Obama watermelon joke unseats mayor

I think America has become too sensitive about race.

The image was a joke, a little warped, but a bad joke in bad taste notheless.

New tabboo on words that can not be used in the same sentence. Obama, watermelon and fried chicken... otherwise you are a racist.

watermelon_white_house.jpg

Hahaha,/b/'s going to have a field day with this

It was a stupid thing to send and the mayor got what was coming to him.

Say xerxes, remember a while back they said Obama and Bush were related...

bush-obama.jpg

Which proves.....what exactly?

Never mind, just thought it was a cool pick of Obama/Bush morphed. Of topic.

I love how he claims to be unaware that black people like watermelons.....wow if you are going to lie at least tell a good lie

Why? No one called him on it before.

Very silly e-mail to send.
Anybody that insensitive does not deserve to be in public office. I can't see how it can be construed as anything but racist. Good riddance to that mayor.

Yep, those are pretty racist things to say.

Don't forget monkeys.

Yep, those are pretty racist things to say.

"stereotyping <vs> racism

You turn the corner and a group of men listening to rap and dressed accordingly (baggy clothes, cocked hats / bandanas, etc) are blocking the sidewalk you were going to use. If you cross the street rather than excuse-me-pardon-me navigate your way through the middle of them, does that make you a racist? I would hope not, since I didn’t even mention the race of the men involved.

Rather, it is practical application of the “gangsta” stereotype in an effort to keep oneself safe from harm. Race need not be at all involved, as groups of people fulfilling the “gangsta” stereotype are just as undesirable to walk through if they are black and in Detroit, or blue-eyed-blonde-haired-farmer’s-sons in a suburb of Des Moines.

When seeking to define oneself, if you choose to adhere to an existing stereotype rather than creating your own identity, you deserve the negative repercussions of that association. If I choose to dress and bathe like a homeless man, I deserve to be treated as one. If, however, I make an effort to be clean and not dress in rags, I do not deserve being stereotyped as a homeless man. If I were to adopt the extreme flamboyance of a stereotypical homosexual (as perpetuated by heterosexual actors on Will and Grace), I would be succumbing to that stereotype; bowing to the power it holds merely because I allow it to.

Homosexuals in particular have legitimate reason to adopt the flamboyant-fag stereotype — it makes it pretty easy to identify each other from otherwise identical heterosexual men. The problem being that the stereotype is unattractive to many homosexual men, and makes them more reluctant to “out” themselves as a homosexual lest they be perceived as a stereotypical “fag.” At that pont, the negatives involved with that association are not worth the benefits.

The problem with stereotypes in general is that many people do not recognize them as stereotypes, or fully understand that a stereotype is a template but not a mold. They do have practical uses and should continue to exist. Rather than telling our children that stereotypes are nonsense and that they should try to ignore the fact that large groups of people attempt to conform to an identical set of behaviors, we should be telling them that a stereotype is useful for self-preservation but is not all-encompassing nor is it permanent. To adhere to a stereotype should still be perceived as a failure of the individual to define their self, never as an ideal form of expression of self. One example of the bizarre affirmation-rather-than-condemnation of stereotypes is the “Gay Pride” parade. A “White Trash NASCAR-Loving Wife-Beater Parade” should cause an equal amount of eye-rolling if it were to occur."

Source: http://www.seretogis.org/2007/12/29/ste ... ng-racism/

Another interesting article: http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/12/20/201641.php

Watermelon and fried chicken imagery are racist stereotypes, when used to mock black people. There's not really any two ways about that.

Roman, we agree. Is that a first?