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What does the exploitation of religious groups have to do with anything? Are there pictures of a man wearing cross leaning on a man wearing a star of david? If not, I'm going to have to call that a red herring.

Pictures can have multiple meanings depending on the viewers. Someone can look at a picture of a wind mill farm and see clean energy while someone else sees a blight on the landscape. You may not see racism here (And frankly neither do I) but it's not fair to just dismiss the feelings of groups who have been the victim of centuries of exploitation as being petty.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
What does the exploitation of religious groups have to do with anything?

You may not see racism here (And frankly neither do I) but it's not fair to just dismiss the feelings of groups who have been the victim of centuries of exploitation as being petty.

My point was that there are many groups of people that were exploited, but you don't read about how offended they are all over the place.

I never said it was petty. What I was alluding to was that not everything is racism. By pointing at every little thing and being offended by everything, you are actually minimizing the plight of those that were exploited. It's not always about exploitation regardless of what some individuals and media outlets would have you believe. That's all I'm saying.

So basically if there was an ad where a male child is leaning on a female child with his arm over her head, should the Feminists go crazy because it's a symbol of the male dominated society according to their view?

 TheCustomLime wrote:
What does the exploitation of religious groups have to do with anything? Are there pictures of a man wearing cross leaning on a man wearing a star of david? If not, I'm going to have to call that a red herring.

Pictures can have multiple meanings depending on the viewers. Someone can look at a picture of a wind mill farm and see clean energy while someone else sees a blight on the landscape. You may not see racism here (And frankly neither do I) but it's not fair to just dismiss the feelings of groups who have been the victim of centuries of exploitation as being petty.

I think you pretty much have it on the way people see things differently. If someone has something on their mind, then they bring it into their interpretation in much the same way as seeing things in clouds. Some of the same people offended by the Black girl being leaned on by the White girl might well be offended by the second picture where the White girl is being leaned on by the Black girl because they'd interpret it as the company saying Blacks can't stand on their own.

It seems like an awkward shot, race aside. I don't get why either kid (old or new photo), would be posed to have their arm resting on another. It's just awkward photography.

Racist? Meh, maybe.

1- no, it didn't seem like it to me

2- the PR counter-argument "what if places were switched?" is idiotic- the entire point is cultural context. In anything with race, there's certainly the potential for it to be politically charged and "re-skinning" things to say they're the same is proving exactly the opposite point.

For example, let's take two hypothetical photos- a woman punching a man, and a man punching a woman. Are those going to be culturally loaded images that mean different and non-equivalent things? You bet your ass they will be.

edit: 3- yeah, it's just kind of a lame picture.

People will often find something upsetting about many pictures. That doesn't mean that the people in the picture, or the people taking the picture, have any intentions of being offensive.

Pictures that I can think off that have created outrage for being offensive: soldiers breastfeeding in uniform, baby wrapped in flag that covered dead fathers coffin, Obama talking on the White House phone with his shoes on the desk, Obama not wearing a jacket in the Oval Office, a folded flag on the bleachers at a Hillary rally, Obama's kids dressing ghetto, musicians wearing confederate flag anything.

Just because you don't intend to do anything offensive, that doesn't mean that nobody will be offended by it. Passive racism is such an example, and if you fail to understand how something may be viewed by someone that could take offense then you are potentially contributing to it.

That said, it is impossible to anticipate every possible reaction, and it's a well known rule that it is easier to comply with Internet demands instead of trying to explain why those people are wrong. Example: subway making their bread crappier instead of explaining that they actually don't grind up yoga mats for their dough.

Not racist. Moving on...

 d-usa wrote:
...if you fail to understand how something may be viewed by someone that could take offense then you are potentially contributing to it.

Absolutely disagree with this statement.

Mdlbuildr wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
What does the exploitation of religious groups have to do with anything?

You may not see racism here (And frankly neither do I) but it's not fair to just dismiss the feelings of groups who have been the victim of centuries of exploitation as being petty.

My point was that there are many groups of people that were exploited, but you don't read about how offended they are all over the place.

I never said it was petty. What I was alluding to was that not everything is racism. By pointing at every little thing and being offended by everything, you are actually minimizing the plight of those that were exploited. It's not always about exploitation regardless of what some individuals and media outlets would have you believe. That's all I'm saying.

So basically if there was an ad where a male child is leaning on a female child with his arm over her head, should the Feminists go crazy because it's a symbol of the male dominated society according to their view?

Let's stick to the topic.

Mdlbuildr wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
...if you fail to understand how something may be viewed by someone that could take offense then you are potentially contributing to it.

Absolutely disagree with this statement.

So complete ignorance of the point of view of others can't ever possibly mean you do something that's a complete faux pas from that POV? Are you for real?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


So complete ignorance of the point of view of others can't ever possibly mean you do something that's a complete faux pas from that POV? Are you for real?

