back to a plantation.
As far as Prince Harry goes, it was a costume party (go look up the photos) with a colonial theme (problematic !™), so you can chose to get your knockers in a twist, or be sensible, it is not as if he is going to invade Poland or start rounding up Jews. Of course everyone hand wringing knew that, but it is more fun to pretend to be outraged.
OTOH, if you show up in your crusader suit and there are a bunch of Mohammedans there, expect some bitching and hand wringing, seeing as how even shoes set them off.
The operative words, however, are “sensible people”.
White hood in Alabama any day of the year, then?
You are being absurdly over-the-top. You used “orange in Belfast” as a prop to argue that we must all “have a conversation” about racism in Mary Poppins and other classics of literature. Not the same thing. And no we don’t. What leftist tyrants want is an endless “conversation” in which we shut up and they lecture and bully us, and destroy our entire cultural heritage.
The operative words, however, are “sensible people”.
The Venn Diagram of Leftists and sensible people has very little overlap.
The Venn Diagram of Leftists and sensible people has very little overlap.
Yep, which is “conversation” with them is pointless and the proper course of action is to ignore them (or laugh at them) rather than feeding their egos and giving them the air time they want to stamp their feet.
I just hit the tip jar, and my credit card issuer immediately asked me to confirm the transaction via text.
Maybe it’s the jar of pickled eggs that makes the place look dodgy. Just HOW old are those things, anyway?
I just hit the tip jar, and my credit card issuer immediately asked me to confirm the transaction via text.
As I told the health and safety people, and the police, and several judges, this establishment is above board and totally rodent-free.
Bless you, sir. May you often know the joy of freshly laundered sheets.
A “Totally legitimate business club”, eh?
In other fashion news, your prairie dress is racist, transphobic, and sexist, because of course it is.
Of course the catch there is “fashion” “news” as opposed to information about clothing.
Or in basic language, some hipster wore some bit of “costume”.
All I’ve ever seen a hipster manage is I’m wearing a contrived and butt ugly costume, and all that anyone notices is the reminder that a hipster has no taste or sense of style.
Adults probably didn’t even notice that particular hipster contrivance—hence the reference to “trend”—, while continuing to simply wear actual clothing and look good while doing so.
And yeah, in parallel . . .
. . . denouncing the transgender and gender identity movement as anti-women and anti-lesbian in particular.
So we have another instance of mere identity vs mere identity, again as opposed to what the adults do.
Meh.
. . . this establishment is above board and totally rodent-free.
That’s ’cause the rodents get fed the pickled eggs.
May you often know the joy of freshly laundered sheets.
Just put some on no more than 10 minutes ago. Well, ain’t dat a coinkeydink!
That’s ’cause the rodents get fed the pickled eggs.
They are fed the pickled eggs and are pickled by the eggs and become the pickled eggs. It is a circle, though not one of life nor death as life or death are understood by most men, be those men themselves live or dead.
The reason this establishment is totally rodent-free is that ,the other day, Cuddles the pickled “egg” ate the last surviving rat.
David, Cuddles has got into the hump fat. You might want to pick up your whip and chair and rescue it, it’s the last can.
Squires, I find your reasoning entirely circular.
😄
Reminds me of the old joke:
A couple were looking at a photograph of three naked miners, all totally covered in black coal dust, waiting for a shower. The one in the middle showed a small bit of colour, a pink willy.
The gallery curator came over to explain to them: “It’s a major collection: questioning our notions of authenticity; subverting accepted norms of cultural and historical appropriation; freeing our perceptions from normative linear and contextualized constructs.”
He left and another man appeared. “I’m the photographer” he said. “It’s just a picture of three miners waiting for a shower. The one in the middle went home for lunch.”
Cuddles the pickled “egg” ate the last surviving rat.
Pogonip, that explains the hair on my last (on-the-house) pickled egg. Albeit, David’s electric razor did its magic.
Albeit, David’s electric razor did its magic.
Surprising, normally that requires his kitchen flame thrower.
Don’t worry, Steve, we have plenty of pickled “eggs”; Cuddles dropped a litter right after he ate the rat. Like tribbles, pickled “eggs” are born pregnant. Some scientists think the “eggs” ARE savage, mutant tribbles—which would explain the voracious appetites.
Tribbles !?! You know the trouble with tribbles…..
Squires, I find your reasoning entirely circular.
“To everything turn, turn, turn…”
Some people just need the crap slapped out of them. Send them to me.
Some people just need the crap slapped out of them. Send them to me.
Do you mean the SJW’s or the people who quote from Bored of the Rings? 😀
…a history of land theft that displaced, and sometimes killed, its original occupants.
If you stop using the silly made-up term “land theft” and instead return to the time-honored terms of “invasion” and “conquest,” you may find that you can forego all the hand-wringing about displacement and killing, because it’s simply understood.
These people seem impervious to the historical truth that people invade and conquer their neighbors all the time. After the Minnesota Territory had been “stolen” by Laura Ingalls Wilder’s grandmother in her prairie dress, my forebears came over here to escape the “land theft” being negotiated between the Prussian white folk and the French white folk. And yet I can enjoy a big plate of Geschnetzeltes mit Rösti and wash it all down with a bottle of French wine, without once succumbing to the vapo(u)rs.
Guess I’m just a sucker for not cashing in on the offendedness craze.
‘Rashaad Thomas’ pathological hostility toward caucasians hasn’t kept his career from chugging along just fine. He belongs to the Gutta’ Collective (“a group committed to sharing a Black and Brown narrative through art and poetry”), contributes to the blog of the University of Arizona Poetry Center, is co-curator of the “Poetry Spot” at the AZ Central website, and is Engagement Manager at the Phoenix Center for the Arts — a job that sounds like a plum gig. He’s even a clothing designer (Ra-harT Designs). From 2013 to 2017 he was at Arizona State University, studying nuclear physics — no, just kidding; he was a major in “Justice Studies” and “African/African American Studies.”’
https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-privileged-elitist-who-saw-blackface-not-black-lung/
From 2013 to 2017 he was at Arizona State University, studying nuclear physics — no, just kidding; he was a major in “Justice Studies” and “African/African American Studies.”
The thing to bear in mind is that Mr Thomas is most likely regarded as an ideal end product of all that educational processing. Which is to say, someone dogmatic and presumptuous, obnoxiously self-involved, and with an inclination to chide and whine, and impose on others needlessly, because he finds it gratifying.
It’s not so much a political position as a psychological type.
As miners have historically displayed a slight preference for left-wing ideology, isn’t this likely to be a case of inter-generational leftist autophagy?
The thing to bear in mind is that Mr Thomas is most likely regarded as an ideal end product of all that educational processing. Which is to say, someone dogmatic and presumptuous, obnoxiously self-involved, and with an inclination to chide and whine, and impose on others needlessly, because he finds it gratifying.
That is to say someone helped him find his “spark”?
https://youtu.be/TqzUHcW58Us