Was Ellen's tweet really racist?

[Propertyquandry]

here

I'm really surprised at the outrage over this. I cannot even see how it can be seen as casual racism. He's just been declared, once again, as the fastest man on the planet. Everybody loves him and she makes a joke basically alluding to the fact that he'd get her where she wants to go quicker than anything else. He even retweeted it, and not at all in a negative way. All the talk of riding him like a mule. It's a mock up of him giving her a piggy back ffs! It seems if he was white or she was black it would be ok.

It's interesting that white people like to have 'interesting', 'useful, 'constructive' discussions about racism without the inconvenience of the opinions of Black people

OP, you say you don't need to read the links that people have posted.

But I think that if you read them you might develop a clearer understanding of some of the other positions people are taking.

I'd recommend the white fragility article that someone else already linked to:
goodmenproject.com/featured-content/white-fragility-why-its-so-hard-to-talk-to-white-people-about-racism-twlm/

I don't think that is racist. And I stand by the assertion that oppression skews perspective. Like an abuse victim being nervous of an innocent touch. It's skewed based on prior abuse. Likewise this response is skewed based on prior, well, abuse.

That I can see can be deemed offensive

It is of no importance at all, what you deem to be offensive

It is continuing abuse. Not confined to history

I can see the point about the American psyche (for both races). The history is recent. America is such a big country (and quite separate from its neighbours) that it's easy to see its racial history as the only racial history there is.

Everybody's view are shaped by their experiences, and I would say (and I know I'm generalising) that if you've always lived in the US, racism is probably more at the forefront of cultural knowledge than in other countries.

"I stand by the assertion that oppression skews perspective."
This is an incomplete argument. (White) privilege also skews perspective.

"Like an abuse victim being nervous of an innocent touch. It's skewed based on prior abuse."
If you knew a person is the victim of abuse who is 'nervous' uncomfortable with other people touching them, why would you touch them or claim they are wrong to be 'nervous', uncomfortable as they view is skewed? It looks to me like you find it difficult to empathise or put yourself in somebody else's shoes so to speak.

Thanks for the way you responded to that Property

I think your analogy of the abuse victim is interesting. So, if I understand correctly - not all people, let's say men, are abusers, however victims will be wary of all men because of their experiences?

Okay. So when a survivor of abuse gets to know a person, then what can happen? And knowing that this abuse survivor has been through an awful experience, what should the man's approach be to put her at ease?

Whose responsibility is it to make sure the abuse survivor is at ease? Is it more his, or hers?

I actually think that whilst it will take them both time to build a trusting relationship, it is more the man's responsibility to prove and demonstrate that he is not an abuser and is not going to hurt her.

Actually, Adjustable, I have read that article before. I completely understand the balance of power argument and the concept of uneven distribution of wealth and resources. But again, I found it coming from a very American POV. There will undoubtedly be some British people for whom it resonates but I don't think that the majority of British black men and women or British of Sinfusm descent feel they have less access to healthcare and education because they aren't white. I think there's a prevailing British psyche (if I'm allowed) that positions in government and the like are the preserve of a certain socio-economic group but I don't think it's drawn along a racial divide. Happy to be proved wrong on that though.

It was probably a bad PR decision given the possible connotations. However, the last thing Ellen is is racist!

I agree with this.

However op just because something might not seem offensive if it involves two white/ or two black people does not mean it isn't if it involves a black and white couple as their is a different power dynamic.

I

I may be wrong but I think most men wouldn't even register that as a 'thing'.

I'm absolutely sure you're right about this, especially if 'most men' in this scenario are white.

And yet, Alice Walker (for example) has written about this kind of negative portrayal of black women. This makes me suspicious about how white men view black women, because I'm inclined to think that Alice Walker probably provides a better analysis of this than the average white man.

Wench, that is all kinds of perverse. How can you be 'absolutely sure' OP is right and simultaneously argue the other side?

Talented though she is, AW had no special insight in to the minds of individual white men, she can only legitimately comment on culture. (And again her work/ life is rooted in a US context with focus on the southern states, so there's that specific background anyway.)

