Milk bottle miscegenation
JC
Thanks to my brother Dave for the heads-up on this. Wow. Now a shirt that depicts the stereotype of the taboo affair that yields a brown baby. Awesome. :| Btw, there’s a bloggy aspect to the site where people can comment on the designs. Most of the responses on this shirt site say that people looooove it…. but I noticed one that questioned the potential racism. It’s not worth really reading through, unless you are interested in witnessing that people don’t really see the problematic nature of it at all.
Adrianna wrote:
Wow!!! People will put any crap on t-shirts.
Posted 20 Jun 2006 at 1:17 pm ¶
CJK wrote:
You should check out the gallery. It appears that one of the pictures may have a guy in black face.
Posted 21 Jun 2006 at 8:41 pm ¶
Changeseeker wrote:
Out of 97 different t-shirt designs in their on-line catalog, 100% are on people who appear to be European-American (”White”). How interesting…
Posted 22 Jun 2006 at 10:17 am ¶
Ani wrote:
Changeseeker -
don’t you know that there are no witty t-shirt wearing ethnic hipsters ? Although…my sister is a tattooed freak hipster and she is half guatemalan and caucasian just like me, but she totally passes as white so how can we (of all people) make assumptions? Would there be raging against the site if they only used non-white and mixed models? what is the right balance to keep away the accusations of exotification or racism?
Posted 22 Jun 2006 at 4:33 pm ¶
jay smooth wrote:
the t-shirt itself is certainly race-weird if not straight racist, since arguably it resurrects the age-old stereotypical role assigned to black male sexuality, that of the unseen boogeyman who constantly threatens to steal your white woman.
How I’d react to it may depend somewhat on the context I saw it worn and presented.. but in this context, especially seeing the reaction from all these kids on there, so put-upon and smugly dismissive of any suggestion that the racial connotations should be analyzed, it’s looking pretty iffy to me.
Posted 22 Jun 2006 at 5:29 pm ¶
Changeseeker wrote:
A question way beyond me, Ani! :-D But you and your sister sound cool. Did you mean that people think you two are “White?” Or that you both pretend you are? Or that one of you does and one of you doesn’t? Or that…oh, dear…now I’m confused…
Posted 22 Jun 2006 at 5:32 pm ¶
Ani wrote:
Changeseeker,
Sorry, reading that over I can see the confusion. My sister has a more fair complextion and looks more like our mom (who is white) while I have more of my dads tone (the gueatemalan) so she never really gets asked what she is and people just assume she is all white. Plus she is a tattooed hipster freak and you know their ranks are still somewhat lacking in ethnic diversity. When asked she says she is mixed, but I don’t think that she is asked very often.
Posted 28 Jun 2006 at 11:53 am ¶
Ani wrote:
I just checked out the blog responses to this shirt from the link and its long and its people going back and forth about whether its racist or not and points to another shirt http://www.threadless.com/submission/69304/my_son Along the same intention (child of extramarital affair).
The discussion there is not very good.
Posted 28 Jun 2006 at 2:12 pm ¶