Racism inverted = racism? · 4:00am Aug 6th, 2013
I finally saw some episodes of 30 Rock. The characters include Tracy Jordan, a fairly stereotypical black celebrity from the ghetto, and Toofer, a black nerd whose role is to provide comic contrast to Tracy by embodying the opposite of every stereotype about black people.
Can you guess which is which? (Hint: Yes.)
It's funny. There's a hilarious sequence where Tracy uses the n-word on Toofer, who is deeply offended and registers a harassment complaint. Their boss tells Toofer that it's okay for blacks to use the n-word because they are appropriating it to take power over it blah blah blah. Then Toofer, very uncomfortable but wanting to fit in, tries to use it on Tracy, and when he does, everyone is mortified because he says it "white style", and Tracy registers a complaint.
But... Let's suppose that it's unacceptable to write a character who is just a racial stereotype. Is it any better to write a character who's the exact inversion of a racial stereotype, and then say, "Look, isn't it funny when a black person doesn’t act black?”
(I have a similar problem with Rainbow Dash. She's basically written as a stereotypical guy who's a girl. It feels to me like Lauren Faust tried so hard to fight a stereotype that she ended up reinforcing it.)
I dunno, I'll go ask the Chinese man at the laundromat down the street.
Well, the racism there comes from the implication of the expectation, not from the character themselves.
No. It's not. All it does is reinforce the stereotype. The only exception I can think of is if it is done deliberately to highlight the hypocrisy of such a thing. Which does not sound like the case here.
Also, long time no see.
My brother-in-law has a masters degree in marine science, and hunts, fishes and plays soccer. He's very offended when people say that he doesn't "act black."
Then on the other side of the coin, I have a friend who loves theater and D&D and will happily tell you he's the whitest black guy you'll ever meet.
So... it depends on the person as to whether someone finds it offensive.
Hmm, that's a brain scratcher. I'm not entirely sure how to respond because in reality, I am the inverted racial stereotype. I don't act like how African-Americans are 'supposed' to act.
Because the media is so filled with racial stereotypes, not just of blacks, but of everyone, I almost want to say that it is acceptable to use an inverted stereotype, just to break the monotony. But at the same time, it's still a stereotype. I guess as long as the character is believable? Gee, I don't know.
Well, it's Comedy, so they're all stereotypes.
1265107
Well, there's a few things here.
1) "Act black" is itself a racist stereotype. So some people will be offended when you say they don't "act black" because there is no such thing as "acting black."
2) Others will call people race traitors or whatever for not acting like a "streotypical" black person. Nice folks.
3) Others will see the stereotype of the typical black person and be glad that they aren't that.
1265099 1265102 1265105 1265107 1265132 1265144 I can proudly say I fit my race's stereotypical inability to dance to a tee.
Though being serious, attending university, being surrounded tens of dozens of people with every possible melanin concentration and facial structure, almost all of them thoroughly dashing stereotypes to pieces just by being there is a wonderful experience, and fights off the cynicism.
And to think, a few years ago I could count on one finger the number of times I had seen a black family.
Canada, it's one heckuva country!
stereotypes are tropes for people... you can't exist without fitting into some. There are harmful stereotypes but that doesn't make them anyless true.
You're asking the internet about this?
To be fair (not being white cis scum and therefore winning the Oppression Olympics by genocide count), combating a stereotype is profoundly difficult when the stereotype's staring you in the face. Completely ignoring stereotypes when you're trying to make a point about race - not that I condone the idea of making points about race in art, of course, except as delightful accidents - ignores that stereotypes being presented in opposition to an ideal, containing an acknowledgement of their reality, is far more useful than denying the truth.
30 Rock seems to present an admirable compromise, at least within the worldview that you have to note race at all. I mean, it doesn't actually help to go to either extreme: going 'the black man invented the moon' is hardly going to change anyone's mind about black people.
To be fair, I don't think anyone's actually said that the black man invented the moo—
Oh, wait.
1: A word is only as hurtful as those who have been victimized by it say it is. People who were true victims of that racial epithet will have a very different perspective than either of those characters.
But yes, it is a cultural taboo with it's own rules and exceptions, so it's use is pretty much culturally defined rather than ethically defined.
2: Rainbow Dash was designed as a 3 way meet between Firefly's adventurousness, teen sportyness, and tomboyism both in attitude and characteristics. She has somethings that some of her friends are a little and some things that none of her friends are. There are girls out there like RD who are not guy girls and who are and are not gay. Yes she is a character and a character has predetermined traits, but you must accept that character's veracity as an actualized person or you will never be able to appreciate them.
