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VA Governor Ralph Northam Got Some Explaining to Do


Bozo the kKklown

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When I was a kid (like 9ish....grade school age) I got more stuff I understood as racism from black kids. Used to call me white boy all the time. And I knew enough to know they didnt mean it in a nice way. That was about it though. And that was in MD. 

 

But looking back I notice that my neighbors (who were super white) used to do small things that showed prejudice (in a....nice? way). Like offering to feed me or give me cloths or little things like that that my hard working single mother would be absolutely pissed about. I didnt get it then. I get it now. Im not even sure you can call it racist. 

 

Now that im an adult I get all kinds of crazy ****. Every VTech home game I go to im reminded that im black by some white dude. This is in southern VA for the most part. Though I had a guy at work about a month ago let me know how good it was I had a job and that it would keep my ass off the streets so there that. 

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9 minutes ago, Jumbo said:

i'd be interested in hearing how younger people of color view it today, as in the same way or are there issues ...i should note, i haven't watched it in probably 25-30 years, but saw it several times in full over a few years back when it was released and seen clips over the years of course...

 

Ima watch it this week with the GF and let yall know

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47 minutes ago, Kilmer17 said:

My college (Mary Washington) used to have a "beauty pageant" called Wo-Man.  Guys dressing up as girls to compete in a pageant.  Plenty of exaggerated "features" and a few black faced contestants.

 

Funny funny event, until it wasn't anymore.

 

We shouldnt be holding people accountable today for something they did that was acceptable 30 years ago.

 

 

 

In the not too distant future, political operatives are gonna be deep-digging through HBC frat culture and it’s not gonna be pretty for a lot of us.

 

But I won’t care...a little violent hazing and casual homophobia from 1998 wont keep me from supporting a candidate that I think has their constituent’s and country’s best interest at heart.  But that’s just me, YMMV.

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16 minutes ago, FanboyOf91 said:

How did the Virginia GOP lose to these clowns?

Because they were worse and didnt try to hide it.

 

Everytime I forget Richmond was capital of confederacy somehow i get reminded.

 

@tshile we talked about whether Northam would be outed as a racist, I'd say racial insensitive at minimum.  I'm ready for some people my generation to be in charge, people that are used to the racial and ethnic makeup of NOVA and how much of a non-issue everyone jus living their lives actually is.

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21 minutes ago, Jumbo said:

  that besides  it's intention to be slapstick comedy, the movie was to lambast and mock racists/racism, and other things identified with 'conservatism', and of course people overall, was obvious to "all of us" back when it came out...

 

 

Not to mention that Mel Brooks is known for his movies doing exactly all you said. 

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1 hour ago, spjunkies said:

I guess Virginia had monthly blackface parties in the 80's.

 

Goodness

 

On the one hand, 1984 sounds kinda recent --- it was only 35 years ago!!   .... on the other hand it was ALSO only 16 years after Loving vs Virginia.     which frankly...  HOLY CRAP! ...     When this ****ty picture showed up in that crappy yearbook at a Virginia University, there was not a SINGLE child from a legal bi-racial wedding in Virginia that had graduated from High School yet.  I cannot even wrap my head around that.   

 

The year i was born bi-racial marriage  was illegal in Virginia.   

 

so...  things were a bit different then.    those crappy black-face costumes actually seemed pretty damned common, in my failing addled memory from the late 70s early 80s.  you still saw Al Jolson and other stuff like that on TV. 

 

i can remember one halloween when i was around 12 or so (right about 1980) seeing 2 kids in black-face, and another dressed as a "boom-box" ... i remember it so clearly because my ass got chapped over it, and it still stings.     When i saw it,  I  said something to the effect of "omg...that is terrible!"  but i said it with a smile... and one of my sister's friends who was there ripped into me HARD about my smile, and really forcefully saying how terrible it was (she was like 4 years older than me).    Honestly, up until that point i saw it as tasteless, tactless, and icky....

 

...but, you could use the same adjectives to describe MY costume of a murdered cheerleader.      Clearly "tacky" works for murdered cheerleader (hell, tacky is what i was going for), but in retrospect "tacky" isn't strong enough to describe blackface.    

 

But our society, which accepted Al Jolson and Mickey Rooney's awful performance in "Breakfast at Tiffany's", and all sorts of **** on sunday morning cartoons...

 

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Mickey-Rooney-in-Breakfast-at-Tiffanys.j   coal-black-sebben.jpg

 

 

as a society we were still feeling our way towards the current (general) understanding of how bad it is to use blackface.    People that use it TODAY are not just trying to be tacky, they are trying to be dicks.  And succeeding.   But comedians back in the day (including amateur costume wearers)  were TRYING to be tacky, that is what they do.. .but i don't think they were all trying to be evil.   

