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Aug. 6, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
23:39
This Week in Stupid (06⧸08⧸2017)
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Hello everyone, welcome to This Week in Stupid for the 6th of August 2017.
Did you know we need to talk about digital blackface in reaction gifs?
Because that's a problem.
Why is it a problem?
Because it's so damn common.
If you've never heard the term before, digital blackface is used to describe various types of minstrel performance that become available in cyberspace.
Blackface minstrelsy is a theatrical tradition dating back to the early 19th century in which performants blacken themselves up with costume and behaviours to act as black caricatures.
And actual black people doing things that are captured on film and used in reaction GIFs is exactly the same thing.
In fact, it's so exactly the same.
This sentence then follows.
The performances put society's most racist sensibilities on display, and in turn fed them back to audiences to intensify those feelings and disperse them across culture.
While often associated with Jim Crow era racism, the tenets of minstrel performance remain alive today in televisions, movies, music, and, in its most advanced iteration, the internet.
I don't even have a comment.
I just, I'm trying not to laugh.
And here, of course, we have an example of digital blackface.
Megan McCain playing up in her minstrel show on the internet.
And I love the very premise of this, because if nobody ever used black people in reaction GIFs, what would we get?
Oh, that's right.
Everyone's a racist because they refuse to use black people in their reaction GIFs.
And if it's nothing but or the overwhelming majority, oh, this is now blackface.
This is a problem.
Okay, progressives, tell me, tell me, what is the desired number?
What is the percentage?
We will all go and coordinate.
We as white people will collectively figure out who is allowed and when to use a black person in a reaction GIF, just so we're not performing a minstrel show online.
Unlike other physical executions of Blackface, such as Robert Downing Jr. and Tropic Thunder, Sarah Silverman on her own show, racist.
Rachel Dollazall, or what about Sean King?
Or the authors of A-B to J-Z that require physical alterations and usually change in demeanor, like Izzy Azalea's Black Scent, I guess?
Digital Blackface is in some ways a more seamless transformation.
Digital Blackface uses the relative anonymity of online identity to embody blackness.
Bitch, she just used her whole fucking name.
She's not anonymous.
In the case of Mandy Harrington, a white woman who masqueraded as the fictional Laquita Jones, Digital Blackface has become a means for her to defend her musician Annie DeFranco's decision to host a retreat at a slave plantation.
Okay.
Digital minstrels often operate under stolen profile pictures and butchered AAVE.
Quite often, it comes in the form of an excessive use of reaction GIFs with images of black people.
Yeah, they're racist.
I see.
It's no longer that there are no women on the internet.
Now it's that there are no black people on the internet.
We get to the good part though.
Now I'm not suggesting that white and non-black people refrain from ever circulating a black person's image for amusement or otherwise.
There's no prescriptive or proscriptive step-by-step rulebook to follow.
Well there probably should be if you're going to be complaining about the number of times it happens, because otherwise how are we going to know when is and isn't appropriate to digitally blackface ourselves.
But don't worry, nobody's coming to take those gifts away.
Just stop doing it.
They're not taking it away.
Just stop doing it.
But no digital behaviour exists in a deracialized vacuum.
Fucking hell.
We all need to be cognizant of what we share and how we share, and to what extent that sharing dramatizes pre-existing racial formulas inherited from real life.
Yeah, but isn't that always just going to be a subjective perception of what's going on?
If you're in a progressive space talking to your fellow Black Lives Matter activists, you'll bound to see far, far greater number of blackface reactions than if you went on, say, the Daily Stormer, right?
I mean, you really have to contextualize all of this in the circles in which you travel.
And so, how are we supposed to know?
What is the rule?
What, I can only post one a day and the other 10 I have to post are white people or maybe a couple of Asians and maybe some South Americans?
I mean, what's the rule here?
I just don't know how to follow this.
If there's one thing the internet thrives on, it's hyperbole.
And the overrepresentation of black people in gifting, everyone's daily crises, plays up enduring perceptions and stereotypes about black expression.
Chris Rock has a lot to answer for, doesn't he?
