#there is no racism against south asian people or any other people of colour apparently

[renardtrickster]

Like a modern-day Echo I am tragically unable to express myself except in this case it’s in regard to how much I hate Two Broke Girls but good god I will try.

Max is the most unlikable TV character for me because she alternates between being an edgy font of offensiveness and the creator’s Coolsona. By the first part, I mean how her only personality traits are “I hate people and will let you know this” and “i had a troubled childhood full of nasty sex”. There’s a point in the show where Han, who I can only describe as her favourite victim, delivers a speech about how she torments him and how it’s affected him, and singlehandedly saved her from both lawsuit AND having her business stolen. Max immediately goes back to sniping at him in the single most frustrating instance of Status Quo Is God I’ve ever seen in my life and I’ve watched Adventure Time.

By “the creator’s Coolsona”, that brings up another topic. Two Broke Girls has what I call “I Don’t Like This” Moments. Typically at the very beginning of the episode, but sometimes it happens in the middle of them too. Where someone does Thing That Creator Doesn’t Like and then Max jumps in to say The Funny Mean Things at them for an entire scene. And maybe because I’ve been growing up in an environment where “odd” things don’t register as weird to me, and I know not to make fun of people even if I do think it’s weird, but it always seems so petty, unnecessary, and unsympathetic. The Thing I Don’t Like can be anywhere from “likes steampunk, has marionette dolls” to “has a beard”. I just saw an episode where she insulted a dude’s mental state, mental maturity, and ability to have sex because he was using a colouring book! For stress relief!

And nobody ever talks back is what really pisses me off. I’ve slowly (and with great difficulty) stopped hoping expecting someone to clock her for mouthing off to them. But nobody ever really contests her. Some of them weakly try to blow it off, but most of them are just content to sit there, slack-jawed, while she unloads the creator’s frustrations into them. Seth MacFarlane at least had the decency to make everybody hate his fursona, Max faces no consequences of any sort for chewing out the people who provide her tips (in a show where getting and keeping money is repeatedly stressed) or her boss, who is also her designated victim! That’s why I said “the creator’s Coolsona”. Max is like the anthropomorphic personification of “yowza what a sick burn, i could make people cry if i didn’t stutter so much”, and she’s the main character! Caroline is (ostensibly) on equal terms of importance to Max, but she’s more like a second fiddle because Max has such an overbearing, inescapable personality. And instead of the (ostensibly) more likable Caroline, we have Michael Patrick King and Whitney Cummings’ walking, talking ball of unreleased daily stress.

And Max is just one aspect of the show (if a pretty integral part)! There’s so much more I could talk about but Impoverished Vriska (which is unfair to Vriska) took up so much of the post I have to shove the rest of it into bullet points.

The rest of the main cast are just ethnic stereotypes.

Han is the owner of the diner (Max’s boss, as I said before) but all of that pales before the fact that he’s a short guy from South Korea. Half if not the majourity of the jokes on the show consist of “Han is short”. Other features is that he’s somewhat incompetent, nobody likes him, he’s definitely not as cool as Max, and he’s possibly very gay.

Speaking of which, Michael Patrick King was confronted with the fact that Han is basically just an Asian point-and-laugh character and said that allegations of his racism were unfounded and he knows what it’s like to be discriminated against because he’s gay. Make of that what you will.

Oleg is the cook. He’s Ukrainian but you could just say “East European Weirdo” and that’s all that matters. His name may as well be Buck because he likes to fuck and that’s all there is to say about him.

Sophie is also an East European Weirdo (Polish edition) who also may as well be named Buck. Literally the only thing that makes her separate from Oleg is that she’s a girl, isn’t on a list of some sort, and she’s sometimes capable of having thoughts outside of flesh on flesh. She’s also shilled a lot which is very weird. Apparently her actor is more famous than any of the others but I wouldn’t know.

Earl... He’s old black and likes weed. He gets very slight characterization outside of that I think. His relation to the diner is so vague that it took me ages to realize what he does (cashier, apparently).

Outside of that, we have more stereotypes as well. There’s a lot of gay characters but I swear every single one of them talks with the Gay Voice. Lisp, effeminate manner, you know how it is.

The episode specifically about LGBT people protesting the cupcake shop was bad too.

One out of context comment to a pretentious nonbinary person leads to a massive riot outside.

After a few scenes of the circus outside, Max and Caroline get picked up by a wild gang of homophobes (complete with them talking about overly offended youths, they’re the bad guys but it doesn’t quite pass the smell test).

