• Lath@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Question: How is a “xinnie the poo” joke racist when it refers to one individual specifically?
    Has it already advanced to be used against all chinese?

    • Neato@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      It isn’t. It’s not saying Chinese people look like Winnie the Pooh. Or even than he looks like Winnie because he’s Chinese or asian. It’s just a coincidental resemblance. And people wouldn’t use it as a pseudo-insult if it didn’t upset him so much. Which is kind of baffling why anyone would be upset at that comparison; it makes you seem lovable.

        • Neato@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Is it racist? Or is it mocking someone among others and delighting in the known fact that it makes a deplorable person upset? Same thing with mocking Trump for small hands.

          Also, it doesn’t seem like it originates from racism: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/xi-jinping-winnie-the-pooh-comparisons

          I don’t hang around in racist circles, but I’ve never seen it used in what others have said below. Have you seen it used that way commonly?

            • Neato@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              Barack Obama in which the Asian man is compared to a yellow bear, and the black man is compared to an African cat named “Tigger”. If you saw people calling Obama “Tigger” (or “a tigger”, so be a bit less subtle about it) as an epithet, I seriously doubt you’d be willing to accept claims of ignorance,

              Wait, what? Tigers are not native to Africa. They are an Asian cat.

              You do it to identify yourself to other American liberals as a consumer of John Oliver or Stephen Colbert’s TV shows. I think it’s petty and stupid to substitute fandom for politics, but at the end of the day, correcting you on that isn’t terribly important to me

              And yet you still do it.

              I’m no expert, but by all accounts he seems to be a pretty boring guy that says pretty normal generic shit about development, stability, and cooperation.

              He can be the nicest dude ever but he leads a control with an iron-grip on speech and media consumption, which is anathema to most english-speaking countries. Also you know, the genocide.

              constructed through your consumption of English language capitalist media.

              Aaaaand there we go. Tankie talking points.

              toward the end of justifying a nuclear war

              Scare tactics! If you knew the first thing of geopolitics, you’d know this would never, ever happen. If russia isn’t going to lob nukes when it’s getting its ass handed to it, China won’t have a reason to.

              This whole little diatribe is full of inaccuracies, huge ass-pulls and insinuations that are so wild as to be ridiculous. And as soon as you actually get a little specific, you throw your entire argument away.

    • porcupine@lemmygrad.ml
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      1 year ago

      Are you really asking why it’s racist for white settlers to call the Chinese head of state a yellow animal? Do you think it wasn’t racially motivated when people made similar “jokes” about Barack Obama because they “just referred to one individual specifically”?

      • Kalinus@lemmings.world
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        1 year ago

        Ok, I never thought about the “yellow animal” angle, so thanks for bringing that up. I just always assumed he didn’t like the comparison because it was like insisting he was short and fat and since he didn’t like it, everyone sorta just ran with it as an insult. Meanwhile I was thinking “who the hell doesn’t like Winnie the Pooh? He shoulda embraced the comparison”

        So yea, thanks for the extra info.

        • Lath@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          I’d say regular people in general don’t think that deeply about these things.
          And though the skin theory sounds correct, i still think it’s about the short and fat part more. It affected his dignity and image, and as i understand it, the concept of ‘giving face’ is of great importance in chinese culture.

      • Rolder@reddthat.com
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        1 year ago

        White settlers? Some brief searching tells me the origin was from Indian social media and then taken for use by Chinese citizens who disagree with him.

      • Lath@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        So in the same vein, all those monkey caricatures of Putin are also racist as well then.

        • OurToothbrush@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          I mean yeah, depicting people as monkeys is generally rooted pretty explicitly in racism, and even white eastern europeans have been subject to racism from western Europe. Read what Emma Goldman wrote about that “conniving slanty eyed Asian”(paraphrased) Stalin.

          • pingveno@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            When have racist depictions of Eastern Europeans as monkeys been a thing?

      • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        In the origin of the meme, by your logic, Obama was compared to a tiger.

        Is Obama orange and striped with a white belly?

          • Krauerking@lemy.lol
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            1 year ago

            LoL that’s such a stretch.
            Plus everyone knows Tiggers are marvelous chaps, and loaded with vim and vigor. Tiggers are wonderful things, and so, hardly an insult.