There's a thread running at the moment in which some posters are refusing to accept that there is any structural racism in UK society, which is depressing.

But it's equally depressing when human beings who are free of these big prejudices and just want to relate to each other on a human level find have base motivations inaccurately ascribed to them by people like you wench.

Or do you think these strange cultural fetishes are at play in all inter-racial (hate that word) relationships?!

It's interesting that white people like to have 'interesting', 'useful, 'constructive' discussions about racism without the inconvenience of the opinions of Black people.

Well yes, a fair point.

There is something of an opportunity here for an interesting discussion about social media outrage, and arguably racism too, bevause there can be so few people that believe Ellen intended the racism people are seeing.

So often the original speaker is utterly polluted by the supposed outrage that it can be impossible to parse what was really intended and how that relates to what was understood.

I think part of the problem with her tweet is actually the core of the joke - it's funny because it is ridiculous to imagine that you would treat an elite athlete as something to ride about on.

As if you could get Usain Bolt to be your pack horse. Even though he is really fast, obviously he would never do it.

But now you're thinking of him as an animal, and thinking of and treating mans as animals has a nasty recent history (and present).

The fact that he is black, from a country populated by the ancestors of slaves, makes that pretty uncomfortable when the person making the joke is white.

What if Oprah had made it?

Then maybe woukd it just be about the silkiness of riding piggy back on an athkete's back for speed?

I think notions of the 'British' or 'American' psyche are inconsequential here. Ellen speaks to a global audience using Twitter. It's worth being sensitive to this when posting anything on the Internet.

I don't think it is completely absurd to ponder whether Ellen's photomontage is an unconscious expression of inherent racism. I am not saying it is but it is conceivable.

Actually, ignore where I said recent history. It's part of practically the whole history of the USA.

Other countries have centuries of history before the slave trade, but the racial imbalance has wound through practically the whole history of the US - if you ask somebody British about the UK's history, chances are you'll hear about the Normans, The Cousins' War or the Tudors, before the slave trade had even begun...

Sorry, that should say Indian.

Peargrapes, no I'm not suggesting they would've wrong to be nervous and uncomfortable. Their nervousness and discomfort would be totally understandable given their history. But it would still be irrational given how few men are actually abusive and given how the touch was completely innocuous.
Likewise, as I've said, I totally get where people are coming from with regards this tweet. I just think it's a skewed perspective and bring offended based on that skewed perspective does not make the tweet offensive. Nor does panicking and recoiling or physically pushing the innocent ban out the way make him an abuser simply because he walks in the footsteps of s previous abuser.

And yes, it would be the new man's task as it were. And yes, it's still the task of white Americans to remember and 'be gentle'. I just think this particular tweet was so blatantly obviously about speed that it's a setback to call the woman a racist because of it.

"If the fastest runner on earth was white and Ellen had made the same remark nobody would have batted an eyelid."
Though that is not the point. There would be no connotations of slavery in this scenario but there are in Ellen's image.
Furk got it right in her post "However op just because something might not seem offensive if it involves two white/ or two black people does not mean it isn't if it involves a black and white couple as their is a different power dynamic."

If the fastest runner on earth was white and Ellen had made the same remark nobody would have batted an eyelid.

But that isn't the case, so here we are with a photo of a white woman riding around on a black man to run her errands

Property being white and therefore privileged in terms of race also distorts perspective.

....unless you take the white man's or woman's perspective as the 'rational' and 'correct' benchmark.

Yes, the white fragility article is written from an American POV.

However, it emphasises racism as a system, rather than a matter of individual prejudice. This is also true in the UK.

And it talks about the discomfort that white people feel when experiencing challenges to the prevailing ways of seeing the world. Also applicable to the UK.

For example, it seems possible that defences of Ellen's image could be driven by a sense of white fragility in response to the challenge to white objectivity, white racial innocence, and individualism.

I don't think the article is too American to be useful in the UK.