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A Historical Guide to Hipster Racism

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A Historical Guide to Hipster Racism http://www.racialicious.com/2012/05/02/a-historical-guide-to-hipster-racism/ ! ⍰ ❎ Go APR MAY JUN f % 88 captures 16 7 May 2012 - 27 Dec 2019 2011 2012 2013 ▾ About this capture SUBMISSIONS GUIDELINES COMMENT MODERATION POLICY WHO WE ARE AFROPOLITAN Search Lies, Damned Lies, and the Complicated Accounting of Identity [Counterpoint] ABOUT THIS BLOG Half-Baked: Popchips And Ashton Kutcher’s Brownface Fiasco Racialicious is a blog about the intersection of race and pop culture. Check out our daily updates on the latest celebrity gaffes, our A Historical Guide To Hipster Racism no-holds-barred critique of questionable by THEA LIM on MAY 2, 2012 · 20 COMMENTS media representations, and of course, the inevitable Keanu Reeves John Cho By Thea Lim newsflashes. Last week at Racialicious HQ, we were delighted to see the term Latoya Peterson (DC) is the Owner and “hipster racism”–coined by our very own Carmen Van Kerckhove Editor (not the Founder!) of Racialicious, in 2006*–suddenly enter mainstream parlance, thanks to Arturo García (San Diego) is the Managing Jezebel’s publication of Lindy West’s “A Guide to Hipster Editor, Andrea Plaid (NYC) is the Associate Racism.” In a flash, the words “hipster racism” papered Editor. You can email us at themselves across Facebook and Twitter feeds across the [email protected]. The founders of Racialicious are Carmen continent (and maybe the world?). Words are wonderful, and when more people have access to language that Sognonvi and Jen Chau. They are no longer helps them name the racism of everyday life, we’re happy. with the blog. Carmen now runs Urban There was only one glitch. While West linked to one Racialicious post (a short piece Carmen wrote in 2007 about Martial Arts with her husband and blogs white girls and gang signs) she never once name-checks Racialicious or Carmen…or any of our amazing pals and about local business. Jen can still be found at Swirl or on her personal blog. Please do allies who have been writing about this stuff since the main target was Gwen Stefani’s Harajuku Girls (i.e. a long not send them emails here, they are no time ago). longer affiliated with this blog. On the one hand, no one takes up social-justice work to see their name in lights and, at the end of the day, the Comments on this blog are moderated. point is just to get the message across, no matter who gives it the signal boost. On the other hand, we’re only Please read our comment moderation policy. human. It hurts when work that we, as a collective, have been jackhammering about for seven-plus years gets credited to someone else. (Seven years, y’all! Back to the dawn of skinny jeans! Before Facebook was open to the Use the "for:racialicious" tag in del.icio.us to public, for cripes’ sake.) send us tips. See here for detailed instructions. And as our friends at Bitch pointed out, it is also distressing, though not in the least surprising, that the words “hipster racism” are more palatable, resonant, and listenable when they come from the mouth of a white blogger. Interested in writing for us? Check out our It’s enough to make you get real low and start thinking terrible emo thoughts, like one white blogger is worth submissions guidelines. more than ten bloggers of colour. And so! To keep the emo monster at bay and, as an ancient person who remembers all the way back to a long lost time when Racialicious was known as Mixed Media Watch, I decided to quietly slip out of retirement for a FOLLOW US ON TWITTER! moment to revisit just a few of our landmark posts about hipster racism, so as to remind ourselves (and yes, to remind the internet) of all the brotherpucking hard work we have done, lo these many years. We are proud to present, in chronological order, Racialicious’ Greatest Hits (Hipster Racism Edition): Join the conversation 1. “Dude, Where’s My White Privilege?“ & “Dude, Where’s My White Privilege? Take 2,” Carmen Van Kerckhove (2005) A WORD FROM OUR SPONSOR Had to use the Wayback Machine to unearth these two gems. Part 1 examines the phenomenon of Williamsburg “Kill Whitie” parties, where white hipsters enact a parody of black hip-hop culture in order to “kill the whiteness inside,” and Part 2 deals with a white hipster who spent 2005 appearing at hipster parties dressed as, uh, Jesus in blackface. Here is an excerpt from Part 2: People (even people of color, not just white people) really seem to believe that we’ve come to a point where racism is over, where it’s passe to get mad about social injustice. And it’s now become cool to be “politically incorrect.” But what the hell does “political incorrectness” actually mean? In my rant I quoted Debra Dickerson on her definition: What happened to race after