Internets

[farla]

There's some bitchery about the racial subtext of hair jokes going on. It's mostly three camps - "Please consider the racial subtext if you're making a joke about how African hair is ugly" "You are offending the oppressed black peoples if you say anything but how awesome African hair/hairstyles are" and "WTF since when?"

What I find interesting is that one of the posters who's in the second camp has an icon from the last cycle of writing "characters of color" about how writers avoid dark-skinned characters as considered too hard to identify with when people write about vampires and other completely non-existent humanoids.

It maybe has something to do with the fact the vampires don't throw fits if you describe them as having pasty complexions.

Comments

[ember-reignited.livejournal.com]

Urgh. I got sort of pulled into this one, trying to convince Blackjack to stop acting stupid, because in spite of everything I do like her. She keeps talking about how white people have funny hair, she has funny hair, funny hair is just funny hair! Yeah, I only started to figure out White Privilege recently, but I'm a lot younger than she is.

And honestly, the people in Camp Two aren't helping anyone.

[farla.livejournal.com]

Yeah, part of the reason she got jumped so badly is that last time she said something so much worse, it's hard to assume good faith. But really, if there's argument regarding a racial group once commonly referred to as subhuman, don't make comparisons with dogs.

I think part of the problem is that people are getting tripped up regarding the difference between racial characteristics (black people have kinked hair) and styles (bangs vs no bangs seems to be the major issue among the complainers). How much of the hairstyle is a matter of racial traits that we should all accept, how much culture we should accept, and how much is open to criticism?

While I see the initial point, and viewing only straightened hair as pretty is clearly wrong, and there's a history of this, I think that once you get to "unkempt = wild = uncivilized = savages = offensive" chain, you're pushing a bit too far. Other people were objecting to even describing skin color as dark because dark can be meant negatively, and some of the black posters were maintaining that including mentions in any way of racism is racist, because black people want to read fiction for escapism and they deal with racism in real life so you're excluding them and that's White Privilege too. So you end up unable to say anything.