does this offend you?

[GrownupGirl]

I've eaten a different brand similar to those onion rings, they are a basically sour cream and onion flavoured version of Cheetos Puffs, and I like them.

The French stereotype isn't offensive because it's a white guy. It's only when it's a non-white person that it's offensive, because white people have never been oppressed, ever.* Like the Frito Bandito, who was a Mexican stereotype and angered many Mexican-Americans. I read that people in Mexico, however, really liked him. Go figure.

*Total sarcasm. Duh!

 

[Alexej]

It seems that the type of "johnny Frenchman" which is that of the man, on his bike, selling onions, wearing his beret; actually comes from the Breton farmers who travelled over to the UK and sold onions.

Other French people do not understand why, in the UK, there is the stereotype of "Johnny Frenchman"

 

[Judge]

Well, it wouldn't surprise me if Pepe Le Pew tried out for the lead part in those Jonny Cat commercials. Of course casting a skunk as a cat would have been most politically incorrect, right? Lots of stereotypes out there.

 

[garnetflower13]

Do you mean when you eat them, or at about ten o'clock at night afterwards when you're sitting bolt upright in bed wondering why your tonsils feel like Satan hung his socks on them?

 

[stringer]

The trend for getting offended over silly little things really undermines the aim to stop real discrimination.

This is very true, I think. It is liable to produce a kind of "offence fatigue," where ordinary, decent people are driven to a feeling of exasperation with "yet another damned whine from the 'easily offended' brigade."

The accusation of something's "being offensive" should be reserved for things that really matter, I think, and should not be devalued to the point of meaninglessness by overuse.

 

[Jumpback]

There are lot of negative stereotypes of Italians in the US, from being gangsters to being to goofy commercials and cartoon characters for food from the past about things like this

But the thing is that Italian mobsters actually tended to like gangster films and goofy, racist advertising probably did a lot to popularize a US interpretation of Italian food.

Like Speedy Gonzalez and Slowpoke Rodriguez are now considered offensive characters, except Mexican immigrants tend to not be offended by them

Kind of the same with fried chicken and African-Americans, African-Americans actually buy more chicken than other populations and Popeyes chicken sets up restaurants in black areas because they serve a spicy variant that tastes more like southern poor traditions, which is where black food preferences tended to emerge from

Popeyes Sandwich Strikes a Chord for African-Americans

Things between poor whites and poor blacks have always been kind of similar, it’s that people in power have reasons to turn them against each other. This SNL skit does a good job of showing this issue

 

[garnetflower13]

This is very true, I think. It is liable to produce a kind of "offence fatigue," where ordinary, decent people are driven to a feeling of exasperation with "yet another damned whine from the 'easily offended' brigade."

The accusation of something's "being offensive" should be reserved for things that really matter, I think, and should not be devalued to the point of meaninglessness by overuse.

I like that phrase, "Offense Fatigue." I am getting there quickly as people are jumping all over each other to see who is more politically "correct."

 

[Jumpback]

So I like old music. You have to watch out because some of it is pretty racist... But have you ever heard of Polk Miller & the Old South Quartette? Polk was a Confederate veteran and the OSQ, at least two of them, were freedmen. (Their names weren't published because it was dangerous to doxx somebody back in the 1900s.)

Anyway, in 1908-ish they got a contract with Thomas Edison to make phonograph records, which they did. In 1909 they made the first interracial record, "The Bonnie Blue Flag," a Confederate marching song. They did cut one record in 1910 that fits the discussion pretty well: it's called "Watermelon Party." Miller did not sing on that one, only the O.S.Q. (Miller may have been playing the guitar.) Racist slurs? yep. Black people & watermelons? yep. Actually racist? No, actually not. It's people having a really good time. Cancel culture would go too far by erasing them.

US history is very, very complicated. The whole blackface thing is completely misunderstood. Like Al Jolson was a Jewish northern liberal who stood up for blacks, and who was almost universally appreciated by black communities at the time. But then two things that caused the long dead KKK to be reformed was a Hollywood movie and Jewish factory owners employing sweatshop conditions in Atlanta and blaming and innocent black man for a rape and murder of a 14 year old white girl, because Jews had so much power to get their guy off.

It’s very, very complicated, blacks actually really liked black face liberal Jew Al Jolson, but blacks and whites were united against mistreatement of Jewish factory owners against poor members of both groups

White minstrel and “coon songs” of the 19th century were very racist but they also came from whites being stuck in a Victorian tradition where proper behavior was required and they could only get around this Victorian control of properness by dressing in black face

In the super liberal era of just after WWI in Paris and Berlin, whites complained that these places imported less talented black musicians instead of allowing whites to gain employement due to being black made them more “authentic”

So the solution ends up being, because people desire simple answers, some poor white peoole are at fault for everything

 

[Jumpback]

not only was Tin Pan Alley (the sheet music craze especially before recorded music but into the first 2 or 3 decades of it) very racist seeming with minstrel songs and coon songs, but it also was accepting along black composers to work, who actually wrote many of the best of the early 20th century standards

History of these things is all very complicated and confusing.