When non-black users flock to these images, they are play acting within those stereotypes in a manner reminiscent of an unsavoury American tradition.
Bloody hell.
Imagine being trapped in this person's mind, with this person's perception of how reality is.
On the internet, no less.
You know, I mean, it's not even like their physical reality.
They're just going on what they see on social media and going, God, this is like a minstrel show.
Reaction gifts are mostly frivolous and fun.
Well, you've sucked all that out, haven't you?
No fun allowed here.
But when black people are the go-su choice for non-black users to act out their most hyperbolic emotions, do reaction gifts become digital blackface?
Well, you've already established that they are.
I mean, that is the base premise of this article.
So why are you asking the question now when we're nearly at the end of it?
Then comes the more sinister side of this.
Oh, yeah, yeah, no, minstrel shows are just fine.
Now we're getting to the sinister bit.
Other than that, that was just a complaint.
Similar cases happen all over the comment section virtually anywhere, with or without a photo, often prefaced with statements like, as a black man, before proceedings sound like anything but, fuck me, you must be joking.
You must be joking.
Right?
A, that's a black person.
You are speaking directly to what you perceive to be, I know, some sort of stereotypical black experience.
And then when a black person says, well, actually, I'm a black person and I don't agree, you're like, well, good God, you don't sound like a black person.
Where to even begin?
Where to even begin deconstructing that?
How is that not just racial generalizations?
How is that not stereotyping?
You've spent half of this article complaining about stereotyping and that's all you do in your representation.
The construct you have of black people and blackness in your head is one huge racial stereotype.
And then we get to the conspiracy theories.
Another instance is digital blackface is an orchestrated attempt by white supremacists to disrupt black organizing.
Yeah, I'm sure it is.
I'm sure this is the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy inserting their spies and their...
What do you think you're going to call them, Jews?
Jews?
This is the alt-right conspiracy theory about Jews being played out by black supremacists.
As the name of the tag suggests, online minstrels are no more believable than their in-person counterparts to anyone who knows black culture and black people rather than a series of types.
Again, it's just a giant fucking stereotype.
And they want control of that.
They want to tell you, look, you can't be a black person if you don't act like me, if you don't think like me.
Because apparently all black people think alike and this person can tell you how that is.
Unfortunately, digital blackface often goes unchecked unless a black person does the work to point out the discrepancies in someone's profile.
What?
Just what?
What?
If a person doesn't think that black people are like the Borg, they are no longer black and there are discrepancies in their profile.
And what they have to call in Tariq Nasheed, the black inquisitor, to root out the white supremacy, do they?
Fucking hell, this is lunacy.
Digital blackface does not describe intent, but an act.
The act of inhabiting a black persona.
And if you're not the right kind of black persona, woe betide you.
Employing digital technology to co-opt a perceived cash or black cool too involves play acting blackness in a minstrel-like tradition.
Again, blackness is the stereotype they have made up of black people.
That's what it is.
I can't, I've been trying to figure out for the longest time what blackness is.
And as far as I can tell, it's just being a stereotypical black person like you'd see on TV.
You know, the literally what they're complaining about here, the hyper reactive, hyper-emotional, hyper-expressive black person who sits there going, girl, girl, and stuff like this.
I'm absolutely certain that's what they mean by blackness.
Ultimately, black people and black images are thus relied upon to perform a huge amount of emotional labor online.
GIFs are performing emotional labor.
Where does this madness end?
At what point are they going?
Okay, okay, I think we've gone far enough.
I actually don't think a GIF can perform emotional labor.
And even if it can, let's just assume a GIF can perform emotional labor.
Okay.
No one is affected by that.
No one is like, oh my god, the burden of this gif performing emotional labor is really crippling me.
Come on!
This is ridiculous.
Someone got paid for this.
Someone got paid to write about the emotional labor of GIFs in digital blackface.
But you know why Whitey wants to use blackface gifs all the time, don't you?
I mean, there's only one reason.
It's because all white people are racist.
At least as far as Cambridge University's head of equality is concerned, and my god, I'm sure he knows what he's talking about given he's the head of equality.