They wiggle out of it in the most contrived manner possible by kissing each other, and suddenly the LGBT crowd outside becomes their best friends despite being convinced that they were bigots (and Han & Max offering piss-poor refutations to that claim).

And the episode ends off with the same nonbinary person, after making up with Max & Caroline, taking an unwarranted shot at bisexual people and then walking off into the sunset.

By the way this same character is the only explicitly NB character on television to my (limited) knowledge. So I’d like to take a moment and weep for enbies in that they already have crumbs and one of the bigger crumbs came from this fucking show.

If 50% of the show’s jokes is “Han is short”, the other 50% is “SEX”. Honestly at some points the show plays out like an Amy Schumer stand-up.

Rant ended impromptu because thinking about this show enough to write this much gave me brain damage.

[charlizealcaraz-blog]

Between Black and White: What Life Was Like for Other Races During the Racial Segregation

The racial segregation that took place in America from 1896 to the 1950s is an example of one of the many horrendous things that should never be repeated. It reeks of the repugnant discrimination that African-Americans experienced on a daily basis and how inferiorly-treated they were by Caucasian people (slavery, lynching, etc).

Public facilities were made and separated only for white people and black people, and it is no doubt that white people were at the top of the social hierarchy and black people were at the bottom–but what were the other races doing at the same time era, the era of racial discrimination and the peak of racism?

Most people would say that there were barely any other races during the racial segregation in America as most history textbooks never talk about them; nevertheless, they did exist in huge numbers and were fully functioning and living American citizens.

According to the racial census done in the 1940s, there was a total amount of 18 million non-whites living in America. Although 12 million of them were black, the other 6 million were other races among the 132 million people in America during that time.

Mixed (Black and White):

Mixed peoples who lived at the time of the segregation struggled with identity issues as their black and white beings were not accommodated in a black only and white only America. They also dealt with the same discrimination that all-black people did and received the same racial slurs and distasteful experience in school, and at work.

Although it was illegal, interracial marriages did exist during the segregation which resulted into mixed children. The children were naturally neither 100% white nor 100% black as they are a mix of both; hence,

“...there was no place for them

in the Black and White America.”

They were treated just the same as pure blacks even though it was evident that they were not just black. Any person who has even just the littlest fraction of black ancestry was considered black and required by law to only use black facilities. There was even a whole rule about it–the “one-drop rule” where it states that any person who has even a drop of black blood would be considered black according to law.

Homer Plessy was ⅛ black and ⅞ white and had an appearance of a white man. He boarded a vacant “white-only” car in a passenger railway and he was immediately detained for occupying a car that was apparently not designated for him, as he was “just not white enough” to legally occupy a “white-only” car.

Asians:

Records show that Asians were treated variously throughout the states when the Jim Crow laws were in effect. Some states considered them to be “white” and brought them into the white society of privilege and a higher spot in the hierarchy, while some were labeled as “coloured” or “black” and were segregated and pushed back to the bottom of the social status ladder.

Being an Asian immigrant–or even an Asian-American–in the segregated South was not different from being African-American in the Southern states.

A hefty amount of Chinese people immigrated to America right after the American Civil War–most of them headed towards the South. The Mississippi Chinese were a group of Chinese people who had migrated to Mississippi during 1865 to 1877, and that time period and region was considered to be societally dominated by Mississippians of British and African descent.

The Mississippi Chinese immigrated to America for financial purposes, hoping to help fund their families back in China with the money they earn overseas. They were seen as “peasants” and from poor artisan families by Native White Americans; hence, also being labeled as “coloured” and received discrimination from them, although less than what African-Americans get.

They were also just as segregated as black people. Although not centralized in Mississippi, the Chinese communities in San Francisco and some other states had separate schools, theatres, etc–this also meant that they were involved in the ‘separate but equal’ idealism, having less quality facilities and less accommodations than white people.

Although not coming from white people, Filipinos endured discrimination and hatred in the 1930a for supposedly ‘taking jobs away’ from other minorities. There was a huge need for agricultural workers at that time after the exclusion of Chinese and Japanese people, and Filipinos were called in to fill the empty spots.

They were brought in as ‘strikebreakers,’ or people who work in place of others who are on strike, and these Filipino workers encountered heated tensions with Mexicans and other minorities who were protesting against their employers as they felt that they were taking away the work. Preserved documents show that Filipinos received hateful letters coming from the people they subbed in for, and even had their camps destroyed.

Filipinos were also seen as a threat to white people as they felt that Filipino men were taking their local European women; hence, they were strongly against Filipinos marrying white women giving Filipino men no dispensation regarding the Anti-Interracial Marriages Law.