Stereotypes are a way to decide if you like or dislike a person in under three seconds. If you create (and I use the word in it's most liberal sense here) a character that is a stereotype you might have not bothered with the character, heck, the whole story, to begin with.
There is only one use for a stereotype: to poke fun at it and ridicule the people who fail to understand it for what it is. This goes for every stereotype, not just the racial ones.
As for Rainbow Dash, well... Like all characters in the show she's written to be somepony Twilight can learn something from or teach something to. Like "being cultured doesn't make you uncool" or "balance competition and cooperation". If she was a well formed character to begin with, there wouldn't have been much of a lesson.
On the subject of Rainbow Dash, humm... well I actually know a girl who is that much of a "tomboy". Drinks beer, uses all her respiratory system for laughing, there was this one time she wore a dress that is now the stuff of legend...
So honestly, as there are people who are like Rainbow Dash in my experience, I don't really have a problem with the way she is designed.
(Edit: this is for episodes where Rainbow Dash is being written as a balanced character.)
Would you believe me if I said it's not even racism?
If we accept the conceit that all the denizens of Africa can be confined to a single race -- a brilliantly nineteenth century idea -- that we have to accept that Black means more than just Black American. I'm fairly confident that few to none of the racial stereotypes would be applicable to a Kenyan: he ain't a racial stereotype, but a cultural one centred around a race.
Are cultural stereotypes more acceptable? Used seriously, no. But from what you've said, they're being used more to highlight how each is a different type of bogus through comedy. Trying to figure out whether you should be offended or not probably means you're over (or under, I suppose) thinking it.
And I'm stunned as to how you could find the Dash a stereotype when there's Fluttershy walking around with a rest button on her head.
Edit: adding on to that, each of the mane six is a different type of girly stereotype. It's only bad when the character stops at that, which is Fluttershy.
God, I hate Fluttershy sooo much. Like, you wouldn't believe.
I respectfully disagree on the idea of Dash being a stereotypical guy written as a girl. I feel like to start a discussion about racial stereotypes and then to imply Dash fits a gender stereotype cheapens the discussion. My other issue is that For Dash at least it comes across to me as you projecting how you think a guy should act and applying it to Dash. If I look at a typical male stereotype they would never confess to enjoying reading and they would rather remove limbs than show sensitivity to Fluttershy.
The problem to me is that stereotypes are often shallow and based on our own assumptions about how someone looks or acts without paying attention to the thoughts or motivations behind it.
*shrugs* Just my two cents.
1266092
Actually Shy is not always "reset".
A good comparison for this is the way she acts throughout most of Season 3 compared to the way she acts in Magic Duel, which was written as a Season 2 episode.
1266092 1266353 I suspect that the writers don't coordinate with each other very much other than by watching the episodes after they're done, and so we get multiple episodes with similar Fluttershy arcs, before the character advances are acknowledged in the next season.
Fluttershy pre-"Flutter On" is frustratingly one-D, but I can't say I hate her because I know I'd fall for someone like that in real life.
Twillight is best pony, but my foolish heart belongs to Fluttershy.
1266288 The problem to me is that stereotypes are often shallow and based on our own assumptions about how someone looks or acts without paying attention to the thoughts or motivations behind it.
Actually I'm not bothered by that aspect so much. My concern as a writer is knowing what kinds of characters are off limits for sociological reasons, even though they might be valid and fully developed characters. Rainbow Dash pattern-matches a stereotype, whether or not her character is realistic and fully developed. It's a danger zone for writers. Just as you can't say a story is believable just because it happened to you in real life, you can't say a character isn't a stereotype just because you know someone who's like that in real life.
There was a time when you could go to the movies and predict that the black guy or the Russian would be the bad guy. Then there was a time when, if there was a single black guy on the cast, you could predict that he would turn out to be the good guy, because the producer wouldn't dare make the single black guy turn out to be the bad guy, because they'd done that too often.
Say you want one character to be a rap artist. Do you make that character black? Do you counter the stereotype by making him white? Do you make half the characters black so it won't be so noticeable? Because you're writing a single story, you don't get to average things out statistically. You have to either embrace the stereotype or blatantly contradict it, and you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.
1266353
I didn't say that she was 'always' reset, just that she is. It's a pattern in her character that keeps on repeating.
