My main point is that it’s fully possible to be fairly culturally aware and *still* miss the import of some of this stuff. For example, the only reason I happened to learn about blackface was because I wandered through the room when my mom was watching an old movie in which it appeared. I had never seen it before! And it certainly was never explained to me in school (and I went to one of the better public schools in the city). I can totally imagine a broad swath of the population missing this type of experience or not fully understanding it.

Is that bad? Yeah, probably. If you’re commenting on politics, then you definitely SHOULD be aware of it; but that doesn’t make it surprising.

“I know that even the black (and libertarian/conservative) columnist Robert A. George at the NYPost did not at first guess why the monkey cartoon had angered people,…”

I have a question – just WTF did he think that the cartoon was about? If the monkey doesn’t stand for Obama, the joke doesn’t make much sense.

And the NY Post is a rather right-wing rag; a columnist there claiming not to see something like that lends itself to other explanations.

By contrast, the TV news producer I know (also libertarian) who shall remain nameless, who thought I was some sort of perv imagining things for detecting lesbian overtones in the relationship between Xena and Gabrielle, is just clueless.

But the fact that you can be that heavy-handed and still not have some of the normals notice what’s up is probably a good indicator of why ads, horror movies, and rock songs — not to mention political slogans — have to be as unsubtle as they are. A lot of people don’t do nuance.

Am I saying they don’t exist? No. Am I saying they’re ridiculous? No. So why the hostility?

And Julian – yes, a lot of this has to do growing up, being educated, etc. But as I said before, I’m still (apparently) not aware of a lot of stereotypes that are out there! I don’t know that that’s really a gap in my education I want to fill? It seems like a fairly pernicious form of knowledge.

For instance, I’m now living in a fairly asian community and am learning a lot about asian stereotypes (especially ones they have of each other). I’m not sure (a) how I would have gained this knowledge in everyday life otherwise and (b) whether I want those things to ever pop into my head, even in a stray thought, when I encounter a group.

Basically, just saying it really isn’t too surprising that people are unaware of stereotypes you’re aware of.

I’m not sure I buy this. Any educated member of the U.S. public is going to be very aware of the history and different meanings of blackface, and pretty much any application of dark make-up will evoke these associations. Similar associations with ‘whiteface’ are not nearly so immediate, particularly because white makeup is routinely and widely applied in circumstances entirely innocent of connections to minstrelsy. Circus clowns, Kabuki performers, singers in many recent productions of western operas, Heath Ledger in a recent esoteric superhero movie — many, many instances of entirely unobjectionable ‘whiteface’ are part of our shared cultural environment. Put Obama (or anyone) in blackface, and there’s clearly something racially noxious going on. Put him in dark-knight-joker makeup, and if somebody sees something racist here, it’s largely (nearly solely) because critics have previously employed nastily racist imagery, and, as you say, there’s no clear alternative meaning. Certainly someone could in good faith view it this way. But it’s a long way from something like the monkey cartoon, where, regardless of ‘intent’, any educated person will immediately see something at minimum quite racially charged and ugly.

2) Liberals are going to claim racism a large percentage of the time.

3) Conservatives are going to claim bad faith a large percentage of the time.

4) The original topic gets dropped. Debate about racism in U S of A proceeds.

5) No one convinces anyone form the other side %100 of the time.

6) Eyes begin to roll.

7) Wash, rinse, repeat.

This, folks, is a very stable equilibrium.

Not just bafflingly clueless, but beyond that. It’d be like the police officer was saying ‘now *that’s* a cheeseburger!’. One would assume that a phrase from another cartoon was mistakenly put in.

Gil: “It’s not a very good theory of the intent, and culturally literate people asserting that it is reveals either political bigotry or an intentional playing of the race card to avoid the need to make an argument.”

After a posting and several comments which laid out the background and evidence for the intent, a simple counter-assertion with no evidence is sorta thin.

But, it should keep on crossing.

It’s not a very good theory of the intent, and culturally literate people asserting that it is reveals either political bigotry or an intentional playing of the race card to avoid the need to make an argument.

Either way, I think Boaz is right to characterize it as contemptible.