multiculturalism hit the scene? Check out The rhetorical cul-de-sac where white hate went—in goes racism, out comes political the Asian American Writer's Workshop's 5 incorrectness. Use of this phrase is a tactic designed to derail discourse by disguising racism as part series. defiance of far-left, pseudo-Communist attempts at enforcing behavior and speech codes. However, vicious, brainless, knee-jerk, or crudely racist a sentiment may be, once it is SUPPORT RACIALICIOUS repackaged as merely “un-PC” it become heroic, brave, free-thinking, and best of all, victimized. THE OCTAVIA BUTLER BOOK CLUB …There is absolutely no difference between Blackface Jesus and the blackface minstrel performers so popular at the turn of the century. It’s just as offensive as Mickey Rooney’s yellowface getup as Mr. Yunioshi in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” White people like “Blackface Jesus” think that they have somehow “transcended” racism. Maybe because they hang out with black people, have black friends, or even fuck [excuse my French] black men or women, that means that they couldn’t possibly subscribe to the same racist notions as did the less open- minded previous generations. Sorry to disappoint, fellas, but you guys grew up to be EXACTLY like them. These two posts led to the internet’s first documented use of the term “hipster racism,” in Carmen’s 2007 piece (Click the book for the latest conversation) “The 10 biggest race and pop culture trends of 2006: Part 1 of 3.” For an in-depth discussion of the term, see s.e. smith’s 2009 article: “Hipster Racism” at meloukhia.net, and for a variation on the theme, “Hipster Ableism” at RECENT COMMENTS FFWD, also from 2009. Violetta on Game of Thrones’ Sexposition 2. “Wes Anderson: The Original Heartbreaker,” Thea Lim (2007) and Race Quandary If I could go back in time, I would rename this post “Wes Anderson: The Original Hipster Racist.” This one has a Violetta on Game of Thrones’ Sexposition and Race Quandary special place in my heart because it’s how I got hooked up with Racialicious. An excerpt: Nejasna on Game of Thrones’ Sexposition and Race Quandary Characters of colour in Wes Anderson’s films are always caricatures, hilariously exotic. Anderson uses “race as a novelty”, says salon.com, “suggesting an assertively white-kid view of the world.” …[With Nejasna on Game of Thrones’ Pagoda in Bottle Rocket and The Royal Tennenbaums, and with the Filipino pirates in The Life Sexposition and Race Quandary Aquatic] Anderson also uses Asian cultures to demonstrate just how educated and well-travelled he is. StrngeFruit on The Struggles of Discussing It’s like the movie equivalent of “Some of my best friends are Laotian” and “I went backpacking in Race In The Asian American Evangelical Vietnam.” The master of in-joke filmmaking, Anderson’s brown characters are like an inside joke for Church [Racialigious] urban hipsters who’ve visited Little India a few times. FEMINISM FOR REAL – JESSICA, …But here’s the thing about Wes Anderson: he positions himself as an outsider, and his protagonists are LATOYA, ANDREA always outsiders, painfully awkward and deeply deficient in social skills but also desperately seeking love (and you will notice that his white characters are capable of longing for love in a much more profound way than his characters of colour will ever acheive). But at the end of the day, what is so outsider about Wes? He’s an extremely succesful, wealthy, white dude. That’s not to say that rich white dudes can’t ever feel alienated. But to position yourself as an outsider, while making art that ensures that people of colour are truly outside, is obscenely fake. 3. “The New Yorker and Hipster Racism,” Andrea Plaid (2008) Another milestone in Racialicious history–this one is from when Andrea was still credited as a Guest Contributor. Here our favourite Associate Editor takes down the New Yorker for its now-famous cartoon of Barack and Michelle as fist-bumping, Osama-loving terrorists: THE SAME WOMAN – THEA Humph, you gotta love hipster racism. I define hipster racism (I’m borrowing the phrase from Carmen Van Kerckhove) as ideas, speech, and action meant to denigrate another’s person race or ethnicity under the guise of being urbane, witty (meaning “ironic” nowadays), educated, liberal, and/or trendy. This racist and sexist balderdash that’s the New Yorker cover fits squarely into that definition …The cover actually corresponds to a story about how Senator Obama’s work in Chicago influenced his current presidential bid…And the magazine actually wrote another pro-Obama article about a year ago…[perhaps they] thought they’d get a pass on the cover because they did good by Obama with the articles and thought people would catch the wink and nudge of the visual joke because, hey, they’re all on the right side anyway.
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