Serious Political Correctness and Race

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verbatim

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Maybe if people lived in a country whose population in power didn't go out of their way to make race an issue then it wouldn't be such a divisive topic.

If you are really bored of the argument then maybe you should move to a country whose government doesn't extensively target minorities, like Germany or Japan for example.
 

dwarfstar

mindless philosopher
Myzozoa All you said about the justification for this new UN report on Israeli apartheid policy etc is correct and the same goes for most of that second piece, but a minor correction: anti-Muslim sentiment isn't "the most prevalent form of antisemitism". While it's true that Arabs and the various Jewish ethnic groups come from the same roots in Semitic ethnic and linguistic groups, the term antisemitism from its inception always referred specifically to anti-Jewish power structures and sentiments. While there's nothing inherently wrong with expanding definitions as language evolves, that specific redefinition has historically been used to mask antisemitism on the left and the right alike, so it's one I think we oughta be very wary of using.

Comrade Landorus No one here is saying that there's a biological reality to race or that the classification didn't start out as entirely arbitrary, but it makes a difference in terms of the social, political, and economic conditions people tend to face. Comparing people of color complaining about white people to white nationalists is inaccurate at best and outright dishonest at worst because people seen as white have significantly more social power when you control for factors like income and tend to be better off economically than people of color (particularly Black and Native American people in a US context) as well, and that's even before you consider that white nationalist ideology is quite literally built around genocide as a goal in part of the wider project to achieve absolute social power for the "white race" as defined by whatever Nazi fuck is giving the speech. "How are they any better than white nationalists", my ass.

verbatim I get the sentiment that you're trying to get across here, but neither Germany nor Japan are good examples of countries where ethnic and religious minorities are treated well either by state policy or the general population. The German government is doing whatever it can right now to cut off the influx of refugees from Syria and the surrounding areas and is trying to push through a "burqa ban" under the guise of commitment to secularism, and violence against Arabs and Jews is alarmingly common over there. Japan, for its part, is an intensely xenophobic society in which the native Ainu and Korean immigrants (or native-born children thereof) are still legally discriminated against in various ways. You are definitely correct that it is the population in power pretty much everywhere, defined along whatever racial lines are applicable for that country, who are the ones making race an issue, though.
 
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Cresselia~~

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Maybe if people lived in a country whose population in power didn't go out of their way to make race an issue then it wouldn't be such a divisive topic.

If you are really bored of the argument then maybe you should move to a country whose government doesn't extensively target minorities, like Germany or Japan for example.
Japan is not kind towards minorities at all.
The Ainu tribe in Japan is heavily discriminated and live in poor conditions.
Japanese are also hostile towards Korean and Chinese immigrants.
Moreover, the Japanese government publicly stated that Japan's low crime rate was due to the lack of black people in Japan.

I forgot which Prime Minister it was, and can't find the exact source.
But I found something similar:
https://books.google.com.hk/books?id=vX4_AwAAQBAJ&pg=PA208&lpg=PA208&dq=japanese prime minister black people&source=bl&ots=ezqAtEny9n&sig=HNmxhyRjg2y4iQYHjA0WhJwq_4o&hl=zh-TW&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjLq9iS2_HSAhXGwrwKHbLsBYIQ6AEIUjAH#v=onepage&q=japanese prime minister black people&f=false

I'm not justifying it or anything. I don't mean it's ok, I just want to point out some facts.

It's just very naive to think that anti-black discrimination only happens in white countries.
It's way more rampant in Asian countries.
 
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verbatim

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I'm aware of the big issues wrt discrimination in Japan and Germany. The greater joke was that some Axis nations are more tolerant than some of the Allied nations from WWII. Anyone looking for a country with lots of different ethnicities and relative safety should probably move to Scandanavia or Canada, where at the very least they have much better relations with their natives than Americans do.
 
I'm aware of the big issues wrt discrimination in Japan and Germany. The greater joke was that some Axis nations are more tolerant than some of the Allied nations from WWII. Anyone looking for a country with lots of different ethnicities and relative safety should probably move to Scandanavia or Canada, where at the very least they have much better relations with their natives than Americans do.
Uh, about that:

http://www.politico.eu/article/sami...multiculturalism-human-rights-discrimination/

"The Sami people are lobbying the Swedish government for a truth and reconciliation process to address human rights violations against them — historical and ongoing — against the background of a debate about how the country should behave toward its newest arrivals.

Representatives of the indigenous group point to forced sterilization, preservation of Sami human remains at government research facilities and the so-called “cultural genocide” that all but eliminated them from the official history of their country.

“There was historical violence, murder and discrimination against the Sami that was so painful people have been generationally unwilling to speak out, partly through fear,” said India Reed-Bowers, a legal adviser to the Sami parliament, which monitors issues of Sami culture in Sweden. “This is why a truth and reconciliation process is necessary.”"
 