It's a bit like Applejack dealing with the problem of being stubborn/not revealing weakness to others, though that one got infamously lampshaded in its third iteration.
1266369
My main problem with Fluttershy is that she's underused:
Most people treat Rarity as being the biggest contradiction. But she's only one between what they expect and how she is -- the selfish fashionista is a stereotype.
On the other hand, Fluttershy is a pony whose virtue is a kindness to others and whose character is a fear of them. These traits are not compatible, and yet their conflict is never really explored. Instead, her kindness is displayed to animals and her shyness to ponies.
This annoys me. Greatly.
1266537
I see your point.
But.
Fluttershy has social anxiety disorder that she deals with via avoidance and acquiescence. This is not in conflict with her drive to nurture those who are vulnerable. In this sense, the contradiction is more believable, no?
1266557
True. I was probably wrong in saying it's a conflict; a hindrance is a better way of putting it.
It's not that I don't believe in it so much as I don't really see it. I think the character traits could work beautifully together, but the show too often deals with it through using an animal-person divide.
EQG, for all else it does weirdly, comes closest to this with Fluttershy handing out fliers for the animal shelter whilst standing yards away from the crowd. I guess I just want to see it more at the centre of an episode than pseudo-grafted as a joke. "Should you help someone who doesn't want to be helped?" is a question that could easily be a Flutters episode, but instead we get a retreading of worn ground.
1267058
I know what you mean there. Personally I consider Feeling Pinkie Keen to be her best showing. Even though it wasn't her episode.
1266392
I think you're overthinking things. Except in rare or extreme cases, stereotypical what matters, not whether that behavior happens to match up to the race/religion/whatever of the person doing it. To use your example: if you have a rapper in your story, it makes no difference (racism-wise) whether he's black or white (or a she, for that matter; sexism is just another -ism), because why would it? Ditto if you have a character who likes watermelon; people of all races like watermelon, don't worry about it. If, though, your character is a rapper who loves fried chicken, watermelon, uses the n-word constantly, has gold rims, and is president of the Tyler Perry fanclub... then it still doesn't matter what race he is, because you're playing on a racist stereotype. If all of those features of your character are critical to your story--if, for some reason, he absolutely HAS to express his opinion about fried chicken and watermelon in your work--then you're writing a story with racist overtones, and you'll have to decide for yourself whether you're comfortable with that. Even if your rapper's white.
On an unrelated note, your title brought to mind a bit from The Daily Show which struck me as particularly incisive, which I'll do my best to paraphrase: "When racism negatively affects whites, it is sometimes called 'reverse racism,' because it is the opposite of how racism is supposed to work."
One of the problems MLP is going to have is their characters all have strong personality types with sharp edges, and one of the things some stories will do is to have the character 'evolve' against their disadvantages. Example: Fluttershy is painfully shy, but with the help of her friends, she Faces a Dragon/Cockatrice/Discord/etc... Each time she rises up above her disadvantage, she 'rounds the corners' off that powerful disadvantage, leaving her a more generic character in the bargain. Trixie apologizes, Twilight learns not to over-react, Applejack learns to ask for help when she needs it, Pinkie throttles back on the non-stop partying, Rarity... does nothing because she's already perfect, etc...
Stereotypes are the mind's way of quickly getting an idea on how a new person/creature will react to stimuli. For example, if you see a doberman pincier trotting in your direction, you would tend to react differently than if it were a properly-pruned poodle.
Where stereotypes turn into -ism's is the way in which the interpretation of the person/action is taken. We have reached a point in our society where a rational discussion of certain topics is impossible, due to the howling rage of the Platoons of the Permanently Peeved, who are more than happy to turn their screeches of outrage upon any who dare to diverge from the politically-correct line in the smallest way, which of course is followed by the media piling on ad infinitum. This leads to a strange two-faced approach to many societal actions, such as the anti-gun spokespersons who have armed guards, the people who campaign in favor of public schools who send their own children to private schools, and the people all in favor of high taxes who promptly hide their own wealth from the same, and so on, and so forth. I've been exposed to many kinds of -isms over my years, but by far the worst is the attitude of certain groups when individuals in those groups decide to make their lives better by getting an education, a job, and moving away from the destructive environment that threatens to suck them back in. I would encourage anybody facing this kind of influence to listen to the greatest philosopher of our time, Bill Cosby, in what has been known as the Pound Cake speech, summarized here .