marny_h96

105 years ago, in what is now Namibia, something happened. Something terrible. Something not a lot of people have heard of. At least not in Germany. And I wonder why.

[...]

It seems that three decades before WW II and the Holocaust, people were killed in German South-West Africa (now Namibia)
. Enough people to call it a genocide.

The Herero and Namaqua Genocide


Sadly, I can't remember where and when I first heard about it. What I know, though, is that it was never mentioned in school. Not once. The German colonial endeavours were generally overlooked in History class but you'd think that something as terrible as a genocide would have been mentioned. Especially when you consider Germany's past. But there was nothing.

So, what could be the reasons for "forgetting" the Herero/Namaqua Genocide?

[...]

Denial? More likely. There's at least one book and one article out there claiming the Genocide is a lie. That's not surprising considering how many people still deny the Holocaust happened. What is surprising – and disconcerting – is that the German government treats the Genocide as something they have nothing to do with. Saying that the government of the Bundesrepublik (Federal Republic of Germany) is not responsible for the actions of the government of the Deutsches Reich (German Empire) is like saying they're not responsible for the action of the Third Reich government. And they took responsibility for that, at least partially, by acknowledging the Holocaust, apologizing for it and paying reparations to the survivors.

yamasan

I was watching that diverting Zac Efron movie 17 Again the other day, and you know what ruined it for me? One throwaway joke, in an otherwise brain candy, fluffy piece of mostly unobjectionable film, ruined the whole damn thing. Our newly 17 again, soon-to-be divorced protagonist, upon overhearing his wife and her friend discussing the possibility of the wife going out with another man, says something like this to his wife and her friend, "If this were Afghanistan she'd be dragged through the streets by goats with her hands cut off." That being technically engaging in adultery before the divorce is complete.

[...]My family left Afghanistan by the skin of their teeth, and there are not so many what-ifs and may-have-beens separating me from being a woman facing the possibility of being stoned to death. So a joke about what happens to Afghan women in the war-torn, still Taliban-influenced country of my people is so far from fucking funny, I can't even. That one little joke threw me out of the movie like I'd been catapulted out with extreme prejudice because my experiences and my knowledge and my ethnicity made it personal. I couldn't keep watching the movie because I'd just been reminded, glaringly, THIS MOVIE IS NOT FOR YOU. YOU MIGHT AS WELL NOT EXIST AS AN AUDIENCE MEMBER, BECAUSE WE TOTES DID NOT EVEN CONSIDER HOW THIS JOKE MIGHT FLY FOR AFGHANS OR MUSLIMS IN THE AUDIENCE, AND WE DO NOT CARE.

And listen, it's not like I shouldn't be used to this. There are countless times I've seen the plight of the Afghan people used as a throwaway plot point or teaching moment in a show or movie or book. I've seen Afghan terrorists, poor oppressed Afghan women, Afghan orphans, the Afghan girl from the cover of National Geographic...I've seen and heard Afghanistan used as the butt of countless thoughtless and tasteless jokes, and only rarely can I at least appreciate the dark humor in them. I've seen the whole trope of only white men can save brown women from brown men. The last time I saw Afghans on TV or in movies in a non-news setting, and as actual people who get to be narratively equivalent to your average WASP was in The Kite Runner, and even that had its problems.

evilprodigy

If you, white chick, have ever exclaimed wonderingly at how beautiful and androgynous! Asian men are, so different from white men: you were being racist. If you have ever marveled that Asian stars are so much more adorable, so much more queer-chic and pretty than American movie stars: you were being racist. If you have ever turned East Asia in your head into your own personal emasculated yaoi wonderland, you were being racist.

Asian men are not your gay boyfriends that go with your handbag (and neither are gay men), they are not your pretty fetish objects -- they aren't any prettier than your own fucking men, nor any more androgynous. They don't exist for you to emasculate. They don't exist for you to idealize. They are not your fantasy boyfriends, they are not a badly-translated boys' love comic, they will not love you long time either and they will not love each other long time and they are not bishonen. Every time you have gone to Japan/Korea/China/Magical Asian Fantasyland and marveled at how delicate the men were and how awesome it was that you couldn't tell the schoolgirls and schoolboys apart, you were being racist. (And you were probably fucking lying, at that, or need some seriously new glasses.) The systematic undermining of Asian masculinity is an old pastime, and by doing this you are partaking in it. Stop it. Stop it all. Shut down everything. East Asia does not exist to mass-produce your China dolls. East Asia does not exist to mass-produce your bishonen.

East Asia is comprised of human beings with cultures that are not oddities, souvenirs, or bizarro fantasy worlds, and of people who do not appreciate being fetishized, sexualized, emasculated, exoticized, othered and generally dicked over -- and it has produced a diaspora of people who don't appreciate this either, myself included. So if you do this: stop it now. Put it down. Put a halt to it, and I hope that if you have a sense of common decency, you have a sense of common shame that you ever perpetrated this to begin with.