Does this warrant this level of criticism

solosuperia

A labour MP's son dressed up as Michael Jackson to go to a fancy dress party.
It seems to have caused some protest...... Labelling it as racism.
Have I missed the point, I don't see this as being racist.
I went to a fancy dress party the other year as Ghandi, bald head wig thing. round metal glasses etc etc.
Was I being racist?
Where is the line? Did I cross it?

ai_1

What justification is being given for calling this racist?
From the detail you've given this sounds absurd but I imagine there's more to it?

solosuperia

To expand on what I said above, Ian Lavery's son had a picture posted on "Facebook" with his dad.

His father, the MP for Wansbeck in Northumberland, held a pint as he appeared unperturbed by his son’s attire, which comprised of a wig, black face paint and him doing a ‘thumbs up’.

His presence in the picture sparked outrage among the MPs’ constituents who said they found it offensive and ‘racist’.

One said: ‘I was appalled and shocked when I saw these photos of Ian Lavery Jr.

RideOnTime

Well then see it then...

Pross

It was probably the black face paint that did it, that hasn't been considered PC for about 30 years. It was also probably unnecessary as Jackson's image is enough to be recogniseable without resorting to 'blacking up' especially considering his own skin colour from the late 80s onwards.

gavbarron

Who was labelling it racist? The Daily Mail by any chance?

ai_1

Pross wrote:

It was probably the black face paint that did it, that hasn't been considered PC for about 30 years. It was also probably unnecessary as Jackson's image is enough to be recogniseable without resorting to 'blacking up' especially considering his own skin colour from the late 80s onwards.

Agreed
I see nothing wrong with the dressing up. The face paint is generally considered offensive because of ways that it's been used in the past. Should it be? Probably not in my opinion. If it's okay to wear a wig or facial hair or draw on wrinkles etc to look like someone of the opposite gender, older, younger etc then what's the difference with trying to appear to be of a different race? The difference is that "blackface" has been used in the past to mock and degrade so it's easy for others to think you're emulating that behaviour.

So it sounds like this may or may not have been racist depending on the guy's intentions but if it wasn't racist it was at least naive and potentially offensive.

solosuperia

Yes The Daily Mail, The Telegraph and The Sun carry the story......
But there is a row in Parliament about it and his constituents have accused him of reing racist.

Don't misunderstand me here, I am quite long in the tooth and I was trying to gauge how far out of date my concept of racism is.
I didn't think it amounted to racism, I can see some people might regard it as bad taste.
In my own case going to a fancy dress party dressed as Ghandi was I crossing the line or dangerously close to it.
On reflection nobody there even hinted it was out of order.

ai_1

SoloSuperia wrote:

Yes The Daily Mail, The Telegraph and The Sun carry the story......
But there is a row in Parliament about it and his constituents have accused him of reing racist.

Don't misunderstand me here, I am quite long in the tooth and I was trying to gauge how far out of date my concept of racism is.
I didn't think it amounted to racism, I can see some people might regard it as bad taste.
In my own case going to a fancy dress party dressed as Ghandi was I crossing the line or dangerously close to it.
On reflection nobody there even hinted it was out of order.

Yeah, it's not really a story. Those papers aren't really pedaling news, just drama.

As above, I don't think your Ghandi costume would offend anyone unless you put on face paint to seem more Indian. Baldness, glasses, age, gender, etc are common to all races. It's the history of mocking other races by putting on face make-up and playing up highly racist stereotypes that has made make-up controversial in my opinion.

BillyMansell

Looks like a case of some people choosing to be offended on behalf of unnamed others or politicians using it for political point scoring.

Was it racist? Was the intention to deliberately cause offense or are others choosing to be offended and call it racist because it's an easy, all-encompassing label for such behaviours?

capt_slog

SoloSuperia wrote:

Yes The Daily Mail, The Telegraph and The Sun carry the story......
But there is a row in Parliament about it and his constituents have accused him of reing racist.

Don't misunderstand me here, I am quite long in the tooth and I was trying to gauge how far out of date my concept of racism is.
I didn't think it amounted to racism, I can see some people might regard it as bad taste.
In my own case going to a fancy dress party dressed as Ghandi was I crossing the line or dangerously close to it.
On reflection nobody there even hinted it was out of order.

It didn't bother anyone when Ben Kingsley did it.