Jason, whose surnames I'm not going to try and pronounce, who manages the Black and Ethnic Minority Society at Cambridge University, posted the outburst on Twitter during the violent protests in Hackney East London last night, 28th of July.
Maybe this is a bit of an old one, but fuck it.
The tweet from the 20 Worlds account said that white people had colonised Dalston and ordered them to go back to such areas as Exeter.
White people had colonised parts of Britain.
Have they?
Are you sure?
But anyway, here's the tweet.
All white people are racist.
White middle class, white working class, white men, white women, white gays, white children, they can all get it.
Can all get what?
What are they going to get?
What are they going to get, Jason?
You happy chappy.
What are you going to do to the white children?
I'm curious.
I want to know what all get it means.
I mean, I'm not someone who uses blackface reaction GIFs.
I am not au fait with black vernacular.
What does get it mean?
I'm really interested to know.
Another added, it was absolutely delicious to watch white middle-class people despair over black people protesting in their colonized Dalston.
Again, you are saying that white people have colonised Britain.
Just so you know, you're saying this.
I mean, they aren't the indigenous inhabitants, which we happen to actually know that they are.
I mean, apparently, British genes have changed little since the Ice Age.
Despite invasions by Saxons, Romans, Vikings, Normans, and others, presumably all non-white, the genetic makeup of today's white Britons is much the same as it was 12,000 years ago.
So to say that British people are colonising Britain is a bit fucking retarded, isn't it?
Over to Australia now, Bondi synagogue ban over terrorism risk leaves Jewish community shocked and furious.
Hmm, that's an interesting headline.
I think we should read more.
A local council has banned the construction of a synagogue in Bondi because it could be a terrorist target.
In a shock move that religious leaders say has caved into Islamic extremism and created a dangerous precedent.
Holy fucking shit.
A local council has banned the construction of a synagogue in Bondi because it could be a terrorist target.
In a shock move that religious leaders say has caved into Islamic extremism and painted Muslims as a bunch of violent animals.
Oh no, wait, it's created a dangerous precedent.
But that's what they're actually saying when they do this.
We can't expect Muslims to not be violent.
Therefore, the Jews aren't allowed a synagogue here.
Why?
Is there a big rise in Jewish terrorism?
No.
No, this is in fact victim blaming.
You might be the target of a terrorist attack.
Therefore, you're not allowed this.
Yeah, the Muslims over there, yeah, they're the ones who are going to do it.
Are we going to address that?
No, no, no.
No, they have the reasoning capacity of a pack of wolves.
Of course we can't.
And that's not my opinion.
That's the opinion of the local council of Bondi.
If you think the local Muslim community is actually going to commit acts of terror and therefore it's someone else's problem and they have to be inhibited instead of this Muslim community being inhibited, don't you think you're the one showing who the problem is?
Seriously, you could not put a more glaring spotlight over the source of the problem if you fucking tried.
I mean, this is just... unbelievable.
The decision, which has rocked the long-standing Jewish community, I would say somewhat understandably, given how they've done nothing wrong, and yet they're not allowed to build a synagogue, which I'm sure they were going to pay for, because someone else is going to do something illegal to them.
I just can't go over this logic.
In the iconic suburb, was upheld in court this week as the nation reeled from the alleged airline terror threat and debate raged over increased security measures at airports and other places.
Yeah, yeah, there was.
A big plot was foiled where a bunch of Muslims were planning to blow up an airline.
Brilliant.
But yeah, don't let those Jews build the synagogue.
Oh, my God, that's just going to encourage him.
What?
The Land and Environment Court backed the decision by Waverly Council to prohibit the construction of a synagogue in Bondi, just a few hundred meters from Australia's most famous beach, because it was too much of a security risk for users and local residents.
It's not, though, is it?
You know, no terror, no lack of, no breach of security is going to come from the synagogue.
Nothing, in fact, is going to happen.
Apart from Jewish people going and praying or whatever it is they want to do at the synagogue.
No one's going to be blown up because of the synagogue.
They're going to be blown up because of the actions of Muslim extremists.
These people have agency and it is important to recognize it.
Jewish leaders are shocked because the decision appears to suggest they cannot freely practice their religion.
