this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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For the uninitiated:
As a non American, thank you. The headline made zero sense without that context.
If it is American and does not make sense, it is probably racism.
Depressingly true, but largely because our popular culture is so pervasive that anything weird that you'd talk about openly is already pretty commonly known.
Like, the Netherlands don't have a particularly pervasive culture, so anything you learn about them that's not "everywhere" won't make sense at first. It dilutes the whole "wait, what the fuck is 'black pete'?" thing.
All that to say, not all of our nonsense is racist, just the unfamiliar nonsense we don't talk about anymore.
what the fuck is ‘black pete’?
Bizarre Dutch Santa Claus helper. Like an elf, except canonically a black person with curly hair, silly mannerisms, bright clothing, big red lips and played by a white person wearing blackface.
It's almost over the top how racist it is, and there's controversy around if they should keep doing it.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2020/12/4/the-netherlands-black-pete
Turns out if you have a history selling slaves, you'll pick up some stuff.
Point being less about pivoting this to the Dutch, and more that not hearing much about a culture also means you don't hear as much about their awful stuff, and when you hear a lot about a culture you tend to mostly hear about the parts that people want to share in public.
No one's gonna make a movie that just casually drops the wide variety of ethnic slurs for the Italians or Irish that have existed.
OMG.
I can understand an elf covered in soot.
But full on black-face caricature?
Almost like institutional racism is a thing.
No no no, didn't you read the statement from the spokesperson for the far right xenophobic organization in the article?
It's not systemic racism if the people not impacted by it don't think it's racist, obviously.
🤦
As an American, I had no clue what a "sundown town" was, but I do know how far American media will go to obfuscate Führer Drumpf's outright racism and bigotry.
Dude it’s a SUPER old term. Like, Civil War old. They’re using the term because it’s highly associated with slavery-flavored racism.
Edit: I’m not saying it’s an archaic or disused term. I’m saying the term was coined well over a century ago.
Uh yeah that’s more or less what the article is about? I wasn’t trying to say “it’s not used anymore” I only meant that the term was coined a long time ago.
No worries, friend 🍻
Obfuscate? Just because you don't know what something means doesn't mean it's a malicious attempt to hide anything. Sundown towns are widely known as racist ordinances.
Same... I figured it was one of those retirement communities where people go to die. TIL.
You are by no means the only one who thought that before reading the comments…
I was reading Erik Larsen's The Demon of Unrest and one of the things he pointed out was that, in areas of the South, blacks had to be off the streets by a given time. If they weren't, they were subject to arrest overnight (during which they might be beaten or even killed), and then "returned" to their owners the next day (where they'd likely face additional punishment).
I knew of the definition of "sundown towns" as you described them, but it seems like they're post-Civil War attempt at some kind of pseudo-slavery, combined with expanded sharecropping, "separate but equal" facilities, red-lining, voting literacy laws, etc.