I hate to disappoint three fat liberals from Canada, but their scheme to turn the tables on us white bigots is old hat — literally. In fact, the hat in question is on display here, but it never became the stigma the National Congress of American Indians (the rights group that designed it) hoped it would become.
The goal of the NCAI — which supports efforts to force the Washington Redskins to abandon its team name and logo — was to demonstrate how offensive racial stereotypes can be. In mounting their consciousness-raising campaign, NCAI focused on two easy-to-stereotype ethnic groups, Jews and Chinamen. At the time the article appeared, I received dozens of emails from readers asking where they could get a hat. I wanted one myself. But the hats were never actually made. The designs, rather, were intended purely as a thought experiment.
The same, sadly, appears to be true of the shirts modeled in the photo below by the aforementioned portly Canucks.
An article at the website Mic explains that the three men pictured belong to an “award-winning Canadian band” named A Tribe Called Red, whose message is “Native Americans aren’t here for your entertainment.” Doesn’t the fact that the three band members are of indigenous stock fly in the face of their message? Isn’t their band here precisely for our entertainment?
Derrick Clifton, author of the Mic article, describes the shirt as “simultaneously sarcastic and witty.” That’s an opinion. He also claims that unnamed “critics” have called the t-shirt “racist” against white people, which he presents as fact, adding that “contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as ‘reverse’ racism.”
I agree. “Reverse racism” carries a suggestion of retribution — that a black person who hurls racial epithets at, or physically attacks, a white person is merely settling some score. That is nonsense. An attack based on skin color is pure racism regardless of the complexion or the intention of the perpetrator.
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