It doesn't appear to suggest that.
That's concrete proof of it.
You couldn't get better proof of it.
Oh, you're the target of hate by Islamic extremists.
Well, you better stop practicing your religion then.
Well, what happened to freedom of religion?
Well, I mean, it's their religion to kill you, isn't it?
And it actually is.
It actually is in the Islamic religion.
To eventually end up killing all the Jews.
I mean, that's how the end times are going to start.
That's how the last day begins.
By murdering all the Jews.
So, I mean, you don't want to prohibit their freedom of religion, do you?
No, exactly.
Think about it, you fucking Islamophobes.
Speaking of absolute insanity, this article drove me nuts.
It just, this article absolutely pissed me off.
And it's not really the whole article that really pissed me off.
It's the premise of the article.
The suicide rate hit a 40-year peak among older teen girls in 2015.
Well, that's terrible.
That's absolutely awful.
I mean, if teen girls are committing suicide at a much higher rate than teen boys, I can absolutely see why CNN are focusing on those teen girls.
I mean, something should be done.
The suicide rate for males between 15 and 19 increased from 12 per 100,000 population in 1975 to 18.1 per 100,000 in 1990.
Terrible.
Then it declined to 10.8 per 100,000 in 2007 and increased again to 14.2 per 100,000 in 2015.
Well, that's not good.
But I mean, how much worse is it for the girls?
Among females, the suicide rate increased from 2.9 per 100,000 in 75 to 3.7 per 100,000 in 1990, dipped to 2.4 per 100,000 in 2007, and then spiked to 5.1 in 2015.
Three times lower than the number for men or boys.
Okay.
It's just okay that teenage boys are killing themselves at three times the average of women, girls.
That's fine.
That's not nothing to worry about.
No, no, no, no.
We'll write an article.
We'll write an article when teenage girls get to a third of the deaths of suicide of the boys, but when the boys have been killing themselves at a much higher rate for a much longer period of time, consistently since the 70s.
Oh, not really newsworthy, is it?
I mean, it's not like the MRAs don't have a point or something.
Fucking hell.
I mean, what this says is that suicide isn't a problem.
They don't care about suicide.
They don't care when someone's killing themselves because for whatever reasons they've got.
What they care about is when something's happening to girls.
Doesn't really matter what it is.
What matters is that girls are suffering.
They're suffering, well, not more than anyone else, obviously.
They're suffering actually at a much lower rate than everyone else.
But the point is, it's not about the suicides, it's about the gender.
Owen Jones, socialism's critics look at Venezuela and say, we told you so, but they are wrong.
The democratic credentials of the post-Chavez, yes, I do read my comments, governments are being maligned.
Here's the right-wing narrative.
I'm sorry, Owen, but you're just turning the phrase right-wing into, here is the narrative that reflects reality.
The Venezuelan people have taken to the streets in huge numbers against the human rights abusing regime.
Yes.
This is in 2014, remember?
The response has been murderous repression, with each death damning evidence of a monstrous autocracy.
Yes.
The government's economic policies have caused nothing but ruination for the population.
Yes.
Demonstrating once again that socialism is an abject failure.
Bravo, Owen.
You got that right.
Those who challenge this narrative, like myself, are nothing but dupes, useful idiots, and the modern-day equivalents of Fabians who went to Stalin's Soviet Union and lauded it as a new civilization.
Hallelujah, he can be taught.
Fast forward three years, Maduro is decried as a dictator after the Congress is annulled.
Yes, Owen, they were right.
You were wrong.
Accept it.
Admit it.
Opposition leaders branded Venezuela's socialist president Nicolas Maduro a dictator on Thursday after the Supreme Court took over the functions of Congress and pushed a lengthy political standoff to new heights.
There was swift and widespread international condemnation of the de facto annulment of the National Assembly, where the opposition won a majority in late 2015 amid an unprecedented economic crisis that has seen Maduro's popularity plummet.
The head of the 34 Nation Organization of International States, Luis Amaholmargro, said the Venezuelan court had dealt the final blows to democracy and accused Maduro's regime of carrying out a coup.
