Proof that white folks still think black people are ape-like. Since so many here seemed to think the black folks complaining about it were making shit up.

Can a white person be on the correct side of the race issue if they have ever uttered or participated in anything in their life that could be perceived as at least somewhat racist?

Can a man be a friend to the feminist movement if he has EVER said or done anything in his life that could be perceived to be somewhat misogynistic?

Because I have to be honest… I like to see myself as a liberal, progressive white male sympathetic to the causes of racial equality and feminism, and I try my best to carry myself everyday in as non-racist, non-misogynistic manner as possible.

But have I ever slipped up in my life? Yup.

When I was 13 years old, I got jumped by a bunch of black kids for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and the first words out of my mouth in the immediate aftermath of that event? “Fuck those niggers.” Am I proud of myself for having uttered something so offensive? No. Have I worked my ass off to see that I need to be aware of my own white privilege, and to realize that bad people come from all races, and while my anger at that group of kids was justified, my anger at their race was not? Damn right I have.

When I was 19 years old, a girlfriend cheated on me. I was angry, hurt, pissed, whatever… and in a fit of rage, I blurted out to a friend, “Fuck that stupid cunt whore!”

Could there be any doubt that my words were patently offenisve and terribly misogynistic? No. Was I wrong for reacting that way? Yes. Do I try my damnedest to not let my internal male privilege not cloud my judgment and thinking when it comes to my perception of and treatment of women? Hell, yes.

So… given those two events in my life, am I a racist? Am I a sexist? Am I beyond redemption? Should everyone who has ever made a mistake get thrown under the bus and written off if they ever say anything offensive, ever?

Because if I had to bet… all of humanity, male, female, black, white, brown, yellow, gay, straight, atheist, theist… ALL of us have said some innappropriate things at some point in our life about other people who aren’t exactly like us. So is everybody a homophobe, a racist, a misogynist?

We make mistakes. What matters is whether or not we are willing to recognize them as mistakes, and whether or not we are willing to work all the harder not to repeat those mistakes.

Nobody’s perfect. NOBODY.

One can criticize without attacking. I fully believe that Amanda did not intentionally try to put out something racist. It appears, however, that she did. If it were a Republican Senator who put out a book with this cover, what would Amanda write about it? Which derogatory attacking name would she use in the title of her go-for-the-jugular commentary on this bookcover if it came from Norm Coleman of MN for instance? Maybe the lesson that will come from this will be that everybody should relax a little in deciding the complete character of an individual based on doing something that can rightly be criticized. Maybe this will wake up the blog to the fact that people screw stuff up sometimes and it doesn’t necessarily mean they are 100% an asshat. Does this slip up define Amanda? Is she a racist in everything she does? Does she yearn for a return to this as a poster earlier said conservatives do?

PERFECT!

I’m not being sarcastic, either. As much as people sometimes wnat to view the world as an absolute black-and-white place (no pun intended… seriously), it’s a pretty gray planet.

I’ve read a few excerpts from my friend’s copy of the book, and it seems like another Marcotte masterpiece. I’m a white dude, so I’m not coming from the persepctive of one whose particular class was offended, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to make a critical observation about the imagery, and yet still hold tremendous respect for the author and her text.

All or nothing histrionics don’t help ANYONE. Just as it would be silly for me to completely write off the tremendous value of the book because of some questionable imagery, it’s also assanine to perceive that anyone who dares make a criticism of the imagery is just being a total close-minded asshole to Amanda.

We all make mistakes, even the smartest ones among us. No human is infallible - not you, not me, not Amanda. Amanda is a brilliant writer and I hope she has a fantastic publishing career for many years to come. I also hope she can look at this first outing and figure out what worked great (her writing) and what didn’t work so great (the imagery in her book), and learn from these things.

Be nice to each other. Or at least try.

Please read Steve Gilliard’s words.

There is a way to be feminist and not be about intentionally knocking other people on their ass.

I hope your book does well.

I think you are an immature and very bigoted individual.

Of course the one in question would doubtless have been seen by blacks in America, and it is lost on me why they would try to insult people who, elsewhere they were trying to entice to join the army.

Fairer to say is that comparing a group you are trying to belittle to animals is certainly far older than the United States of America. Isn’t it? Is this a controversial position? And nobody seems willing to dissect the racism they claim exists in the Jerry Lewis poster, the Bud Light commercial, or even the WWI poster under discussion.

The fight against racism does not depend on believing that there wasn’t a parallel use of the image of a white woman threatened by an ape without a racist meaning, does it?

Propaganda geared to different segments of the populace, what a concept!!

I’m done. You have blinders on and seem happy with that. Well and good. But I’ll let Steve Gilliard have the last word =)

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/08/blacks-and-animals.html

The gorillas are in the zoo and the woman is across the ravine getting ready to take their picture. The gorillas are plotting to jump the ravine, to get a Bud Light. That would put them in the lap of the woman. It ends humorously with the gorilla who was to jump being distracted by the camera.

Gorillas, white woman, clear threat. Racist Madison Avenue, I’ll never drink that beer again. Oh wait, I already hate that beer. it’s like making love in a canoe: Fucking close to water.

The gorilla in the WWI poster *is* anthropomorphized. It is standing upright, wearing a hat, and carrying a tool for crissakes!

True. But gorillas really can stand upright. And the tool and helmet you are marked “kultur” and “militarism”, respectively. Both explicit references to Germany. You claim they reference African-Americans when they are virtually labeled: German. Not very plausible.

But you studiously avoid addressing the predominant part of the image: the face. It is big, with a mouth larger than any gorilla’s, and red. Red eyes, red mouth. And the part of the face above the mouth is pale gray. Paler than a real gorilla. Cartoons are caricatures. Why would the artist de-emphasize the blackness if trying to mock blacks? It makes no sense.

But it is the context of the image that really belies your reading: Are you aware that this poster helped recruit over a quarter of a million blacks to join the army? Why on earth would they try to insult blacks they hoped would sign up to become cannon fodder? It makes no sense. The image contradicts what you say, and the context coincides with my reading. Sorry. Apparently this image has been misread somewhere and it has become taken as fact. It is clearly wrong.

But my argument that there is a non-racist, parallel reading of a white woman threatened by a gorilla involves many, many more images than that. I am curious to hear how you deconstruct the iconography of image linked in post #444 to achieve a racist reading.

The gorilla in the WWI poster *is* anthropomorphized. It is standing upright, wearing a hat, and carrying a tool for crissakes!

The reason that this poster was effective at recruiting soldiers to fight againt the Germans is because it makes an intertextual reference to racist images of black people. It makes a metaphor out of an already existing racist metaphor. ie: Just as black men are to savage beasts who will attack our women, so are the Germans, who are poised to attack Europe!

The idea that the propogandists who created this image just randomly picked a gorilla (who is anthropomorphized) because its scary doesn’t really make sense to me. It they just wanted to show me how scary the Germans are, why not just draw a scary man with a gun? The poster is an allusion to racist propoganda. A sort of meta propoganda if you will.

-Megan