it all depends on how you look at it. you look at it through your own subjective perspective, and you see racism. in your mind - it's racist. just recognize your subjectivity in the matter. so far, I have not gotten any objective answers from either you or Barbara on why it's racist. you both state it like it was some patently obvious truth that cannot be denied or debated. I just want you to recognize that it is not that the picture is racist. it is that YOU THINK it's racist. it is YOUR OPINION that it's racist. and no, I am not stupid. in my own opinion, I am quite smart.
probably the same thing that people think about people who think that something is racist simply because they themselves think its racist.
minerva, conversing with you is like talking to an alien. It's like we have no common frame of reference, so things that are obvious to the rest of us need to be explained to you. Sometimes that is a good thing, in that it forces us to challenge our assumptions and occasionally it will lead to a breakthrough in that our assumptions are wrong. But in this case, portraying Obama as a witch doctor is clearly, obviously racist, and explaining it to you would be an exercise in futility.
a witch doctor is not exculssive to black people. in fact, it is not at all relevant to African Amreicans. there are shamans or witch doctors (whatever name they go by) in vertually every primitive society. the term Voo Doo economics was used to describe the economic policies of Regan and H W Bush. now let's say Obama was a Republican, and he followed the same economic principles, and let's say that some liberal periodical out there posted the same pic. would you find that racist, or would you recognize the connection btween Obama's Voo Doo economics and the portrayal as a witch doctor, and have a good laugh?
another point - what if a pic depicted Cheney as a pentecostal faith healer (the white man's equivalent to the witch doctor) for his international political ideas. would you consider that racist? or is it only racism when there is a non-white involved?
If you cannot see the racism of portraying a black man as a "primitive" then there are two and only two explanations: either you're full of shit and you're trolling or you are indeed a moron.
You're trolling, right? Because there's no way anyone could be this stupid, is there? I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here, since I don't recall ever seeing any of your posts prior to defending that racist photoshop job with Obama's image.
I'm still waiting for an objective - just ONE objective reason as to why the pic is racist... so far all I've got are conjectures as to the motivation for my asking the question. but to anwer your point Knave, I did not see it as a black man being portrayed as primitive. I saw a person being portrayed as using primitive, less than scientific methods to fix a complex problem. the person could be any color, and it would be just as applicable. YOU seeing it as a race is makes YOU the racist. now answer me this: do you think Bush being portrayed as a faith healer would be racist??
just look back at your arguments - then see who is stupid. you haven't offered anything objective or rational. you've simply made conjectures about whether I'm stupid or trolling etc. simply because I happen to disagree with your point of view - one that you think is beyond argument, in your own mind at least.
Sorry - stuff like that picture don't exist in a vacuum. You cannot examine it outside of the context of race relations and history in this country. By your definition, there is nothing that qualifies as "objectively racist".
This is what I was talking about. I guess it is possible that minerva is not aware that there is a part of this world that we all (presumably, I don't know if minerva is an alien or not) live on, called Africa, and most of the people from this place called Africa have darker skin than most of the people from other parts of the world, and most parts of Africa have historically been behind the technological curve compared with many other parts of the world, and some people from other parts of the world have exploited some of the people from Africa, and some of the people from Africa are seen as inferior by some of these lighter-skinned people who come from other parts of the world, etc. But by the time you've finished explaining the history and why it is considered offensive in this day and age to show a picture of a black man with a bone in his nose, everyone has fallen asleep. Except, maybe, for minerva -- his alien race may not sleep like we humans do.
I know full well what you think you are trying to do with this "objective" crap and it's bullshit. Racism is not like 2+2=4 and if you don't know that you're an idiot. If you can't understand the validity of the historical and cultural reasons why that image is racist, then you are stupid. If you don't give a f'ck about that, then you're a stupid troll.
pardon me for trying to encourage a little critical thinking. most of you probably looked that picture and automatically thought it was racist, without really examining why you thought it was so. I was simply trying to get people to think about why they thought it was racist. in a different context, perhaps you wouldn't think that was the case. but instead of getting rational thoughts, all I got was - if you don't agree with me, you're stupid, you're a racist - only a racist would say or think that, you're a troll. seriously, I expected a little better.
quite so Knave, quite so. but if that's the case, then perhaps you shouldn't declare your opinions or feelings about something as being objective fact - like 2+2=4, but rather say, "I think that's racist" or "in my opinion, that's racist" but either way, most people are like you guys - they don't think critically, they simply go with their gut feeling, and their gut feeling tells them it's racist. so practically speaking, it's stupid of the GOP to do that because most people will think it's racist and turn them away from the GOP.
Do you know what the word "context" means? That picture is racist because of the context of the treatment of Blacks in this hemisphere over the 500 years of recorded history.