Even history of US includes German villages and Italian villages and Irish communities and Jewish communities and so on within cities and these groups fighting things out in kind of racist gangs between poor people for control of organized crime and whatever

 

[Jumpback]

Here is a version of “After You’ve Gone” by Fiona Apple, a 1918 song that is one of my favorites written by two African-Americans

At the same time “Coon Songs” were being put out by northerners who tended towards being liberal and Jewish, but they were also actually liberal and allowed blacks employment

These things happened in places like New York City with very few poor white Christians being involved in anything. The interplay was between people like Jewish city dwelling immigrants and black song writers, both of which had almost zero to do with poor white Christians. This is US history, it just tends to be inconvenient

What actually happened is liberal white city dwellers both put out incredibly racist things and gave black composers and musicians a chance. But the whole issue gets blamed on poor white christian people who were not involved in any way.

Tin Pan Alley - Wikipedia

“An extraordinary number of Jewish East European immigrants became the music publishers and songwriters on Tin Pan Alley – the most famous being Irving Berlin. Songwriters who became established producers of successful songs were hired to be on the staff of the music houses.”

 

[Moshi Moshi ^w^]

Is this packaging offensive? Seems to me it shows a stereotypical French person:-

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Johnnys-Onion-Rings-24-50g/dp/B00IQS8DL6

Nope. Trivial thing to get offended by to be honest.

 

[Brictoria]

Is this packaging offensive? Seems to me it shows a stereotypical French person:-

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Johnnys-Onion-Rings-24-50g/dp/B00IQS8DL6

Personally, the most offensive thing is that there are people who actively go looking for things to be offended by, or trying to find things to be offended about.

 

[Gerontius]

US history is very, very complicated. The whole blackface thing is completely misunderstood. Like Al Jolson was a Jewish northern liberal who stood up for blacks, and who was almost universally appreciated by black communities at the time. But then two things that caused the long dead KKK to be reformed was a Hollywood movie and Jewish factory owners employing sweatshop conditions in Atlanta and blaming and innocent black man for a rape and murder of a 14 year old white girl, because Jews had so much power to get their guy off.

It’s very, very complicated, blacks actually really liked black face liberal Jew Al Jolson, but blacks and whites were united against mistreatement of Jewish factory owners against poor members of both groups

White minstrel and “coon songs” of the 19th century were very racist but they also came from whites being stuck in a Victorian tradition where proper behavior was required and they could only get around this Victorian control of properness by dressing in black face

In the super liberal era of just after WWI in Paris and Berlin, whites complained that these places imported less talented black musicians instead of allowing whites to gain employement due to being black made them more “authentic”

So the solution ends up being, because people desire simple answers, some poor white peoole are at fault for everything

You're talking about the Mary Phagan murder, I imagine.

This is a particularly interesting analysis of the subject you've done. I was aware of "coon songs" as well, specifically Arthur Collins & Byron G. Harlan as recording artists who specialized in that.

Very interesting that you mention the "propriety" of the Victorian era found a release in minstrelsy. I know at this same time in England the Pre-Raphaelites were wanting to see people go back to the old morris-dances and maypoles. Well, I guess white Americans did not have that tradition, coming from a mostly Puritan background, so they borrowed from slaves who had never had to put up with Puritan nonsense.

Quite interesting, and thank you.

 

[Jumpback]

You're talking about the Mary Phagan murder, I imagine.

I see that they just reopened the 1913 Mary Phagan murder case

Did Leo Frank kill Mary Phagan? 106 years later, we might finally find out for sure.

One of the strangest events in American history where a 14 year old white Christian girl who worked in a mix raced sweatshop factory was either killed by Jewish guy who ran the factory or black worker at the factory, but whites were so convinced that it was the Jewish guy that they even ignored Jim Crow laws to allow the black guy who was the other suspect to be the star witness, who said things about helping the guy running the factory with all his prostitutes and so on and on and on.

There were no other suspects, it was either black guy or Jewish guy who killed 14 year old white Christian female factory sweatshop worker and whites were so on the black guys side that they might have even let a guilty black guy get away with murder, just because they trusted black southerns more than rich Jewish northerners who had quickly become dominant in factory ownerership in Atlanta in 1913

 

[Jumpback]

This is a particularly interesting analysis of the subject you've done. I was aware of "coon songs" as well, specifically Arthur Collins & Byron G. Harlan as recording artists who specialized in that.

