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My money's on Bethany.
reading through the comments it seems so many people have been waiting for a forum to air how aggrieved they have been by natives for voicing how they feel.
also "part" native? which part of them is native? you can argue this however you want but what i know is that many native people including myself avoid these images and representations and places that have them. we may not always tell you, we just may avoid you.
for you to get so upset over this when you get called out? you came into our yard with this poster and calling people out in your post.
You'll have to work harder than that to stuff me into a white sheet, asshole.
If you aren't racist, don't act like one. We aren't your convenient excuse or holier than thou "get over yourselves" poster children, we are hundreds of distinct and diverse living cultural groups.
Get the fuck over yourself.
The "oh come on chill the fuck out everyone gets so offended these days you can't say anything anymore" is a classic defensive posture of entitled white people who can't/won't take the time to listen to why their actions and words are hurtful.
Keep missing the point. Thats your right. I don't think most of the people griefing you are offended by the poster so much as they're offended by your absolute lack of contrition or even sense humor on the subject.
:)
In all honesty, Mr. Savage, this poster image would not have stirred so many issues as of late if you kept your mouth shut on what people should or should not view as racist. Just promote the show next time.
dan, the reason this is so dissapointing is that this poster is for 'it gets better project' correct? our young native people also suffer from high rates of suicide. often with many people having to leave home communities they may be the only native kid around. i know i was. the only representations they may see are the ones done by non natives or catering to non natives. often not very nice.
the hurt lies in how these representations are perceived. and maybe by the comments there are a few people whose perception of these images aren't the same as yours? rather than listening it seems you have lashed out.
often native kids will hear this their whole lives. and believe me i speak from experience. we have heard all the arguements posted today. "i have a native friend/stepdad/lover...", "but the person who created it is part native", "just get over it, its not that bad" what all these statements say is you have no power over how you will be perceived and viewed. you can accept it or get over it. so many native kids internalize these arguments over the years. i wish you would listen.
facepalm.jpg
Speaking of Native Americans, be sure to watch the bacterial video, "Bike Ride On the Soos Creek Trail" featuring Songs of the Omaha Nation.
http://youtu.be/wmnMc3D2PYE
our Danny is one prickly bitch.....
racism isn't always an academic discussion. if a community perceives black face to be racist then it is considered so. unfortunately for natives we don't have a large community. so when we may ask for people to back off of certain images we usually end up in these long conversations that really amount to... "we will continue, you can either accept or go away".
Boy was I wrong. Again. But I'm getting used to it.
how many more fights do you have to pick with the staff before someone finally fucking fires you?
Is a hipster in headdress racist? Are the non-hipsters overreacting? Judgement call on both. What is a fact is that cultural symbols, stereotypes, clothing, etc. get appropriated all the time, and we don't notice most of the time because the "Kiss me I'm Irish" carries very little baggage; most folks like to be kissed and at least pretend to have a little Irish in them. As a society we are past the "no dogs, no Irish" era.
Native Americans, in many instances, live lives that would be unrecognizable to your average headdress wearing raver. The headdress & warpaint are images that have been used for ages as ways to simplify what the reality of Native American life is like.
So if you are using imagery like this, full-native, half-native or non-native, why? Can you really say that when stuff like this is viewed by the public no one will see it and see the implication that, tonight only, we are going to let go of our inhibitions and be free of spirit and dance like, as they would say in a more coarse time, Savages?
Art and humor that deal in individual characteristics not your own are the risky precisely because it doesn't matter who created it, it matters who sees it.
Establishing a taboo is a method to enforce a privilege -- like the bill creating a taboo against teachers against admitting such a thing as homosexuality exists. It ain't a disadvantaged ethnicity trying to deny there's such a thing as distinction in race. The taboo creates a denial in which the unspoken privilege finds shelter.
Troll harder.
http://tinyurl.com/3vkq6cc
@ 38 - Oh dear. How about a lemony votive candle instead?
