Michelle's $540 Sneakers

[Vincent Vega]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1855276' date='May 2 2009, 02:13 AM']I don't know what to tell you all. I was a pretty common racist caricature, particularly during WWII.[/quote]
I didn't say I doubted it. Just that I was unfamiliar.
[quote]Even if not explicitly portrayed as rats the Japanese were given sort of rat like reatures, you see the teeth, exageratedly yellow skin etc.

[img]http://wpcontent.answers.com/wikipedia/commons/d/d2/AntiJapanesePropagandaTakeDayOff.gif[/img][/quote]
That, I have seen.

[Hassan]

[quote name='USAirwaysIHS' post='1855280' date='May 2 2009, 01:17 AM']I didn't say I doubted it. Just that I was unfamiliar.[/quote]
I understand

[TotusTuusMaria]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1855278' date='May 2 2009, 02:16 AM']Yeah, and someone who knew nothing about the history of racial slurs against black Americans would know that comparing them to a monkey was any big deal. What's your point?[/quote]


calling a black person a monkey is something that is done pretty commonly today as a racial remark.

a rat being compared to a japanese person is done.. never. actually, you are probably the first one to do it in america in years.

the point is... your comparison wasn't very good.

[quote]Those posters were from the second world war when the anti Japanese sentiment was the most extreme, if you think it just magically vanished when the US government stoped printing racist propoganda posters you would probably be mistaken.[/quote]

again, haven't heard it in NEVER. Probably a couple people may go around saying it because obviously you have heard about it (says something about the crowd you hang around), but I have never heard of it and obviously a couple others here haven't either. It has almost all "magically" disappeared. There ain't much hate going on toward the Japanese anymore, hassan. and no one (except you) compares them to rats anymore.

[Hassan]

I don't know what is so suprising about this to you all. It's not exclusive to the Japanese.


[img]http://www.bnaibrith.ca/images/jewishratmsn.jpg[/img]

Or Rawanda, what were the Tutsis called? Cockroaches. You have to dehumanize the group, associate them with some sort of hated pest, strip them of individuality. This would be like when Neil Boortz (a popular right wing radio host) described Muslims during Ramadan as coming out to eat at night like cockroaches.

I mean there is a reason I through a little self rightous fit everytime time someone here decides to explain how all Muslims think. Muslims, Christians, Jews, blacks Japanese etc the first step to persecuting them is to strip them of their identity.

[TotusTuusMaria]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1855286' date='May 2 2009, 02:24 AM']I don't know what is so suprising about this to you all. It's not exclusive to the Japanese.


[img]http://www.bnaibrith.ca/images/jewishratmsn.jpg[/img]

Or Rawanda, what were the Tutsis called? Cockroaches. You have to dehumanize the group, associate them with some sort of hated pest, strip them of individuality. This would be like when Neil Boortz (a popular right wing radio host) described Muslims during Ramadan as coming out to eat at night like cockroaches.

I mean there is a reason I through a little self rightous fit everytime time someone here decides to explain how all Muslims think. Muslims, Christians, Jews, blacks Japanese etc the first step to persecuting them is to strip them of their identity.[/quote]

hmmm... kinda like aborted babies?

so all i have to do is find imagery comparing aborted children to an animal type and you'll start standing up for them too?

[Hassan]

[quote name='TotusTuusMaria' post='1855285' date='May 2 2009, 01:22 AM']the point is... your comparison wasn't very good.[/quote]
why?



[quote]again, haven't heard it in NEVER. Probably a couple people may go around saying it because obviously you have heard about it (says something about the crowd you hang around), but I have never heard of it and obviously a couple others here haven't either.[/quote]

As I said, given the persecution of ethnic or religious minorities follows some general pattern it really could be predicted. If the Japanese wern;t compared to rats it would have been some other common pest. Something that needed getting rid of.

[quote]It has almost all "magically" disappeared. There ain't much hate going on toward the Japanese anymore, hassan. and no one (except you) compares them to rats anymore.[/quote]
[url="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese_sentiment#Since_World_War_II"]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Japanese...ce_World_War_II[/url]

Since World War II
In the 1970s and 1980s, the waning fortunes of heavy industry in the United States prompted layoffs and hiring slowdowns just as counterpart businesses in Japan were making major inroads into U.S. markets. Nowhere was this more visible than in the automobile industry, where the lethargic Big Three automobile manufacturers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler) watched as their former customers bought Japanese imports from Toyota and Nissan, a consequence of the 1973 oil crisis. The anti-Japanese sentiment manifested itself in occasional public destruction of Japanese cars, and in the 1982 murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American beaten to death when he was mistaken to be Japanese.