Myzozoa

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there are many technical errors in this and perhaps other errors, but also important points. i'd guess that, if you're looking for a nation state that has treated indigenous cultural formations much better than as existential threats to that nation-state, you're in for a long search.

http://www.filmsforaction.org/news/...xism-is-as-alien-to-my-culture-as-capitalism/

as someone said: "this one goes out to all the white people, and all the non-white people that imitate white people."

"The only possible opening for a statement of this kind is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of "legitimate" thinking; what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world's ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.

So what you read here is not what I've written. It's what I've said and someone else has written down. I will allow this because it seems that the only way to communicate with the white world is through the dead, dry leaves of a book. I don't really care whether my words reach whites or not. They have already demonstrated through their history that they cannot hear, cannot see; they can only read (of course, there are exceptions, but the exceptions only prove the rule). I'm more concerned with American Indian people, students and others, who have begun to be absorbed into the white world through universities and other institutions. But even then it's a marginal sort of concern. It's very possible to grow into a red face with a white mind; and if that's a person's individual choice, so be it, but I have no use for them. This is part of the process of cultural genocide being waged by Europeans against American Indian peoples' today. My concern is with those American Indians who choose to resist this genocide, but who may be confused as to how to proceed."




"There's a rule of thumb which can be applied here. You cannot judge the real nature of a European revolutionary doctrine on the basis of the changes it proposes to make within the European power structure and society. You can only judge it by the effects it will have on non-European peoples. This is because every revolution in European history has served to reinforce Europe's tendencies and abilities to export destruction to other peoples, other cultures and the environment itself. I defy anyone to point out an example where this is not true. "

"But, as I've tried to point out, this "truth" is very deceptive. Revolutionary Marxism is committed to even further perpetuation and perfection of the very industrial process which is destroying us all. It offers only to "redistribute" the results--the money, maybe--of this industrialization to a wider section of the population. It offers to take wealth from the capitalists and pass it around; but in order to do so, Marxism must maintain the industrial system. "
 

vonFiedler

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"This is what has come to be termed "efficiency" in the European mind. Whatever is mechanical is perfect; whatever seems to work at the moment--that is, proves the mechanical model to be the right one--is considered correct, even when it is clearly untrue. This is why "truth" changes so fast in the European mind; the answers which result from such a process are only stopgaps, only temporary, and must be continuously discarded in favor of new stopgaps which support the mechanical models and keep them (the models) alive."

All I can fucking hear reading this is "but the FBI says it's a fact that blacks commit more crimes. I'm being rational."

Not sorry about being a mental European though.
 
Anyone else annoyed about Netflix's new remake of Death Note? Tbh I'm dissapointed as I've always loved Netflix and their incredibly diverse shows and this seems like a huge step backward for them.
 

vonFiedler

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Anyone else annoyed about Netflix's new remake of Death Note? Tbh I'm dissapointed as I've always loved Netflix and their incredibly diverse shows and this seems like a huge step backward for them.
In terms of race? Not really. I think there are some properties where the local culture is not inherently tied to work where it doesn't hurt to not worry about such things when adapting them. Nobody worried about white washing when The Departed was made.

But then why keep things like the name Kira? Frankly, what little we've seen looks ass.
 
I mean, aren't shinigami inherently tied to japanese culture? But outside of that the change of name to Light Turner really bothers me, I just cannot take it seriously anymore. The fact that it's an adaptation for the sake of being an adaptation bothers me as well but that is more because the new setting adds nothing to the story in terms of, well, story, transporting the story to Seattle doesn't make it better, doesn't change it in any meaningful way, it's change for change sake. And finally to say that the story is universal to defend the change in scenery but still having no Asian main characters feels very hypocritical of them.
 

vonFiedler

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I mean, aren't shinigami inherently tied to japanese culture?
The shinigami in Death Note aren't really reminiscent of the one's in Japanese mythology. It's more like something else and then you pick a name that vaguely clues people into the idea.

And Japan has made a bunch of live action Death Note adaptations for adaptation's sake. I thought they kind of sucked, but maybe that's because they were trying to cram a lot of story into movie format. If someone could make a live action Death Note work, and that someone is Netflix, then that'd be pretty cool. I'm not hopeful atm though.

It's definitely important that Asian actors get more roles!!! But like, with the increasing popularity of anime adaptations, do you want to tokenize them into being the one Asian person mandated per production? We already see some actors who fill that role and I find it a bit troubling tbh.
 
I wouldn't mind if there were Asian actors in any other roles but to me the problem is that they are not even in "stereotypical" roles (though I would argue that anime/manga adaptations using asian actors is as stereotypical as book adaptations using white actors).
 

vonFiedler

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(though I would argue that anime/manga adaptations using asian actors is as stereotypical as book adaptations using white actors).
I don't think you understand what I mean by token.

Take the 2014 Godzilla movie. Good movie. But probably the most awkward thing in it is Ken Watanabe's role. Because of the idea that an east to west adaptation mandates an Asian actor as "due diligence", you get Ken as the only Asian actor talking in a thick accent spouting mysticism throughout the movie (even though he's supposed to be a scientist). That's tokenism. And that's the role that is going to be in every adaption of this sort if you believe that they require an Asian person. If we want better representation for Asian people, then they need roles in regular movies that are interchangeable with any other actor. Don't create a token closet to shove them in.