Much similar to Filipinos, it was mostly men from India who immigrated to America for agricultural labour. Although records show they lived a decently peaceful life, the Congress barred immigration from India in 1917. It is unknown when the immigration ban was lifted, but it was evident that because of it, there was a great gender imbalance. Consequently, Indian men married local Mexican women–a bizarre dispensation from the Anti-Interracial Marriage Law.

Interestingly enough, black men would try to pass off as anything but black to avoid being lynched. They witnessed how untouched the Indians were, especially Sikhs, and decided to sport one as well to get around racial discrimination. Turbans helped black people go incognito during the Jim Crow Era, and it worked out well for them as they were often not questioned once seen wearing the traditional accouterment.

A turban isn’t limited to just Indians–it is also commonly worn by Middle Easterners, East Asians, and North Africans in different variations–but it was classified as the “racial marker” for Indians and thus, anyone who wore a turban during the racial segregation was Indian.

Mexicans, Latinos, and Hispanics:

The 1940 American census above doesn’t show a category for Mexicans, Latinos, and Hispanics and that only indicates how inferiorly treated they were. Although not as much as African-Americans, these groups experienced extreme discrimination and lynchings, and were also subjected to more inferior segregated facilities.

Mexicans immigrated to America after Mexico and the United States had formed the bracero–a labour program in which Mexicans were encouraged to move to the U.S. to as contract workers. The braceros were desperate for jobs and kept them despite being paid very low wages, and often worked under inhumane conditions that other ethnicities, especially whites, would be unwilling to accept. Mexicans were treated so poorly in the United States that at one point, the Mexican government refused to send any more workers to the country.

Much like other non-white and non-black ethnicities, Mexican communities were also given separate schools for their children. These schools were much more inferior and alienated than other races’ schools (example: Chinese Schools); so much so that they filed many cases to the Supreme Court, claiming that their rights were being challenged.

Discrimination amongst Hispanics and Latinos, revoltingly enough, were based on how light or dark their complexions were. Lighter skin Latinos and Hispanics, since they could pass of as white, experienced no discrimination at all unless they tell them what their last names were. Even if they did, they would change their last names to “white” last names. For example, one woman would change her last name “Purcell” to “Purcella” or from “Juan” to “John.”

American Baseball teams set a conspicuous example of this malpractice. Sports teams during the Jim Crow Era were, unsurprisingly, also segregated to White Leagues and Negro Leagues. There were no separate leagues for Latinos and other ethnicities, therefore, they were ‘smuggled’ into the two existing leagues depending on their complexion. Light-skinned Cuban baseball player Adolfo Luque played for the Cincinnati Reds for example, while dark-skinned Cuban baseball player Martin Dihigo played for the Negro Leagues.

The Jim Crow Era in America was, undoubtedly, the worst times for blacks as they were treated inhumanely and were killed simply because they were of darker complexion. It is appreciated that history textbooks were formatted to highlight both their sufferings and excellence in that time era of peak racism, but most often they forget to talk about other ethnicities and how they were treated–whether they were just as alienated as black people or not.

Their stories are unsung and they need to be told in order for this generation, and generations to follow, to understand the conditions of International Relations between America and other countries.

It seems as if their stories are forgotten and are completely omitted from America’s history by the way they were documented. Lest we forget the way other minorities were treated in history to learn why we shouldn’t do it in the present and avoid it in the future.

[loumandforyou]

That rpf poll is bringing out the worst in some people. I checked the replies on the poll for the first time recently, and I did not scroll far enough to see the comments where people implied Sam Reid is not white is what I am getting from yours and others posts. I however did scroll far enough to see someone say that everyone who voted against Jam is anti-black. I would love to shake everyone who is acting like this by the shoulders and tell them it's not that serious and none of it is real.

I have blocked the person who says it's antiblack not to ship lou.stat and Jam, because it's a bit ridiculous to me (I mean I have blocked them before that cause of their armand "jokes") cause if we are to make this silly poll about race, then it's also racist not to ship the only south Asian actor and we should be shipping Jacob and Assad and Louis/Armand.

But anyway this poll (or any shipping poll) has no impact in real life at all and I think some people take it waaaay too seriously. And I need people to understand that preferring one ship over the other is just... a preference. Personally I don't ship Lou.stat (I don't ship any actors) that much, because I don't like Lestat that much, but apparently no, it's antiblack. Automatically thinking someone dislikes a ship because of the black and not the white character sounds much more racist to me.

Making characters of colour into their stereotypes and ignoring poc that tell you it is actually racist to do that... now that's also racism. No?