Critics of Maduro say it's an excuse for him to consolidate power and muzzle the opposition amid a severe recession, soaring inflation, and acute shortages of food and medicine.
Probably just right-wing propaganda.
Probably just those goddamn right-wingers.
But the question is, can British socialists condemn Maduro?
He is the leader of the Venezuelan Socialist Party.
Probably fucking not.
Venezuelan exiles beg Corbyn to condemn Maduro.
Expatriates of the Strife Torn Nation say that silence is complicity.
Well it is.
But the thing is, Jeremy Corbyn can no more condemn this than he can condemn his own party and his own philosophy.
Because he has lauded Venezuela to the hilt in the past.
He was a huge fan of Chavez.
sorry, Chavez.
And he called him, they called Castro a champion of social justice.
He said that Venezuela shows us that there's another way.
There is another way.
And it's a shit way that ends in revolution against the socialist dictator because of a lack of food, medical supplies, and personal freedom.
Erika Urvina filled the box with food and medicine.
Protein shakes for her 10-year-old niece who grows thinner by the day.
Blood pressure tablets for her mother, plenty of cans of black beans and tuna, and sent it to Venezuela.
When it arrived, her desperate family opened it to discover the contents had been stolen, and in their place, thieves had placed rotting rubbish.
They opened a box full of worms.
Socialism doesn't work.
It just doesn't fucking work.
It does not improve the material conditions of anyone apart from the dictator and the party.
Her home country is in crisis.
Protesters are being shot in the street.
You're listening, Owen.
Opposition leaders are being arrested in the middle of the night in their pajamas as Maduro forges on with plans to install an assembly that he says is necessary to protect the people from the enemies of socialism.
Well, I'm sure it is fucking necessary to protect the people from the enemies of socialism.
But the problem is the enemies of socialism have become the people.
Owen.
Jeremy Corbyn, always quick to praise Caracas in the past, remains silent.
What a fucking surprise.
How could he say anything?
How could he say anything without utterly undermining his own political position here?
Chris Williamson, a shadow home office minister, went on television this week to condemn America over the problems, but refused to denounce Maduro for anything more than maybe not doing enough to diversify the economy.
Maybe if he wasn't busy seizing private property, that would help.
Look at this, Owen.
Just look at this.
One of the trade unions closest to Corbyn still has press releases on its website entitled, Venezuela Building a Fairer Society for All.
Yet tell that to Mrs. Irvina, who said her sister, 36, needs surgery for breast cancer but must first source all the surgeons' materials herself because the hospitals have run out.
Well, that would be the capitalists.
That'd be all the fault of the capitalists.
Nothing to do with the socialism.
It's all the capitalist fault.
Good God.
How dare they not just simply give you what you need so you can appropriate it?
How very fucking dare they?
When their father needed a blood transfusion, Elisa had to run the gauntlet of checkpoints at night to fetch supplies from the next hospital.
Surely you don't have to be a capitalist or nasty neoliberal to condemn that.
I invite Jeremy Corbyn and his friends to come to Venezuela.
Not to party with people like Chavez and ride around in bulletproof cars, you know, members of the party, but to stay with an ordinary family like mine on a Venezuelan salary.
Wake up at 4am and look for food to feed your family.
It's only because it's only, what, 82% of the country that's in poverty now?
So Manola de Rubes was a lawyer for the Ministry of Defense during the Chavez era, and she got used to seeing a lot of money in envelopes.
Chavez was so charismatic, meeting him didn't feel frightening, but Maduro, he's a crazy man.
But it looks like they were both really fucking corrupt.
I wonder what they're worth.
I wonder what Chavez was worth when he died.
I wonder what Maduro is worth now.
Do you think it's going to be anywhere near Castro's 900 million?
Do you think it's going to be anywhere near that?
Or do you think it's going to be a little lower?
Do you think maybe only a few hundred million, 200 million?
She too urges Corbyn to join the international condemnation of Maduro.
Silence is very dangerous.
Silence is complicity.
This is not communism, it's dictatorship tyranny.
See, she's still inculcated into the ideology.
It's not that she's not in favour of this.
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