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Comment by grujicd | Hacker News Reader

I watched that scene on yt, read the lyrics and even wiki page about that song. I can't understand why it's considered "extremely racist". It looks even cute. However I'm from Eastern Europe and probably miss some subtler context here. Or is this a case of overcorrection in US society? Excessive political correctness for past wrongdoings?

It's also quite funny when I saw that "black magic" is now considered racist. Guess what? It's also called "black magic" in Serbia since centuries ago, when noone here ever saw non-white man. Black in this context symbolizes darkness, and fear we feel in the dark. Not a skin color.

Btw. "roleplaying" cowboys and indians was a pupular childhood game in 80-ties here. Although Indians (I'm using this term since it's still the only one used around here) were typically portraited as bad guys in movies, they were as popular as cowboys in our games and many children wanted to be like them.

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Mostly because it reinforces/reinforces several stereotypes by associating the group as exotic and savage (less developed).

For example, making their skin literally red. Potentially artistic license, but also very odd considering that isn't a real skin color. Or stating that they were white to begin with and then were turned red, implying a type of deficiency/aberration from "normal" white. Plus the term "redskin" was used historically as a pejorative and associated with contempt, derision, condescension, or sentimental paeans to the noble savage. The stereotype of huge noses also is frowned upon since it was used to make claims of their savagery and brutishness unlike the civilized Europeans. (See also stereotyping Jews as having big noses)

Similarly, the song implies that the entire language is non-sensical words instead of actually being a full language. This is probably the biggest issue. The tribes actually had a full language for communication, not just a bunch of grunts.

It also takes something that would have very specific and special meaning, a war dance, and turns it into a party dance.

The sexism isn't great either. Forcing Wendy to be the aid since she's a girl instead of letting her join in the fun.

> Or stating that they were white to begin with and then were turned red

The lyrics never say that the native were once "white" and turned red. It says that they're red because they've all been blushing. The "white" skin color is never mentioned nor even implied, anyone can blush and it has nothing to do with skin color.

> Similarly, the song implies that the entire language is non-sensical words instead of actually being a full language.

The song gives actual words in some constructed native language, together with their translations. For such a short and simple text, the implication that they can do a lot more than just grunt could hardly be any clearer!

> The sexism isn't great either. Forcing Wendy to be the aid ... instead of letting her join in the fun.

They're showing that their native culture encourages women to work and make themselves useful to their community and tribe, and that their contributions will be properly valued in return. Have you never heard of the Ant and the Grasshopper? It was quite a popular story among native Americans, despite originating in the Western world.

> I watched that scene on yt, read the lyrics and even wiki page about that song. I can't understand why it's considered "extremely racist". It looks even cute. However I'm from Eastern Europe and probably miss some subtler context here. Or is this a case of overcorrection in US society? Excessive political correctness for past wrongdoings?

It's "extremely racist" because the new requirement by certain ideological groups is that depictions of certain ethnic groups has to be done with extreme sensitivity, otherwise they're racist. It's an extremely high bar (e.g. I'm sure a huge amount of American material depicting the English or French would be considered racist if that standard were applied). The result seems to be a general expungement of Native American imagery in the US, even of some stuff created by Native Americans themselves.

> It's also quite funny when I saw that "black magic" is now considered racist. Guess what? It's also called "black magic" in Serbia since centuries ago, when noone here ever saw non-white man. Black in this context symbolizes darkness, and fear we feel in the dark. Not a skin color.

First they go after the mockery, then they of after the innocent stereotypes, then they go after the things that just have a coincidental relation (because they can't stop).

> I'm sure a huge amount of American material depicting the English or French would be considered racist if that standard were applied

I think what you are missing here is that there is no history in the US of genocide against people of English or French descent. The US has a long history of exploiting American Indians, forcibly relocating them at gunpoint, or just killing them outright.

Part of what made this possible was systematic dehumanization of American Indians by portraying them as ignorant savages who were incapable of being "civilized" due to their race. This is the exact dehumanization that Disney was engaging in for laffs in Peter Pan.

Obviously, we need to do more to make up for this history of injustices against American Indians. But I find that those who speak loudest to justify racist caricatures against them are the ones least likely to want to do anything to redress those injustices.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Massacres_of_Native_A...

War of 1812. The Acadians. The Irish.

>> I'm sure a huge amount of American material depicting the English or French would be considered racist if that standard were applied

> I think what you are missing here is that there is no history in the US of genocide against people of English or French descent.

I'm not missing that, and I'm well aware that kind of logic is used to justify the different standards. However, those justifications aren't terribly relevant to what I was describing, which was the standards themselves and their results.