The issue isn't "OMG you called me racist I would never", it's the casual sloughing off of any responsibility to actually dig into what is involved in the representation. You ARE being casual, Dan.
The discussion about racism today isn't a matter of identifying suspects and shunning them. It's not like modern politics, in other words. It's not a matter of "am I a racist" -- it would be rather superhuman if you were not -- but "where is the racist impulse coming from, what has it done to me in the past, where am I going to go with it in the future?" That's why we, as anti-racists, look at that headdress and see a symbol of something you claim isn't there -- but you haven't even looked. You shrugged it off without a thought.
What people are digging at you about isn't racism, it's a lack of interest in even thinking about racism. Why should you? You're white, you're set. Which just happens to be what racism is all about. Native Americans don't have the option of seeing that symbol the way you do. They HAVE to see the appropriation, because they live in it. Only white people get to say "pah, I don't see anything, it's nothing to do with me, I'm going to the dance party". To quote Madge in the Palmolive commercial, "you're soaking in it". You are soaking in a race-privileged and race-segregated and race-oppressed world. I think people would rather hear you address that than blow it off.
The whole point is the white gaze. It's not how many Indian people find it offensive or the race of the person who made it. The point is what Fnarf said: white people can disregard race if they want to. The most insidious part of white privilege is it's invisibility. I wrote into Dan about the Indian painting he posted awhile ago. I didn't write in because I was horrified by the painting, but more because it saddens me to see how Indian people are put in these neat little categories that non-Indians never have to take the time to examine. I was trying to bring up the problematic issue of how white people view Indians in art/fashion etc. and just how Indians are viewed in general. It was interesting to see this whole thing develop around another Native issue.
I highly recommend I Am Not A Mascot and Newspaper Rock for anyone interested in learning more about Native issues.
I was recently told by a half-Native friend that it was disrespectful for me (a non-Native but part Asian person) to wear my hair in two braids. She said it was OK for me to wear one braid down the back but not two braids down the sides.
I don't want to be disrespectful, but really? I think Asians have been wearing braids for a long time. Also, if I can't wear two braids, is she allowed to eat sushi?
My ancestry is largely Norwegian, my current status is broke, and I'm likely to live out my life as a dreg of society. Not exactly privileged. Also, do you know what recent act of cultural appropriation I didn't flip out over? The goddamn Thor movie.
Today, the offended divide people just as much as the offensive. We might get to the real roots of bigotry and discrimination quicker if people didn't fly apart at every distasteful speck of dirt. But I suppose that's the point - divide and conquer.
What you could have done is talk about being indian for a while. What tribe is she, where are the from, what reservations were they taken to, what cultural traditions are alive in her family today, what kinds of intersections between white and indian culture has she experienced in her life or heard from her parents, grandparents, where's the hairstyle come from, was it part of her tribal style, and so on.
The idea is that you become informed, you deal with the symbols of life around you in a way that incorporates them INSIDE the culture rather than taking them in but leaving the people outside.
And surely you can inform that discussion yourself, with the Asian part of your background. Really, it's OK to talk about race. It exists. Talking about it is cool. It's not wanting to talk about it that smacks of privilege.
@52: So you are Norwegian and broke...I'm sorry to hear that you are broke. It fucking sucks, I know. But do you know what sucks more than being white and broke? Being non-white and broke. Again, like the insightful posts you ignored (or failed to comprehend, which would you rather cop to?) explained, your whiteness makes racism invisible to you. Your privilege makes oppression invisible to you. Of course you are not bothered by the Thor movie, you have not experienced oppression from a stereotype.
I agree that money and weapons give you privilege. Um, who has all the money and (most of the) weapons in our society? Oh, that's right! Why do they have that money? Oh, yeah.
If it makes you feel any better, rednecks tend to call me a faggot.
And no, that does not make me feel good at all. I've been called faggot, and though I'm straight (and yeah, being called that is on a WHOLE other level if you are actually queer) it sucks.