RideOnTime

SoloSuperia wrote:

Yes The Daily Mail, The Telegraph and The Sun carry the story......
But there is a row in Parliament about it and his constituents have accused him of reing racist.

Don't misunderstand me here, I am quite long in the tooth and I was trying to gauge how far out of date my concept of racism is.
I didn't think it amounted to racism, I can see some people might regard it as bad taste.
In my own case going to a fancy dress party dressed as Ghandi was I crossing the line or dangerously close to it.
On reflection nobody there even hinted it was out of order.

Did you use paint or make-up to change the colour of your skin? I think this is where the line is.

RideOnTime

^^^ bit edgy in my opinion.

Pross

Judging by the OED definition http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/racism it is hard to see how it is racism. Even the Institute of Race Relations website definition http://www.irr.org.uk/research/statistics/definitions/ wouldn't appear to suggest it is racist unless you argue it is abusive behaviour based on a belief or ideology. It's a word that gets thrown around regularly without any consideration of its true meaning.

Incidentally, is the definition of Institutional Racism on the IRR site potentially racist in itself? It suggests that Institutional Racism can only occur when a policy disadvantages people from black or minor ethnic backgrounds so therefore it is apparently OK for the police (for example) to have a policy that disadvantages white British people. Seems bizarre to me but then I guess that is how universities etc. get around the issue of 'positive discrimination'.

Thoughtless / tasteless doesn't necessarily equate to racist.

VmanF3

Racist no. Bad taste yes.

MP being involved = should know better.

meth_tical

I find this no different to black people passing as white people and then going on to make a movie (a very bad one) in white chicks http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381707/
Why is it then only political correctness in this country is getting so out of hand and issues this as racist. Next we wont be able to put green face/body paint on and go as "The Hulk" as someone, somewhere will also find this offensive.

Frank the tank

It's a shame some people have nowt else better to do than be "offended" by such trivia. I'm sure our reps in the house have (or at least should have) more important things to do.

Frank the tank

It's a shame some people have nowt else better to do than be "offended" by such trivia. I'm sure our reps in the house have (or at least should have) more important things to do.

Mountaindancer

Racist, Fascist, Communist, Sexist! Words, thrown around by small people with small minds, suffering an inferiority complex and who live in fear of being ignored. Newspaper hacks and some politicians usually fill this category.

MisterMuncher

meth_tical wrote:

I find this no different to black people passing as white people and then going on to make a movie (a very bad one) in white chicks http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0381707/
Why is it then only political correctness in this country is getting so out of hand and issues this as racist. Next we wont be able to put green face/body paint on and go as "The Hulk" as someone, somewhere will also find this offensive.

Or Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder. It's a question of historical baggage, really. Blackface is inextricably linked to some fairly crude and unpleasant stereotypes, used for decades by white people to dehumanize and caricature black people. "Whiting Up" or dressing as the hulk simply doesn't carry this level of meaning because it doesn't have the same history. The situations are not analogous. It's a similar argument to a certain slur "only being short for Pakistani, I don't mind being called a Brit". "Brit" generally wasn't followed by eff off when it was smeared in dogmuck on someone's front door.

nathancom

It isn't surprising that the majority of you don't find this offensive, from your comments you are not black. As the excellent post above states, centuries of dehumanised portrayals of black people leave little room for the inoffensive application of face paint.

I don't think you would find it particularly funny if you lived in a predominately African country that had a history of enslavement, disenfranchisement, vicious and prevalent racism towards white people and then saw black people dressing up as white people as a joke, laughing and getting drunk. You might even find it threatening and demeaning.

This has been going on for centuries, back to medieval carnivals and whilst it is on the surface entirely harmless, there is an insidious connotation of the black man with drunkenness and uncontrolled revelry that really should be disavowed today. Why is this any better than the Tories dressing up as Nazis at stag parties?

BillyMansell

nathancom wrote:

It isn't surprising that the majority of you don't find this offensive, from your comments you are not black.

Blimey, talk about being offensive with your making assumptions about people's race from nothing more than them adopting an objective view of a single story on a forum.

