Tasteless, Racist or Both?
Is there a difference between racism and just acting stupid? The Spanish Olympic basketball team posed slanting their eyes by pulling them with their index fingers.
We're predictably horrified and assume that the copying of ethnic features is and racist. Is it? We're pretty much in agreement that the minstrel days are gone and that white performers should not put on blackface. There is a current controversy with the film Tropical Thunder and white actor Robert Downey in blackface (for the purpose of satirizing white Hollywood). There is another white actor in Jew face with exaggerated Semitic features.
Does intent mean anything or is acting as any other ethnicity automatically wrong and racist? When white kids copy Black jargon are they racists, stupid or both?
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