Racism is a waste of time. It is one of the lowest forms of stupidity. It should always be mocked. The racist should be allowed to speak, promptly ridiculed, and his statements repeated ad absurdum in the context they deserve. The “be ever sensitive” approach leads to taking the racist seriously… it leads to debating with the racist on his terms. It allows no one to laugh at a tragedy so that they may move beyond it. Overuse of racist banter and memetics, coupled with likewise useless and disgusting matter results in it not being funny anymore… renders it pointless and absurd among anyone who ever cared one way or the other… kills it as a race meme.

As noted by some posters here, 40 oz alcoholic beverages in the hands of anyone where they’ve not been seen before are funny in and of themselves to many people… why is that? How did that happen? I bet most who found this video funny would have found it *exactly* the same level of funny had Walters and Goldberg traded the turtle and 40. The reason? Perhaps the racist tones of the meme have given way to the absurdist tones, completely in the minds of many. That’s beautiful, and it’s happening now.

s nc bsrvd, blck ppl rlly d lv chckn. But there is nothing wrong with that because chicken is delicious.

Now that I’ve lighted the flare to distract your racism-eating Tyrannosaurus Rex, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, as Layne notes.

And a lesbian! (I think, I’m too lazy to verify this)

And developmentally disabled! Whoopi is off limits!

Austin’s distinction between locutionary, illocutionary and perlocutionary speech acts is an interesting take on literal meaning, intended meaning and the meaning inferred.

These meanings may be the same, or they may be wildly different. Discerning which is the ‘correct’ meaning may not be very easy or possible at all. As you say, context is what it is all about; but context can only help us tease meaning out, it cannot ever provide ‘true’ meaning.

I suppose that attempting to discern meaning is what human social experience is all about, and if it were always plain and always easy we would have no art or poetry, or political discussion or top 10 lists, or…well, you know, no human social experience!

Wait, you’re also saying those 40s are just 40s. . .

They’re not, btw. Like a cigar, a malt liquor 40 often is just a 40, but not when inserted into the hand of a black person who’s not actually drinking one.

And who’s being incoherent?

And who’s “reading racism into a thing”? Tell me, Crispian, Layne, and others–would you also not object if she’d been depicted eating watermelon? how about fried chicken? (Crispian, I can already surmise that, incredibly enough, you see no problem with depicting Whoopi getting happy about some fried chicken. I wonder if bb moderators will let your claim that “black people really do love fried chicken” [wtf?] stand . . . )

And where did you put the rest of my posts?!

cf. Jay Smooth

And I’m not calling for censorship either. Instead, I think that racist depictions of black people should be called out as such. Putting a 40 in a black person’s hand reiterates a racist stereotype, no matter how much you as a white person used to drink it too.

Food for thought–and growth:

http://mediamatters.org/blog/201105260009

http://www.broadwaycarl.com/2011/05/but-its-not-about-racism-chugging-40s.html

You’re not doing this right, smearballs. You’ll look better, believe me, if you man up and admit your mistake.

On the flip side, the pickle and pigs head puppet with Joy was unexpected and sorta funny.

Maybe I am just too old. It seems like a lot of humor lately is just ‘weird’. Tim & Eric I think optimizes this trend. While I often enjoy weird – weird doesn’t always equal funny.

You’re talking about ostensibly more obvious signs of stereotyping (watermelon and chicken) but that all goes to evidence of showing that the creator had an ill intent in mind or is amazingly oblivious. For instance, if Whoopie were holding a watermelon in one hand and a chicken leg in the other…we would say the creator’s racist intent is painfully obvious. I mean, how could he have been so unaware of such a blatant “coincidence”! And maybe it’s a generational thing, but I didn’t note the “40s” connection at all. Though I’ve seen that stereotype mentioned around the internet before it’s not one I’m very familiar with.

This is why it is so easy to accept it was a coincidence and not expect smearballs to feel a sharp pain of guilt. I mean…he had Barara Walters shot. Is it because he is antisemtic? I mean, the only Jewish person on the View is shot! Is he recalling the Holocaust? How could he be so insensitive to such a major part of world history?