I think I misinterpreted your initial comment. I took it to mean that you think that if you are not sympathetic, it means you are part of the problem and are a racist. My point is that just because you aren't sympathetic doesn't necessarily mean that.

My view is that of a fairly ordinary middle-class, middle-aged white British guy. As such, I am not offended by the pic. Why would I be? But I can see easily why black people might find it offensive, due to the history of white oppression of black people.

If people are offended, they are offended. You have to accept that, unless you want to make an argument that people are pretending to be offended for no reason, in order to... IDK what, have some lulz?

The earlier pic with the black girl leaning on a white girl; it's similar to this one but actually it's a mirror image, and doesn't trigger the same cultural background references.

If we lived in an alternate universe in which black people from Africa were the ones to discover and colonise the Americas, and then engaged in a slave trade of white people lasting several hundred years, and so on and so on, I think you could imagine that white people might find that other pic offensive in such circumstances.

Was there a black person on the project team? Who can say. It's certainly possible, likely even, but it's also possible that none of them were black except the young model herself. What difference does it make? Maybe several black people protested and were ignored. Maybe they kept their mouths shut because they were in positions of low power. IT is all speculation.

At any rate, however GAP managed to come up with this advert, whatever process was used, it has caused offence. I am sure that was not their intention, but the fact remains.

The offense to the ad has also likely caused offense.

Should those offended by the ad remove their offense due to the new offense?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
...that people are pretending to be offended for no reason...

I don't think it's a matter of getting offended for no reason. I think it's a matter of getting offended by EVERYTHING.

I guess if you want to live your life looking for things to be offended by, it's up to you, but for someone to look at an ad about kids wearing cute clothes and turn it into something about race...well, that's just a little excessive and unnecessary in my view.

Racism is a terrible thing to have to live with. Some understand it, some don't. That doesn't mean that EVERYTHING is racist. You have to pick your battles if you want to be taken seriously.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Breotan wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What makes you say it's not (passively) racist?

I'm just not seeing the racism. But is that because I'm white and am thus oblivious to the racist element? Or is it that there really is no racist element?

The picture, which clearly is a posed shot of models not a candid shot, shows a tall white girl leaning on the head of a smaller black girl.

Obviously being white it is more difficult, but can you see how in the background of the history of white on black racism in the USA, this picture might appear to a black audience to be racist? Taller height and position of physical dominance, being imposed by a white person on a black person. It's a pretty obvious trigger.

Perhaps I'm missing something but I just don't see it the way you describe. If the ad had kids dressed in blackface, then yes, I would agree there is racism but nothing like that is in the picture. I just don't see the taller girl as imposing some sort of dominance over the smaller girl.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Given that point, why did GAP use such a shot? They didn't sit down and go, "Bua ha ha! What can we do to piss off black people this month?" But equally, they went through the whole process of imagining and creating the shot without considering that black people might perceive it differently to the GAP designers.

In other words, they forgot to include black people in their mental audience for the ad.

Perhaps they didn't see it because this ad wasn't specifically targeting a black family? For example, McDonalds puts ads with white people in magazines with mostly white audiences and ads with black people in magazines with mostly black audiences. I don't see advertising like that as racist. I see it as an attempt to target a specific demographic for their product. Following that train of thought, look at the pictures below. Is there a racist element in either ad given the models were deliberately chosen to target a specific demographic? I would say no, there isn't. Deliberate, conscious choices went into making these two ads, but no racism.

The second ad was created in the 1970s. What is considered offensive has changed in the last 40 years.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
The second ad was created in the 1970s. What is considered offensive has changed in the last 40 years.

I don't think so. I think that the internet just gives people a lot more access to things to be offended about. Now people seem a lot more hypersensitive about these things.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Was there a black person on the project team? Who can say. It's certainly possible, likely even, but it's also possible that none of them were black except the young model herself. What difference does it make? Maybe several black people protested and were ignored. Maybe they kept their mouths shut because they were in positions of low power. IT is all speculation

I agree about the speculation, and would go further stating everything involving the nature of this photo and its passively racist (or not) imagery is speculation. Which is why I asked how you could be so certain posting:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Given that point, why did GAP use such a shot? They didn't sit down and go, "Bua ha ha! What can we do to piss off black people this month?" But equally, they went through the whole process of imagining and creating the shot without considering that black people might perceive it differently to the GAP designers.

In other words, they forgot to include black people in their mental audience for the ad.

You don't know if that is the case, but you are quick to label the ad as passively racist. That is problematic for me. You make assumptions, much like people outraged over the ad made assumptions, but none of those assumptions amount to any actual truth. Gap isn't a racist company, the photo itself is not racist, but it is perceived as racist because some people are choosing to see something ugly in the image and conflating it with other ills in our society.