Very interesting that you mention the "propriety" of the Victorian era found a release in minstrelsy. I know at this same time in England the Pre-Raphaelites were wanting to see people go back to the old morris-dances and maypoles. Well, I guess white Americans did not have that tradition, coming from a mostly Puritan background, so they borrowed from slaves who had never had to put up with Puritan nonsense.

Europeans have turned to the combined freedoms US whites and blacks twice to search for their own freedoms against white European morality

First during the Jazz age in ultra liberal 1920s Berlin and Paris, then as rock and roll and blues during the late 50s and into the 60s

People in Britain and whereverjust don’t understand things like freedoms in the US and actual cooperation between black and white artists does not mean that black artists were the sole trailbreakers

Like you can’t ask especially Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters who their primary influence is because they are dead, but it’s going to be Jimmie Rodgers, a white country singer and also the most popular blues singer of the late 20s and early 30s. Or like Chuck Berry is way more influential to the British Invasion than Elvis and he was larger a country singer, his first hit was a reinterpretatatiin of the country song Ida May and other songs are either basically country or heavily country influenced. He said this. He played country songs at black clubs and got harassed for being a black hillbilly before black audience realized country rhythms were actually fun. Things like the “House of the rising son” by the animals is 100% whitein origin

But the influence is either from having freedom from things like Victorian white traditions by being poor white people or for looking to black slaves and recently freed black slaves who were not controlled either to copy or for inspiration. But nothing happens without both sides, Jazz doesn’t happen without blacks having more freedom to explore European instruments and rock and roll doesn’t happen with figures like Jimmie Rodgers inspiring blue singers and things like rock and roll don’t happen without Chuck Berry adding country or just general freedom of like Buddy Holly had (buddy holly probably being the most important Beetles inspiration and Chick Berry being the second most important)

So inspiration heavily comes from black artists, but even more so for finding a way around control of whites in Victorian/Edwardian/etc societies

 

[Jumpback]

You're talking about the Mary Phagan murder, I imagine.

This is a particularly interesting analysis of the subject you've done. I was aware of "coon songs" as well, specifically Arthur Collins & Byron G. Harlan as recording artists who specialized in that.

Very interesting that you mention the "propriety" of the Victorian era found a release in minstrelsy. I know at this same time in England the Pre-Raphaelites were wanting to see people go back to the old morris-dances and maypoles. Well, I guess white Americans did not have that tradition, coming from a mostly Puritan background, so they borrowed from slaves who had never had to put up with Puritan nonsense.

Quite interesting, and thank you.

Some of my favorite songs are late Tin Pan Alley songs written by black artists like this Fiona Apple version of a 1918 song written by two black artists

But at the same time northern, Tin Pan Alley was giving blacks a chance, things like the worst of the worst offensive songs against native Americans were being put out, and the people putting these out tended towards being liberal city dwellers, the Jewish cowboy craze which made native Americans seem ridiculous happened during this same period, but then it was also the northern Jews of Tin Pan Alley giving blacks a chance

US history is so very very complicated and the US is so important to the world view of reality, that I hate it when things get simplified into poor white peoole being racist because that is not the problem and has never actually been the real problem

 

[Jumpback]

You're talking about the Mary Phagan murder, I imagine.

This is a particularly interesting analysis of the subject you've done. I was aware of "coon songs" as well, specifically Arthur Collins & Byron G. Harlan as recording artists who specialized in that.

Very interesting that you mention the "propriety" of the Victorian era found a release in minstrelsy. I know at this same time in England the Pre-Raphaelites were wanting to see people go back to the old morris-dances and maypoles. Well, I guess white Americans did not have that tradition, coming from a mostly Puritan background, so they borrowed from slaves who had never had to put up with Puritan nonsense.

Quite interesting, and thank you.

If you look at some old Al Jolson things it’s a white/Jewish northern liberal guy dressing in black face to be able to just have fun employing black music and to a lesser extent the music of white poor people

It’s all completely misunderstood now, but it made sense at the time, especially since Jolson and others were not allowed to have fun like this without dressing in black face

The black face is incredibly offensive, but the freedom whites had for dressing in black face and even blacks understandings of this issue at the time has gotten completely lost to history

Jolson actually employees black people in this clip and there is even some pre break dancing 50 years before break dancing. Why blacks supported Al Jolson instead of found the black face thing offensive

And the song he sings is very white country influenced to make things even more confusing (why Chuck Berry played country music in black clubs, because white country music tended to be more fun dance to than blues oriented black music, despite using the banjo which may have come from African traditions). Except, also, biggest influence on blues in late 20s/early 30s was a white guy. But white music also influenced by Jewish showtunes and black Jazz/ragtime

