Hey, kids! Wanna know what your role model, Miley Cyrus, does in her spare time?
Um. Yeahno. What they said.
Oh, and don’t read the comments at TMZ. We PoC need to watch our stress levels. No, seriously, don’t.
Barry’s BlueSky- Untitled April 24, 2024And there's a written version! https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/24/zionism-seder-protest-new-york-gaza-israel [contains quote post or other embedded content]
- Untitled April 24, 2024Naomi Klein on how Zionism has become a false idol. https://youtu.be/U75KcMUjMyI?si=uZuV_UNZkWXNFYG3&t=198
- Untitled April 24, 2024The Leader of All Manhood has issued his ruling: It's gay for men to love sex with women. Guys: If you hate sex with women, you can do it and be straight. But if you love sex with women, that's gay. If you want to be straight, fuck men instead. Sorry, but that's the rule.
- Untitled April 24, 2024
Wow. Disney just has a knack for creating trainwrecks, don’t they? I mean, how the hell do people still kid themselves that Disney’s band of vapid starlets are a positive role-models after watching these catastrophic messes.
I mean seriously, did they have coke dealers on-set when they were shooting episodes of the Mickey Mouse Club?
Wow, racist and stupid. What is wrong with these people?
Which one’s Miley Cyrus?
The kid on the left looks a whole lot like one of the kids in my Venture Crew. Are these people all supposed to be famous or something?
Hell, if I hadn’t read the posting and had just seen the picture my reaction would have been “Why are all those people squinting?”
Cyrus is in the center of the photo, with the black sleeves and the purple coat lying on her lap. She’s the only one in this photo who is famous.
Yes, a lot of white people don’t notice even obvious racism. It’s not morally wrong to have something go over your head, as long as you wouldn’t argue that your reaction should be normative.
Hell, if I hadn’t read the posting and had just seen the picture my reaction would have been “Why are all those people squinting?”
Especially if you don’t think, “One of the kids in this photo is not like the others, in two ways: 1) he’s not white; and 2) he’s not squinting — I wonder if there’s any relationship between 1 and 2?”
Wow, racist and stupid. What is wrong with these people?
They’re teenagers.
This is racist and stupid, and it should be called out and she should apologize. But it doesn’t appear hateful, it looks ignorant. Most 16 year-olds are ignorant, given to rash behavior, and easily influenced by their piers. All three of these typical tendencies are on display here. And white 16 year-olds are ignorant about racism. But ignorance is NOT stupidity, ignorance can be cured by education. I would focus not on Miley herself being stupid and racist, but on her ACTIONS being stupid and racist, and hope she apologizes and learns a lesson.
The squinting one might mistake for just drunk and photophobic. The putting the fingers in the corners of the eyes so that you look “oriental” gesture is fairly unmistakable though. Why did this seem like a good idea to anyone? Seriously, what “fun” or “joke” is there to be found in this sort of behavior?
And they’re doing this right next to, on both sides of, an Asian dude?
Point well taken, Decnavda.
I would argue that my reaction would be normative for people who have not been exposed to this kind of racism. But upon being told “they’re not squinting, they’re pretending they are/mocking Asians” I would then expect people to recognize the racism inherent in the act.
The Asian kid not doing it? Nah, not so much a clue. I’ve seen plenty of teenage and 20-something party pictures where almost everyone in the group is doing “x” while one or two of the kids in the picture is “WTF?” Didn’t register.
I must say that I really haven’t been exposed to anti-Asian racism. Perhaps this seem naive to you all but that’s my life. I was raised up in a small town in Massachusetts. We didn’t have any Asians there (and no Hispanics and one black family) and I’d never heard any. When I moved to the Chicago area there were a few Asian kids in the school. One of them was one of my best friends and he and I were on staff at Scout summer camp as well. If there was any anti-Asian racism voiced there it wasn’t done in front of me. Then when I went to MIT there were lots of Asian kids from all over (Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Red China as it was then known, Hong Kong, etc.), and overt racism of any kind is just not something you’re going to run into at the Institute.
If you didn’t see it in this photo, there’s just no way you can say that with any confidence.
My guess is that the Asian dude’s presence is the whole point of the picture. Someone made a joke about him being the only Asian person there, and then they all decided to take a picture where they would all look Asian. Hey, look!
I agree with Dianne — stupid action, probably no understanding of context.
Well, Hannah responded and said none of this is her fault, she’s being unfairly picked on because Britney’s clean and sober for minute.
I’m going with stupid, not ignorant.
Especially if you don’t think, “One of the kids in this photo is not like the others,
Except he does look like the others, i.e. vaguely stoned. And I noticed that fact first because A) it seemed to fit the title as well as the first sentence, and B) I didn’t care enough about Miley Cyrus to pay close attention to the photo.
Mmmhmm. This.
Since she’s still a teenage girl, it’s probably still sinking in to Miley that she really, really doesn’t have privacy, and she won’t for a long time. Her show is about a girl who lives two lives, as a rock star and as a regular high school girl, but I imagine it’s hard for a person whose brain isn’t fully to developed yet to digest the idea that everything she does carries cultural and political weight.
The actions in the image are offensive, but without knowing the context of the photo it’s hard to attribute motives to the people being photographed. That is to say, what they’re doing is wrong, but it’s not really possible to gauge how wrong or mean-spirited unless you were there. (For example, one of the blogs that the original post links to uses the word “chink.” I would argue that “chink” is an offensive term, akin to the “slanted eyes” gesture.)
So what’s saddest about the photo is not the realization that Miley Cyrus is an especially obnoxious bigot. It’s that she probably is/was well within the majority view of wealthy white teens who don’t /didn’t realize that thoughtless racial posturing can be offensive.
Miley Cyrus apparently “doesn’t notice racism” in a lot of situations. An episode of her show include a rather insensitive treatment of a black woman, played for laughs. This isn’t an isolated incident. I’d say she needs a lesson in racism 101, stat.