So what was first opinion ("this ad is racist") now becomes "fact" in the public consciousness as Gap pulls the ad. Actual facts that challenge the claims of racism, like the precedent set by the older ad (i.e. that same pose and arrangement of models are used by Gap in a previous ad campaign), or that the two girls in the current photo are sisters, are brushed aside with a "yeah, but still!" type of response from those who are choosing to assume the worst about an image of a black girl and a white girl in a photograph.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:
[
You don't know if that is the case, but you are quick to label the ad as passively racist. That is problematic for me. You make assumptions, much like people outraged over the ad made assumptions, but none of those assumptions amount to any actual truth. Gap isn't a racist company, the photo itself is not racist, but it is perceived as racist because some people are choosing to see something ugly in the image and conflating it with other ills in our society.

So what was first opinion ("this ad is racist") now becomes "fact" in the public consciousness as Gap pulls the ad. Actual facts that challenge the claims of racism, like the precedent set by the older ad (i.e. that same pose and arrangement of models are used by Gap in a previous ad campaign), or that the two girls in the current photo are sisters, are brushed aside with a "yeah, but still!" type of response from those who are choosing to assume the worst about an image of a black girl and a white girl in a photograph.

THANK YOU!!!

Seems like the only qualification for whether something is racist is whether enough people complain about it being racist. And the quantity "enough" seems to be shrinking.

It's a bit silly, I think. These things bubble up every now and then, nearly every group for nearly every special interest.

The discussion that we should probably have is this: to what extent does the offense of a group control what is considered generally offensive? Not all people are offended by the same things, and many people are not offended by much. But we all (or at least all of those in polite society) generally recognize that there are things that are generaly offensive, and also things that offensive to groups, and should be handled delicately.

I remember a few years back, some minor politician, a city councilman or something, used the word niggardly, and he was attacked as racist. there was also an issue with some sort of sound recorded greeting card that to most people sounded benign but some people claimed offense because they heard a racial slur. There were also people deeply offended by Michelle Obama wearing a sleeveless dress. Nothing really happened, everybody had a good laugh, and we moved on.

The key is, to think about it. Look at it. See if you can empathize. And you know what, I can. I can see somebody seeing that picture on a bad day, and wondering why the only black kid is being used as a leaning post. I'd like to think that most people, upon further reflection, would blow it off, but sometimes you just a head of steam about something ridiculous. My strategy is to change the subject, and spare the offended party any further embarrassment by arguing.

I just wish they make a new picture, same positions etc. but with all-white kids. I'd laugh my buttocks off.

I recall a woman complaining that Castle Crashers was racist.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
What makes you say it's not (passively) racist?

What makes you say it IS passive racism, as opposed to a bigvsister doing what big sisters do?

You're the one making the claim here, its not our responsibility to prove a negative.

One thing to keep in mind is that for a lot of black people, they really don't see white and black kids playing together. There are plenty of black people that live in mostly black neighborhoods, and so they wouldn't have as much experience with kids playing in a color blind way.

 Polonius wrote:
One thing to keep in mind is that for a lot of black people, they really don't see white and black kids playing together. There are plenty of black people that live in mostly black neighborhoods, and so they wouldn't have as much experience with kids playing in a color blind way.

Which makes them passively racist.

 Manchu wrote:
Seems like the only qualification for whether something is racist is whether enough people complain about it being racist. And the quantity "enough" seems to be shrinking.

rac·ism
ˈrāˌsizəm/Submit
noun
the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior.

THIS is Racism. How is this portrayed in those pictures? Because a white kid has their elbow on the head of a black kid and is leaning on them? Come on.

I can equally say that the black is helping keep the white kid up and supporting them which is very noble. Seriously?

I swear that the likes of Twitter and Tumblr are arguably the worst things to happen to news in the last few years. They seem to act as a repository for every easily offended yet publicity hungry nobody in the world.

In a sane world these people would be ignored, but Twitter outrage make for quick and easy journalism and in these days of 24 hour online news it makes for easy clickbait to have a hack monitor Twitter and knock out swift lazy articles based whatever nonsense is trending, no matter how utterly nonsensical the content may be. Sadly that just encourages more of these spurious 'outrages'. Offence for the sake of being offended.

The ludicrous 'white terrorism' article above is another example of this unfortunate trend.

Blacks "supporting" whites and keeping them up has had its history in the US.

 Sigvatr wrote:
Blacks "supporting" whites and keeping them up has had its history in the US.

Just in the USA??? That's a good one! When was Apartheid eradicated in South Africa? Waaaaaaaay after the Emancipation Proclamation, I think. Nice try, though.

Sorry if you were offended by my comment, LOL. (See what I did there????)