It's this kind of narrow-minded, reactionary view that muddies the water for meaningful discussion.

diplodicus

A few years ago my wife and I went to a party as Homer and Marge. We used yellow skin paint. Was this wrong?

rolf_f

Pross wrote:

It was probably the black face paint that did it, that hasn't been considered PC for about 30 years. It was also probably unnecessary as Jackson's image is enough to be recogniseable without resorting to 'blacking up' especially considering his own skin colour from the late 80s onwards.

It was possibly a clever dig at Jackos racism in whiting up. By representing Jackson as he was when he was still a black man, he was showing how racism works both ways. Or maybe not.

As long as people continue to get into a flap about this sort of thing it will retain the power to offend. If people had the sense not to give a damn about trivial stuff, the racists would lose a lot of their power to hurt people.

ballysmate

nathancom wrote:

It isn't surprising that the majority of you don't find this offensive, from your comments you are not black. As the excellent post above states, centuries of dehumanised portrayals of black people leave little room for the inoffensive application of face paint.

I don't think you would find it particularly funny if you lived in a predominately African country that had a history of enslavement, disenfranchisement, vicious and prevalent racism towards white people and then saw black people dressing up as white people as a joke, laughing and getting drunk. You might even find it threatening and demeaning.

This has been going on for centuries, back to medieval carnivals and whilst it is on the surface entirely harmless, there is an insidious connotation of the black man with drunkenness and uncontrolled revelry that really should be disavowed today. Why is this any better than the Tories dressing up as Nazis at stag parties?

No idea what colour you are, unlike you I can't discern that from a post. To be honest, it doesn't matter anyway.
What I can discern is that you are reading far too much into this. At the end of the day, someone went to a fancy dress party as Michael Jackson. He wasn't trying to depict an entire race neither positively or negatively. He just dressed as a modern icon to the younger generation.

arran77

nathancom wrote:

It isn't surprising that the majority of you don't find this offensive, from your comments you are not black.

You are clearly far more intelligent than any of us because I find it very hard to believe that you can tell what race or colour anyone is from a post on a forum :roll:

I really don't think that dressing up as Jacko is in any way, shape or form a general statement on race or colour.

Things like this get taken way too seriously in my opinion

RideOnTime

Ballysmate wrote:

nathancom wrote:

It isn't surprising that the majority of you don't find this offensive, from your comments you are not black. As the excellent post above states, centuries of dehumanised portrayals of black people leave little room for the inoffensive application of face paint.

I don't think you would find it particularly funny if you lived in a predominately African country that had a history of enslavement, disenfranchisement, vicious and prevalent racism towards white people and then saw black people dressing up as white people as a joke, laughing and getting drunk. You might even find it threatening and demeaning.

This has been going on for centuries, back to medieval carnivals and whilst it is on the surface entirely harmless, there is an insidious connotation of the black man with drunkenness and uncontrolled revelry that really should be disavowed today. Why is this any better than the Tories dressing up as Nazis at stag parties?

No idea what colour you are, unlike you I can't discern that from a post. To be honest, it doesn't matter anyway.
What I can discern is that you are reading far too much into this. At the end of the day, someone went to a fancy dress party as Michael Jackson. He wasn't trying to depict an entire race neither positively or negatively. He just dressed as a modern icon to the younger generation.

Was Billie Jean really not his lover?

Pross

nathancom wrote:

It isn't surprising that the majority of you don't find this offensive, from your comments you are not black.

Who says people don't find it offensive? There's a difference between being offensive and being racist - refer to the definitions I posted above. By classing anything that could be deemed offensive as being 'racist' it undermines the true meaning of racism.

southdownswolf

Did anyone dress up as Bubbles at the party?

arran77

southdownswolf wrote:

Did anyone dress up as Bubbles at the party?

Seeing as he's a common chimpanzee that's probably only offensive if it was something like a gorilla dressing up as him :P

nathancom

Pross wrote:

nathancom wrote:

It isn't surprising that the majority of you don't find this offensive, from your comments you are not black.

Who says people don't find it offensive? There's a difference between being offensive and being racist - refer to the definitions I posted above. By classing anything that could be deemed offensive as being 'racist' it undermines the true meaning of racism.

If the offence is based upon perceived racial differences then it is racial offence.

I am not trying to criticise people for not being offended. Why should they be? That doesn't mean that black people wouldn't have a right to be offended. Would it be ok to dress up as a Fagin with a big hooked nose? I mean it is just a bit of fun (at the possible expense of an ethnic minority group)