As an aside, that justification isn't terribly satisfying, and has some pretty significant rough edges/internal contradictions (e.g. implying that racist/stereotyped depictions are OK so long as there's "no history in the US of genocide against" against the stereotyped group).

> ... Indians (I'm using this term since it's still the only one used around here)

Many of the tribes still in existence today refer to themselves, in English, as "Indian" or "American Indian" (and many Native American) but most just use their actual tribe name. "Native American" is a weird term to be the "PC" term as it's very Euro-centric. I think the outrage culture's issue over the term "Indian" is a lot more being offended on other's behalf than the parties themselves being offended. At the very least, they're grouping together a lot of different tribes who have different opinions and treating them as a monolith which, to my eyes, is the thing we shouldn't be doing.

"European" or "asian" seems to be as big of a monolith than native american and yet it's a convenient term and in many cases it's not offensive.

I don't see why "native american" has to be euro-centric. They are the people that were living before the europeans (and middle-eastern, asians and africans) arrived. Those are also american now (as in: they are now citizens of a nation in the american continent), but I think we can distinguish the original population as "native".

On the other hand I (personally, as a mixed race native american, I know other people don't mind) quite dislike the term "indian" as it stems from a confusion that europeans had many centuries ago...and somehow they haven't bothered to correct it?

“Extremely racist” seemed odd to me too after watching it? Maybe outdated? It didn’t seem like the characters were interacting with the Native Americans in a racist way? They participated in their cultural traditions and seemed to have a fun time doing it?

The characters aren't participating in the cultural traditions of Native Americans, they're interacting with and participating in a pretty ridiculous stereotype of Native Americans.

> They participated in their cultural traditions and seemed to have a fun time doing it?

That might well be the problem. Some people will regard that as "cultural appropriation" regardless of the surrounding circumstances. That is, even if the "appropriated" subculture is totally okay with the practice, it's still considered wrong - apparently, the new standard is other cultures must always live totally isolated from the "dominator" culture, as if in a zoo or under a viewing glass, for the sake of hipster-like "authenticity".

> It's also quite funny when I saw that "black magic" is now considered racist.

Do you have a handy link for that? Google cannot find anything useful for me right now that isn't just some people on Quora...

I have definitely seen this before but it seems pretty more on the extremities. Although that's where all these ideas started, good and bad.

Not just with magic but the idea of white/black, light/dark as a placeholder for good/bad qualities being racist. Seems much more obviously related to illumination than color to me (scary/bad things happen in the dark/blackness/night).

Seems to me like a quick fix would be to not use white/black to refer to people.

Sorry, I don't have references, I think I saw it in discussions when github switched from master to main.

This is a bit of problem for us outside of USA. We don't experience US culture from everyday interactions. We mostly get it online where many things are exaggerated and polarized more than in reality.

So, is there a controversy around "black magic" the US or not?

> So, is there a controversy around "black magic" the US or not?

That I can't answer being outside the US myself, alas.

It's similar overcompensating logic as people use to now rename git branches from 'master' to 'main' or whatever -- even though the concept of master was never anything about, or analogous to, slavery (i.e. there are no 'slave' branches -- it's just not the mental model, at all). Keep in mind that it's ostensibly smart people doing this.

Surprisingly (but maybe I missed a memo), the Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), is in fact defined in terms of master and slave devices; but, I'm not aware of any movements to redefine it. The embedded systems world has not (yet) been cleansed and re-educated.

It's a new Puritan era.

>This will resume your Premium subscription, are you sure?

This broke one of my package managers the other day. New employee couldn't get up and running.

If anyone from Facebook/IGListKit is reading this, go pound sand. Can't wait to remove your lib entirely.

"Main" _is_ a better name for that branch though. It's shorter and more intuitive.

> "Main" _is_ a better name for that branch though. It's shorter and more intuitive.

That's just making stuff up. IIRC, "master branch" comes from "master copy," which has long established usage and connotations of "thing you make copies from." My educated guess is that "master" in this case ultimately comes from the idea of someone who "mastered" a craft and created an item that less skilled workers would then copy to mass produce. "Main" lacks those connotations, which actually makes it more confusing.

If you want to use a different branch name, fine, but please don't make up BS justifications for doing so.

Honestly, if you're looking for an alternative that's about as intuitive as "master," "root" is probably a better choice than "main" (at least given the branching system I've always used).

Those connotations don’t apply to the “main” branch. That’s why the new name is more intuitive - previous one was misleading.

It wasn't misleading to the vast majority of the world.

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