There's also a lot of Asian properties that are deeply entrenched in Asian culture, and should have all Asian actors or should not be made at all. Death Note isn't one of those properties. To say that it specifically needs an Asian actor and not movies in general is favoring tokenism over actual progress.
 
The thing is, you need to start somewhere, there was a leaked mail where some producer (I think Sony) was saying how they don't write roles for asians because there are no asian movie stars, of course that creates a negative loop where there can't be any star because there's nobody writing roles for them to star in. You need some place for people to become known before they are given a big enough role to launch them, and when you have no roles going for them while on top filling all the ninjas, samurais, martial arts guys with white people in the main roles, well it's just picking the wound.

And the Godzilla movie is a bad example tbh. I hated all the humans in that movie. The scientist is full of shit, and the notion that the creatures feed on radiation is laughable, but the other humans were not better, I don't care about the 50th straight white boy with daddy issues working in the military, I was bored out of my mind every minute without Godzilla.
 

TheValkyries

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I think moving the story of a guy with a God complex wanting to cleanse society of criminality who goes on a murderous rampage has the potential to translate exceptionally well when you move that to a country that is currently heavily struggling with extra judicial killings from law enforcement, especially when also considering the extreme prison population as well as how minorities are targeted for such imprisonment more often than whites.

Having Light be a white kid and having L be a black man further accentuates an incredibly raw narrative that is actively happening in this country.

Shit, a white man repeatedly stabbed a black man to death in New York City in a modern day lynching and the victim was described as a career criminal in a major news outlet while the purpetrator's fashion sense was described as dapper and sharp.

So while inevitably Netflix Note will be bad, adapting it to this setting actually makes a ton of thematic sense.

That said it is important to also note that whitewashing like this happens extremely often and much of Asian portrayal is extremely orientalist and that's a severe problem. That this adaptation was announced so soon after Iron Fist was released as well as in the wake of Ghost in the Shell, which made whitewashing a plot point, puts this new adaptation under intense public scrutiny. Ultimately the Asian American community is starved of representation in our media on all fronts. To add that stories from Asian cultures are being mined for adaptation and whitewashing is a further insult. America really needs to come to terms with race along with gender and class and start realistically combatting these complex intersecting problems in a more holistic sense.
 

brightobject

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lol seriously doubt its a statement on race, although it might have indirect implications on the position of the black person in film!

anyways what do you guys feel about something like Hamilton, a historical musical drama where minorities play in many of the roles? Does this issue apply differently in theatre? why or why not?
 

vonFiedler

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anyways what do you guys feel about something like Hamilton, a historical musical drama where minorities play in many of the roles? Does this issue apply differently in theatre? why or why not?
In early theater, men played women. Because theater is on the stage, far away from detailed view, there is less emphasis on visual details. There are many good examples of great minority actors playing roles where they play other races. And there's also fine examples of vice/versa.
 

Cresselia~~

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I just find it weird if the actor/ actress of a movie is a different race or nationality from the character.
But I think I'll get used to it within a few years.
After all, actors/ actresses casting as a character of another gender is quite common in East Asia in general.

Back then, when Zhang casted as the main female in Memoirs of the Geisha, lots of Japanese people were offended because Zhang was Chinese instead of Japanese.
But it seems that people in USA couldn't be bothered about how Japanese people feel about the film.

However, when they were asked about how they feel if a white person casted as main character of anime adaptation movies (I think the film was called "Ghost in a shell", something like that), the Japanese people somehow weren't offended... even when Americans keep saying it's whitewashing.

I hope the difference is because these 2 films were filmed in different years, and that society had progressed since then.
Though I think the true reason is because the political tension between Japan and China.
 

Cresselia~~

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http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39556910
A common overbooking problem on a United Airlines flight on Sunday ended with a man being bloodied and dragged from his seat and an already troubled airline earning more bad press. How did it all go so wrong?

-----------

This incident has sparked outrage in the Chinese community.
Though dragging out the doctor wasn't the main reason.
The main reason was that all 4 of the "randomly chosen" passengers who were asked to leave were all Chinese.
The Chinese community therefore suspect that racism was part of this incident.

PS: None of the English sources stated that the other 3 passengers were Asian, but some Chinese sources did.

Edit: But now, the doctor is identified as Vietnamese, so as his wife.
 
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I'm torn on this. On one hand I find it to be completely possible that there was racial discrimination but on the other hand Chinese media can be a little bit quick to trigger. Anything taken as an insult or lack of understanding to their nation or people will always spark a huge outcry.

I asked Japanese people about the whole ghost in the shell stuff and most said they don't care as long as the actor is good. I then made the question more specific by asking if they'd be okay with a Korean or Chinese person playing a Japanese character and they said that it would feel a little awkward but they still wouldn't have much of a problem with it so there you go.
 
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