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Thursday, May 3, 2018

MORE RACIAL STUFF

A CBR post alleges that some people had complained about BLACK PANTHER being "anti-white," albeit with no links to people actually saying this.

I've just posted this.
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Is BLACK PANTHER "anti-white?"

Well, certainly the politics of the film, positing an African fantasy-civilization that did not suffer the depredations of Europeans, is only viable because of "white guilt" over real-world depredations. (No mention of "brown guilt" on the part of the Muslim peoples who organized the majority of the slave trade, naturally.) But alluding to "white guilt" is not the same as projecting an "anti-white" attitude.

However, suppose you have a movie of dominantly white characters in which one of the sympathetic characters calls two full-grown black men "black boys."

That movie would be no more, and no less, "anti-black" than BLACK PANTHER is "anti-white."

That said, I'm glad this subject was raised. I just finished discussing political correctness with my brother-in-law, who took the position that the "P.C." mentality was really about politeness, about encouraging Americans to treat people the way they want to be treated-- an argument I've encountered on this forum a few times.

Had it occurred to me then, I could have brought BLACK PANTHER up as a perfect refutation. Mild though the film's reverse-racism is, it still demonstrates that for P.C. people, courtesy is a one-way street.

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