 

 

 

So in that context .... Northam could've POSSIBLY played the "we didn't have any idea how bad that was, back in those days.."  card.  And it might've worked to some extent, with enough "mea culpa" mixed in............    but jeez has he ever bungled everything since this came out.   He has come across as a liar, and an insincere one, at that.       I am not sure how you recover from the picture AND the badly mangled response to the picture, both.   

 

 

***EDIT***  wow... a LOT of similar posts between when i started, this, and left for coffe, and then came back... :P    so let me change my post to ... yeah, some of what ^^THEY ^^ said

  

     

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there may be holes in this, but off the top of my head per robert downey

 

it seems to me you should distinguish when blackface is being used in a way that supports the cause of anti-racism (inc. via comedy/satire) as opposed to being used to perpetuate the problem of racism

 

as generalities re: blackface:

 

casual use by whites for jokes/parties---not ok ;)

 

used to make social points (inc. via comedy/satire) by people aware of the issues and on the right side of the issue of racism is different, but they are still open to pass or fail judgments in how they execute the choice

 

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Yeah, Blazing Saddles was tremendous and, for suburban white kids of that era (like me), it was instrumental in making a mockery of all that racist **** you heard your grandfather/uncle/neighbor say.  To really “get” Blazing Saddles as an 80s teen was fundamental in growing into a 21st century adult that is very much at ease and allied with black America...and other minorities as well.

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7 minutes ago, Hersh said:

 

Not to mention that Mel Brooks is known for his movies doing exactly all you said. 

 

  i actually did mention that in my post :)


 

Quote

 

part of that was likely knowing about the people making and in the movie and where they stood on such things in the culture of the times


 

 

:P

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1 minute ago, Sacks 'n' Stuff said:

I always thought you were black.

Why do you have to bring out the race card?  Why can't Llevron be judged by the content of his character (or the fact that the name sounds suspiciously like LeBron?)  

 

Btw, Llevron is black.  Look further down the post re going to VT games.

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2 minutes ago, Jumbo said:

 

  i actually did mention that in my post :)


 

 

:P

I was just seeing if you were paying attention to what you write. 🤔 Yeah, that’s what I’ll go with. 

 

and not that fact that I’m watching Transformers G1 with my four year old son now and totally missed it.

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42 minutes ago, Jumbo said:

that besides  it's intention to be slapstick comedy, the movie was to lambast and mock racists/racism, and other things identified with 'conservatism', and of course people overall, was obvious to "all of us" back when it came out...

 

I would say it mocks racism.  Absolutely.  That's pretty much the entire movie.  

 

Come on, the black hero and the Waco Kid are the only two people in the movie who aren't both racists and inbred morons.  It does the same thing to racism that Archie Bunker did.  

 

"Conservatism"?  I disagree.  

 

I'd say that it's more a case of conservatism migrating to where it has become Blazing Saddles than the movie mocking something that was considerably less obvious at the time.  

 

 

46 minutes ago, StillUnknown said:

 

They ran ads that ms-13 was gonna jump out of bushes to grab white women

 

 

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I could be completely ignorant on this...but seeing some examples being used, I'm not sure they are all "blackface"

 

To me, a white guy playing a black guy in a movie where his skin is darkened, etc. isn't the same as the shoe polish around the face and exaggerated features of minstrel-like blackface. So that Soul Man example or what Robert Downey, Jr. did don't feel any different than Eddie Murphy doing that white guy skit. 

 

I write all of that to say that I don't think using some 1980s movies as examples makes what some of the politicians did OK. 

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larry, gene spoke on the intended mocking of conservatism in the movie himself back then, and many people---like playboy for decades---were as focused on the "sexual repression" identity of the gop as well as the racism., and just being 'casual' or 'provocative' with sexual content was kind of 'trolling' conservatives and celebrating liberalism---especially the cleavon on bernadette stuff---mel acknowledged that on a playboy after dark

 

he also talked about some of the brief gay caricatures as also digging at conservatism (they didn't use that term), though mel said he thought less about that and was more concerned that he made one too out there that it wouldn't work comedically, until he remembered who he was and that it was slapstick

 

now some people might have an issue with that aspect now that didn't arise back then  (i just remember one brief scene at the end when the shooting of saddles supposedly spills out onto other movie stes in the studio lot and a male chorus line type dancer in tux and tails with a cane and a very caricatured voice 'saying 'let's get 'em girls' to other male dancers from another movie, as they attack the bad cowboys from saddles...if memory serves :P

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