We can read all kinds of things into his video. You feel that the 40s is a really obvious reference. I don’t think so.

As I said above, though, why the focus on intention, rather than effects? Can’t someone do something that’s racist without meaning to do so? I don’t care what smearballs meant to do, and I do know what smearballs did–that moment in the video has the effect of reiterating a common stereotype about black people in the U.S.

Re the Baba Wawa bit–how many Americans realize she’s Jewish? I’ve known of her for decades, and I didn’t. Far as I know, she’s basically just “white.” IOW, she doesn’t register for most people (far as I know) as Jewish.

But Whoopi is obviously black, and although you may not be aware of it, associating black people with 40s is a common and pernicious stereotype about blacks. I’m not “reading that into the video.” It’s there. And I’m not saying smearballs should feel “a sharp pain of guilt.” A sincere “Oops, my bad!”, felt and verbalized, would be just fine.

cf. Jay Smooth

No need to take it personally.

And to those others also saying that they’ve seen other sorts of people drinking 40s–that doesn’t negate the fact that depicting a 40 in a black person’s hand reiterates a pernicious stereotype. I mean really, why Whoopi’s hands, and not Joy’s or Baba’s?

Food for thought–and growth:

http://thinkprogress.org/media/2011/05/24/169212/eric-bolling-40oz/

Isn’t it possible to do something racist without realizing that’s what you’re doing?

Sometimes effects are nearly as important as intention. If a government policy has disproportionate effects on a particular demographic. There are examples in the law, such as manslaughter charges where there was no intent to kill. But what is the unintentional effect here? That someone is or could be offended?

It could be put more generously as ‘maintaining harmful stereotypes of blacks.’ But a split second clip in a music video is hardly maintaining harmful stereotypes. All I could remember was the diet coke and the giant breasts. I don’t think blacks must never be depicted ingesting watermelon, chicken, or 40s, lest it automatically be racist. It will always depend on context. In this context, it was a very brief part of odd behavior that included soda and breasts.

If we turn again to Ms. Walters, she is also depicted holding pickles (a staple of Jewish delis) and a pig’s head (Jewish people are forbidden from eating pork). Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to dismiss any offensiveness because people may not know Walters is Jewish; that it isn’t obvious. Well that is what I’m saying about Whoopie holding the 40s for a split second.

Now if someone is truly offended, even if the offense is exaggerated or silly, I agree it’s nice for someone to apologize for creating unintentional offense. But I don’t think that person needs to concede the action was inherently racist.

BTW, thanks for a more interesting discussion that just that the video was amusing.

Also, @bcsizemo? You’re really not making yourself look less racist there. In fact, I’ll bet the folks you’re defending (smearballs I guess) wish you would just shut the hell up.

What isn’t obvious? That Whoopi is black? That is obvious. If you’re saying the racist idea that “blacks sure do loves them some 40s!!” isn’t obvious to a helluva lot of Americans, then I think you’re wrong. That visual joke-among-many in this video invites recognition of, and thus laughter at, a racist stereotype, and it will register that way to a lot of viewers, whether it did for you or not. And so, the problem–non-black laughter at black kids stealing and eating watermelons, black men stealing chickens and eating fried chicken, black adults acting as easy to scare as children, and so on, are all racist forms of entertainment that mainstream U.S. society respectfully dropped decades ago (for the most part). And so, I object to the resurgence of that form of racist humor here. And if pickles and a pig’s head in Jewish BW’s hands evoke a lot of similarly explicit anti-Semitic laughter, then I object to that too.

“Now if someone is truly offended, even if the offense is exaggerated or silly, I agree it’s nice for someone to apologize for creating unintentional offense. But I don’t think that person needs to concede the action was inherently racist.”

I’m not following you here If the offense isn’t a racist offense, then what kind is it? (And again, I don’t care whether the offense was intended or not.)