I'm not going to claim that cultural appropriation is automatically racist. But it is often problematic, and it requires thought. In the poster for your guy's show, I don't see anything aimed at raising questions about what it means to be native, or how people are represented. I do see Native imagery being employed to signify being uninhibited and wild and cartoonish. That seems like a problem to me. That you refuse to acknowledge that is problematic, that there are valid reasons a person could be offended, is pretty gross. Especially it is for the "It gets better" project, as previous commenters have stated, Native American youth are three times more likely than average to commit suicide. I wish you would have taken a moment to at least consider that you might be hurting those youth, instead of launching into full defensive, shut-up-and-get-over-it mode.
Excuse me.
When we stop living in a kyriarchy.
And yes, you are privileged. I suggest you read up on what that means.
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcint…
(For example: As a largely straight guy who was a pretty big target for assholes while in public school, I have mixed feelings about focusing on eliminating gay bullying in school as opposed to getting rid of school bullying as a whole. Even though a lot of the crap I went through took the form of homophobia, I felt left out of the conversation even though I had a lot to say.)
I don't like entitlement and aristocracy in any form, no matter who's being spoiled, exploitative, or oblivious. And it might help to remember that a lot of people in the world might view all of us in America as monstrously privileged. A person can always find a fight or a division if one looks for them. Doesn't meant that there aren't real problems, but that our outrage might be better used.
Glad the conversation calmed down a bit. I think I might take that lemonade now, provided I can put some vodka in it.
:P
You are able to "get past the differences" because you are the dominant narrative.
I never really thought about publicly airing my grievances via a nationally read blog.
1) As a put down towards people who aren't transgendered
2) As a way for douchey pc'ers to seem hip (i.e. oh, i under stand the queer plight, even though i'm cisgendered).
Really do we even need transgendered? I understand that people may want a way to describe themselfs and thats fine. But it seems like cisgender is the a reaction to "transgender" being used negatively.
Probably because HEADDRESSed the subject already.
*ba-dum tssssss
I think people don't like the word because it calls out what is considered normative socially and personally and that is uncomfortable. There is nothing wrong with using a word to understand who you are to understand who you and other people are not and how that fits in our perceptions of gender identity.
And yes, we do need words to define those who are not trans so we can focus on the excluded voices of those who are.
You know nothing about me yet are confident in lumping me in with the Great Aristocrats. Seems rather prejudiced of you. Have your gold medal in the Oppression Olympics. I'll go be a human being, thank you.
*knocks over a desk*
It's statements like this that make me hate the word cisgender. Because you're implying that if you're not transgender then you must be part of the "haters". How about focusing on the exclude voices instead.
I.E. instead of complaining that your voice isn't heard because those that are fighting for gay rights "are really fighting for middle class, white, cisgender, mostly male gay rights", go out and speak up for your rights. Hating againts one group isn't going stop the hate against another group.
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!
What @20 & @21 said. Absolutely. And Dan, while your at it, try reading "Native Seattle" by Coll Thrush.
@89 VERY intelligent and pertinent comment to add to the discussion. I somehow you doubt you could pull off the "Frat Boy Overbite" on the dance floor, let alone a traditional Native dance. Good luck with that.
I had a knee-jerk reaction against what you suggested, but thought about it and decided to go ahead and talk to her, and you know what? You were right. She actually DID just want to talk about her heritage, her perception of its invisibility and the how much loose borrowing from her culture bothered her.
Working against discrimination in all its forms? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzcAR6yQh…
Does it get better for Native Americans, who have the highest poverty and suicide rates in America? Who still have major sports-league mascots that are horrifically racist and stereotyping plastered all over their television screens? Who have sports utility vehicles using the names of their tribes?
Apparently, as long as its getting better for you and your cause, it doesn't matter if it gets better for anyone else. Pretty pathetic.
If she wanted to start a conversation about race, rather than being offensive and idiotic, she should have said "Hey, did you know that X hairstyle is sort of similar to what Y tribe used," or "Hey, let's talk about race," or something like that. The only appropriate response to "it's disrespectful to wear your hair like that" is "fuck you."