Japanese soccer + blackface entertainment

Yes, it is. You don’t have a “right” to be offended. There’s the door, don’t let it hit you on the ass on your way out.

“how will things change in the world if we shut our eyes to things we don’t like?”

The first question you need to ask is “Does what I am looking at need changing?” And if so, why? If a group of white supremacists are beating on a black man, inflicting bodily harm, out of racist spite then yes, that needs to be stopped.

If a group with no malicious or discriminatory intent, or perhaps with intent to pay homage (as we saw with the Louis Armstrong impersonation a couple of weeks ago), performs some action that, based on unfortunate but unrelated history on the other side of the planet has been deemed by a completely separate group of people to be unacceptable based on their cultural mores, then I am sorry but you do not have a “right” to change something just because to you, personally, based on your cultural upbringing, find it “offensive”. Your (or anyone’s) cultural rules and norms are not universal. Thankfully.

Well there is no irony in the comment like that coming from me.(^^)
I agree they don’t mean to insult black people.
I am imagining how I felt if the equivalent happened to me, say, in black or white dominant community.
For instance, suppose some people put on heavy cosmetic to impersonate Asian people and act out Samurai just for fun.
I probably laugh off, but some Japanese might be offended.

I think it is important to let the members of community know that there are people who are offended by picking up the physical traits like that.

I don’t know how they respond. I don’t know if they find the complaint reasonable or not, but if you don’t send the message in the language of the community, there is no way the members know some people are offended.

It is important to send a massage in a way that will facilitate a dialogue between Japanese and black people in Japan(–there are already African Japanese though.)
In the past, some black characters were dropped just because there were protests from African-American people whether people understand the claim or not. Instead we need a dialogue through which we come to understand each other better and deeper.

I for one want to listen to discussions where Japanese and black people in Japanese society are talking about the topic in Japanese , not the complaint in English in which the black people appealing to CNN and Obama for help. I think, that is a good way for black people to integrate into Japanese society.

I for one want to listen to discussions where Japanese and black people in Japanese society are talking about the topic in Japanese , not the complaint in English in which the black people appealing to CNN and Obama for help. I think, that is a good way for black people to integrate into Japanese society.
when i lived in osaka we use to hold these forums at the u.s. consulate. various speakers would attend and the media would report. JAFA also provided this platform.

the protest in English in English on CNN also had Japanese press. the complaint was filed in Japanese and English. If a Japanese news agency would have picked up the story (or maybe i should say deemed it news worthy), you would have had Japanese.

a good way for blacks to integrate into society is do what other non-Japanese are doing. knocking out some of the continuous bullshit that pops-up along the way helps also!

Japanese are not the audience!

What! native English speakers only ???? Nihonjin Okotoawari？　Somebody, call Debito!!!
Joking aside.
If you want to play the game that way, that is okay with me.
But more and more black people are living in Japan. I guess there is more need to talk about the problems facing black people in Japan. Waiting for TV media to pick up the topic is often inefficient.
Internet is easy and effective ways to get the message across.
I think some black person, for that matter, some foreigners, should open the blog IN JAPANESE to talk about the problems facing them.

personally, i am not waiting for the media to pick-up on various issues since “my” issue may not particularly be your issue. much has changed in japan since i first landed in 1981. there is still a ways to go!

You don’t have to be defensive.
I am just suggesting alternatives which I think are more effective to address the issues facing black people in Japan while at the same time helping black people integrate into Japanese society. Oh well.

No problem.
こちらこそ。
忌憚のない意見の交換が重要だと考えます。
仲良くやっていきましょう！
何か手伝えることがあったら言って下さい。

Maybe they do flinch!

http://www.tmz.com/2009/02/02/asian-group-not-mad-at-one-of-these-people/

They aren’t emulating a culture, they’re emulating a physical characteristic. It’s a fact that a large portion of the people who call them selves “black” are in fact, dark skinned. Dave chappelle did the same thing and put white powder on his face in an attempt to make himself look caucasian but nobody cared at all, it was just a part of his act. Silly double standards and ridiculous hypersensitivity is the problem here imho.

