ā¦didnāt this meme start in China? Pretty crucial context here lol.
It did, as a light-hearted joke comparing Xi and Obama walking side by side with a resembling image of Tiger and Pooh. Of course, westerners then proceeded to take it and turn it into their own distortion and elaborate some story about how China is banning Winnie the Pooh and that is why painting a chinese man yellow with photoshop is a sign of resistance against a government on the other side of the globe and totally not racist.
It resembles a lot the same thing that happened with that image that floated the internet around a few years ago of Putin photoshoped as a stereotypically and comically flamboyant homosexual man, which is totally not homophobic even if the punchline is āheās gayā because you can always make it up that the image is banned somewhere and thus is a sign of resistance and contains no reactionary sentiment behind.
I wouldnāt really called the original ālight heartedā since Obama was compared to character named literally āTiggerā.
I didnāt catch that (in my language heās just called the name of the animal, translated). I am unsure if that was intentional or not, however.
Yea that one is pretty easy to connect the dots, I think itās safe to say people from China, the most populous country on Earth, can be racist, just as any individual from any other country can be.
Iām not really convinced that they would be making a reference like that that only works in English (and is a bit of stretch even then imo).
Not exactly, because the meaning changed from āhey look Obama and Xi loojs kinda like this silly little picture of Winnie the Pooh and Tiggerā to āthe Chinese people yearn for freedom from this censorship-loving yellow man sure hope Xi gets angry about my crackkker postingā.
Itās strange that this concern for context only ever goes in one direction. Symbolism, like words, develop meaning through their usage.
If I were to say that I ejaculated during intercourse with your wife last night, would you take that to be an insult or would you be dying on that same context hill that the verb to ejaculate used to refer to suddenly making a statement and that intercourse used to refer to having a discussion with someone?
Probably not.
Would you say that the swastika isnāt a Nazi symbol because it originated in Indo-European religious and cultural symbology?
Maybe. I canāt speak for you.
The origin of something doesnāt determine its usage.
Yeah and that meme had Obama as ātiggerā. Wonder whyā¦
The meme starting in China doesnāt mean much. Pretty sure Chinese people can make racist memes too.
Would you be comfortable calling Obama a tigger? You realize in a bar that would get you beat up right?
Is that context crucial though?
It gets brought up every time its pointed out how this is rascist, and it doesnāt make the use of this mene less rascist
It matters because this meme implies that itās always racist. I donāt mean to say that it canāt be racist.
okay, but that distiction doesnāt really seem that important. It seems to only be relevant if youāre trying to provide cover for its rascist usage.
Iām not saying thatās what youāre intending to do. Just pointing out how it gets used by people who want to claim its not used in a rascist way at all
Rap music also started in the black community but that hasnāt stopped white racists from using tropes and out of context snippets from rap music to attack black people.
I donāt use it at all, but I donāt particularly like the implication that itās definitely racist in all contexts. It just feels reductive.
No, it is simply rascist in the context we are going to be using it. If we were posting on doyen in mandarin it woudl be diffrent. This is some reddit runoff we are filtering.
Chinese here. Thanks everybody for fighting racism on my behalf. Iād just like to point out that Iāve never considered, or met any other Chinese person who considered, the Xinnie meme racist.
The libs downvoting this post en masse š¤£š¤£š¤£š¤£
Iām on hexbear so I canāt see the downvotes lmao š¤£
I just see the overall score
This is why disabling downvotes is good. Make those cowards show themselves.
Racists who know enough not to talk openly shouldnāt be able to passively influence discussion either.
Saying āThis isnāt racist because it is based off of a similar meme that originated in Chinaā has big āI canāt be racist when I say the N-word because I have a black friend.ā energy.
Itās less that and more āohh, itās fine when they say it, but when I say it, itās racistā which isnāt reasonable in the first place for the n-word, but doubly so in this case since we know thereās a lot of racism going around in the HK independence āmovement.ā
Daily reminder HKs minimum wage is 1 dollar for servants and 5 dollars per hour for workers, they have the highest rent in the entire world yet some of the worst living conditions and historically have only had 49% of there parliment able to be elected, the other 51% is 8 western buisnessmen.
HK separtists advocate for the above because they are the lucky enough ones to be above the slave class and they want this relationship to continue, and for things to remain the same rather than for things to get better via intergation with china, which would give the HK working and underclass access to cheap housing via mainland China, who have 90% house ownership rate vs HKs like 17%.
Source;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_domestic_helpers_in_Hong_Kong
I challenged this notion with a lib the other day.
The watermelon originated in Africa. That doesnāt mean that the vile caricaturised depictions of black people eating watermelons is somehow not inherently racist.
You can also look to the origin and continuing usage of the swastika, especially in Asian cultures, as another example here - you arenāt going to tell me that the right-angled unicode swastika being used by westerners on the internet isnāt done in service of fascism 99% of the time.
And on that matter, donāt let erm-ackshually dorks tell you that the 90 degree swastika wasnāt used by Nazis and isnāt representative of them. One of the most famous depictions of the Nazi swastika is a right angled one:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1214749781387436032/pu/vid/450x360/o0Nxlts0lffM8lUv.mp4
āThe watermelon originated in Africa. That doesnāt mean that the vile caricaturised depictions of black people eating watermelons is somehow not inherently racist.ā
Thatās not what is happening here tho. You canāt claim that every cartoon where a black person interacted with a watermelon is racist.
Just like here you canāt claim it just cuz the character is yellow it is racist.
Pooh is used cuz dude looks like Poohā¦ Not cuz heās yellow. The fact that Pooh is yellow too doesnāt suddenly make it racist.
āYeah guys Iām totally not racist, I just think those dirty yellow ching-chongs are ugly and inferior to our superior white race and we should nuke all those subhumans to make way for more lebensraum for the white race !1!!1111!!1!111ā
Anti-Asian Racism
A liberal once made an anti-CPC song with the lyrics āThey say ching chang chong and oppress Hong Kongā
Reminds me of a popular kindergarten birthday song in The Netherlands where you squint your eyes with your fingers and sing āHankipanki Shanghai, Hankipanki Shanghai, Hankipanki Hankipanki, Hankipanki Shanghaiā to the tune of Happy Birthday To You.
Itās not done anymore in most schools these days AFAIK but only since recently