Other highly symbolic deals — including the sale of famous American commercial and cultural symbols such as Columbia Records, Columbia Pictures, and the Rockefeller Center building to Japanese firms — further fanned anti-Japanese sentiment. The unease continued well into the early 1990s.

Popular culture of the period reflected American's growing distrust of Japan. Futuristic period pieces such as Back to the Future II and Robocop 3 frequently showed Americans as working precariously under Japanese superiors. Criticism was also lobbied in many novels of the day. Author Michael Crichton took a break from science fiction to write Rising Sun, a murder mystery (later made into a feature film) involving Japanese businessmen in the U.S. Likewise, In Tom Clancy's book, Debt of Honor, Clancy implies that Japan's prosperity is due primarily to unequal trading terms, and portrays Japan's business leaders acting in a power hungry cabal.

The animosity which peaked in the 1980s, when the term "Japan bashing" became popular, had largely faded by the late 1990s. Japan's waning fortunes, coupled with an upsurge in the U.S. economy as the Internet took off, largely crowded anti-Japanese sentiment out of the popular media, which has turned to other issues.

On 2 March 2007, the "comfort women" issue was raised again by Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, in which he denied that the military had forced women into sexual slavery during World War II in an orchestrated way. He stated, "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion in narrow sense." Before he spoke, a group of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers also sought to revise Yohei Kono's 1993 apology to former comfort women.[18][19] - The New York Times editorial quickly refuted Abe's statement: “These were not commercial brothels. Force, explicit and implicit, was used in recruiting these women. What went on in them was serial rape, not prostitution. The Japanese Army’s involvement is documented in the government’s own defense files.”[20]

[TotusTuusMaria]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1855295' date='May 2 2009, 02:29 AM']why?[/quote]

because comparing Japanese to rats with big ears isn't commonly done anymore.

[TotusTuusMaria]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1855295' date='May 2 2009, 02:29 AM']The animosity which peaked in the 1980s, when the term "Japan bashing" became popular, [b]had [u]largely[/u] faded by the late 1990s.[/b] Japan's waning fortunes, coupled with an upsurge in the U.S. economy as the Internet took off, largely crowded anti-Japanese sentiment out of the popular media, which has turned to other issues.[/quote]

Edited May 2, 2009 by TotusTuusMaria

[Hassan]

Do you call fading in the early ninties after a big upswing well after the second world war almost magically disapearing after WWII?

[TotusTuusMaria]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1855306' date='May 2 2009, 02:34 AM']Do you call fading in the early ninties after a big upswing well after the second world war almost magically disapearing after WWII?[/quote]

i never said it magically disappeared [u]after WWII[/u]

you are the one who even first used the term "magically"

I am just saying it isn't done anymore nor has it been done in decades, which makes the comparison not so much of a good one seeing as the monkey racial thing has been used recently and is a common racial remark toward black people.

[kamiller42]

Hassan, speaking of insensitivity towards a people, do you think Michelle Obama was being insensitive wearing $540 sneakers to a food shelter where they were feeding the poor? I wonder how many meals those shoes would have bought? Just saying... that's all.

How's Barack's brother doing these days? I wonder what kind of shelter $540 would buy him.

[TotusTuusMaria]

i don't think she was being insensitive.

[homeschoolmom]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1854671' date='May 1 2009, 08:24 PM']Yeah, I mean having a stepfather with only two vast estates and then going to the nations most prestigious prep schools.

Must have been tough fer her.[/quote]

So, do we get to disregard anything that the Obama daughters might do in life because their daddy was president, they went to Sidwell Friends school and their mom wears $540 sneakers? I don't really care, I just want to know if I can write them off now.

Get back on topic, please!

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='TotusTuusMaria' post='1855345' date='May 2 2009, 03:59 AM']i don't think she was being insensitive.[/quote]
I think she is downright embarrassing, and so is her husband. I also get tired of everyone pulling the racist card where none is intended if someone makes a derogatory remark about him. They are the antithesis of everything I believe, and the color of their skin has nothing to do with it.

[HisChildForever]

[quote name='kamiller42' post='1855326' date='May 2 2009, 02:48 AM']Hassan, speaking of insensitivity towards a people, do you think Michelle Obama was being insensitive wearing $540 sneakers to a food shelter where they were feeding the poor? I wonder how many meals those shoes would have bought? Just saying... that's all.

How's Barack's brother doing these days? I wonder what kind of shelter $540 would buy him.[/quote]

Okay, while it is ridiculous to buy a pair of sneakers for that price, if we begin to really examine our purchases we will ALL find something we probably could do without. Contact lenses, treating yourself to that new sweater, any and all beauty products. Should we feel guilty when we buy these things with our money?

Besides, the sneakers may be WORTH that much money, but how much did she PAY for them? The price would have gone down significantly if the sneakers were on sale and she had a coupon, perhaps she had a gift card.