>>People still do the squinty eye thing and don’t flinch

What on earth are you talking about? Anyone doing the ‘squinty eye thing’ in the west is immediately pilloried.

Anyway, what’s the difference between Asian Americans complaining about ‘the squinty eye thing’ and black people in Japan complaining about blackface? 30 years ago ‘the squinty eye thing’ was NOT taboo in the USA, but it is now, and rightly so. Who changed that? It was Asian Americans “pushing ones own cultural taboos onto another group of people.”

I forgot to add “unless you’re a black person impersonating a white person”

I don’t believe I ever said it was ok DC, as I said. The problem is oversensitivity and double standards. Mass media tells us that it is ok for a non-white person to impersonate white people. But every other combination of race and impersonation is somehow wrong and should be shunned and we should be on the look out for anything that could be remotely racist sounding. (emobile monkey?)

‘Western’ ethics in this area may not be perfect, but they represent the result of decades of pressure from ethnic minorities protesting about negative stereotypes or gross caricatures. Ethnic minorities grossly caracituring whites in the media is extremely rare, so has not received much attention, but deserves the same contempt.

In Japan, whites are of course a minority along with all non-East Asians. Gross caricatures of all minority races are common. Even when shopping in Tokyu Hands for some novelty spectacles I found a product on full display called “HARO GAIJIN SAN!” (sic) which features an enormous white nose, lurid blue eye-patches and a blond wig. It’s not possible to buy a similarly gross product caricaturing East Asian featues in a mainstream department store in the west.

ah wait, here’s a “neon yellow” asian as well, in a popular cartoon network cartoon.

http://www.freewebs.com/xiaolinshowdown10/together.jpg

What we are talking about is not “Western” ethics but American ethics. In Europe, doing chinky eyes is not a taboo at all. I have direct experiences in France, Germany and Italy. In France now, a French white actress plays a black with a painted face, As far as I know, France doesn’t have any worse record for treatment of blacks as America. On the side note, lots of Europeans doing chinky eyes think the eyes very attractive and beautiful.

What complicates the thing is that it’s on facial features. Very few people are confident of their own eyes, noses or anything else on their face. Reason why very often such mimicking is not appreciated by the impersonated.

You should tell Japanese you don’t like it because in your country it’s not done and wrong. Japanese should know how you feel for their act but your view does not come from Western ethics let alone universal ethics but your country’s ethics.

Debito’s “parody” misses the mark in so many ways it is not even funny.

The story of “Little Black Sambo”, in and of itself, is most certainly not racist or discriminatory. Note I say the “story”, not some versions of the drawn caricatures within some editions. If you only read the text, or listened to someone reading it to you, I don’t see any way a reasonable person would be offended in the least. The same, however, is not true of the racist drivel Debito wrote. Both his images and his text are offensive.

The “golliwog” imagery in some, but not all, versions of “Little Black Sambo” has been decreed to be “racist”. There is no doubt racists have used those images to support their agendas, but calling a vaguely human-like caricature “racist” or “anti-black” would be like calling Wile E. Coyote an “anti-canine” image, or Speedy Gonzales “anti-Mexican”. Intelligent people would never confuse even a golliwog image with a real black, and true racists really couldn’t care less what the image was of, they would find a way to use it to support their backwards world-view.

Now the real question: were the images in the copy of “Little Black Sambo”, as shown on Debito’s site, deliberately drawn to disparage and insult blacks? Now, were the images Debito himself scribbles in crayon (he shouldn’t give up his day job…) deliberately drawn to disparage and insult Japanese?

Therein lies the difference. A self-proclaimed “human rights activist” should know better.

In my personal experience, it doesn’t matter how it’s presented. It can be a totally neutral statement such as “people of african descent tend to have coarser skin”. Now, if I said something of that nature, regardless of the truthfulness or untruthfulness of the statement, I would be told I am racist. If you replace it with another statement about another ethnicity such as “asians tend to be shorter” or “Caucasians tend to be hairy”, I would not get a reaction anywhere near as bad if I had said the first one.