quote:
Originally posted by Th3rmal
Whoever finds that racist, obviously havent been in Australia long enough to realise that racism isnt really an issue here. Why? because we know that whoever is making the "racist" joke isnt serious, and its just a bit of fun; which frankly 95% of the people who I see can handle.
That does not mean it is not racism to the rest of the world though. It can mean however that those 95% of people don't have a problem with racism, or being racist, or take racism to lightly, or have a very different definition of racism, or frankly don't see a form of racism when it happens because it is seen as 'normal'.
quote:
Originally posted by Th3rmal
One asian had "I ate your dog" and a black student had "Black magic", because frankly, problems in the form of offensive racist comments arent seen in our community.
Because such stuff is not racism as far as I know. It does portray some typical usages or refers to their ethnical background, but it isn't racism as it does not insult anyone.
Racism is insulting people. I don't see what's insulting about "black magic" and what's wrong about "I ate your dog" (dog being a delicasy in many Asian countries). So that doesn't say a thing about having no problems with racism in your school. The same with having many different nationalities doesn't mean a thing at all.
However "nigger" and such things are racism as such words (or typcial images in the case of that video) have a big insulting history behind it. If some guys would have printed that on their T-shirt (no matter what ethnic background they have), the school board will most likely say something about it (or at least should).
So, those things are very different and shows, imho, that some people realy do not know what the true definition of racism is or at least have a very distorted vision of it.
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The "can't take a joke" argument don't hold up either. Everytime there is a discussion about racism that argument comes up. "Australians and their ability to take a joke"? It is not because a group of people find something funny that there isn't anything wrong about it. You know that the KKK found it funny to linch black people? Or that many of the SS found it funny to shoot Jews. Etc. They would say the same thing: "if you don't you probably can't take a good joke....". I'm not comparing Austrialans with those kind of people of course, but I only want to show that the argument of "can't take a joke" is realy misplaced and/or don't say anything at all about it being racism or not. It simply and only proofs that humor is objective, it does not proof anything about racism at all.
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quote:
Originally posted by segosa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet
Something which popped to my mind too.
If you would ask any child/teenager they wouldn't see anything offensive about it because they don't know any better. If you would ask some other people who know where that image actually comes from you would get a whole different perspective.
quote:
Originally posted by Jarrod
I feel that's it,
if they were insulting heritage directly then it's racist, since they weren't it could be considered offensive but it's not racist
Maybe. But offensive because...?
Offensive because they used an image which was used in the past for insulting black people? thus can be seen as racism I'd say...
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