US history is very, very complicated, but it gets presented as super simple

 

[Jumpback]

Europeans have turned to the combined freedoms US whites and blacks twice to search for their own freedoms against white European morality

First during the Jazz age in ultra liberal 1920s Berlin and Paris, then as rock and roll and blues during the late 50s and into the 60s

People in Britain and whereverjust don’t understand things like freedoms in the US and actual cooperation between black and white artists does not mean that black artists were the sole trailbreakers

Like you can’t ask especially Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters who their primary influence is because they are dead, but it’s going to be Jimmie Rodgers, a white country singer and also the most popular blues singer of the late 20s and early 30s. Or like Chuck Berry is way more influential to the British Invasion than Elvis and he was larger a country singer, his first hit was a reinterpretatatiin of the country song Ida May and other songs are either basically country or heavily country influenced. He said this. He played country songs at black clubs and got harassed for being a black hillbilly before black audience realized country rhythms were actually fun. Things like the “House of the rising son” by the animals is 100% whitein origin

But the influence is either from having freedom from things like Victorian white traditions by being poor white people or for looking to black slaves and recently freed black slaves who were not controlled either to copy or for inspiration. But nothing happens without both sides, Jazz doesn’t happen without blacks having more freedom to explore European instruments and rock and roll doesn’t happen with figures like Jimmie Rodgers inspiring blue singers and things like rock and roll don’t happen without Chuck Berry adding country or just general freedom of like Buddy Holly had (buddy holly probably being the most important Beetles inspiration and Chick Berry being the second most important)

So inspiration heavily comes from black artists, but even more so for finding a way around control of whites in Victorian/Edwardian/etc societies

Like

You're talking about the Mary Phagan murder, I imagine.

This is a particularly interesting analysis of the subject you've done. I was aware of "coon songs" as well, specifically Arthur Collins & Byron G. Harlan as recording artists who specialized in that.

Very interesting that you mention the "propriety" of the Victorian era found a release in minstrelsy. I know at this same time in England the Pre-Raphaelites were wanting to see people go back to the old morris-dances and maypoles. Well, I guess white Americans did not have that tradition, coming from a mostly Puritan background, so they borrowed from slaves who had never had to put up with Puritan nonsense.

Quite interesting, and thank you.

Listen to T.B. Blues recorded by Jimmie Rodgers in 1931. He died from turburclosis less than 2 years later

Then listen to Robert Johnson recording 5 years later who was a major influence of the British Invasion (the recording quality of Johnson is far inferior, so it sounds like it is earlier, but it actually was 5 years later)

And keep in mind that Rodgers was very, very popular. Even if he borrowed or copied from black musicians he was so legit that he was Howlin Wolfs hero (Wolf said that he couldn’t yodel so he howled) and so on

Rodgers was the real deal, both the father of country music and the most influential blues artist of his time, while dying from Tuberculosis. Guy likely had mad respect from everyone, he was slowly dying the entire time he was popular, and he knew it.

The Rodgers recorording has 34 thousand views and the Robert Johnson recording has 6 million views. I am sorry, but although I see Johnson as a superior guitar player, I see one recording as real blues involving a guy who is going to die very early and knows it and actually wrote a better song, and another guy who turned to mythology and did not write as good of a song. But the inferior, less sympathetic version which might be a partial copy gets 200 times as many views because blacks are oppressed minorities and whites are evil doers

This is not fair, no one at the time hated Rodgers and no one was as a sympathetic figure as a guy dying of Tuberculosis and he was a sympathetic figure for recording with black southern musicians, but now he must be a figure of hate now for being white and being involved in country music and being Christian.

 

[Brictoria]

US history is very, very complicated, but it gets presented as super simple

All history is complicated, but people like to simplify it so as to be able to present their "preferred" bits out of context in order to support their narrative, hoping their audience lack the knowledge\intelectual curiosity to confirm what they are told is "true" and so will just accept it on face value.

 

[Jumpback]

All history is complicated, but people like to simplify it so as to be able to present their "preferred" bits out of context in order to support their narrative, hoping their audience lack the knowledge\intelectual curiosity to confirm what they are told is "true" and so will just accept it on face value.

But the problem being that people usually just don’t have the knowledge or intellectual curiosity to question what they are told is “true”

Hitler era Germans didn’t question, they complied and punished everything that went against the Goebbels narrative. They just did not question or even allow questioning, they complied and punished non-compliance. And this included behavior by a lot of very smart people.

The worst thing about humanity might be just how succeptible humans are to propaganda and manipulation.