In the wake of the idiotic flip flop of Barack Obama on the FISA issue (see: 4th Amendment R.I.P.) I was looking to do something in protest. On my website, I've had a link to a Stop Illegal Spying website for sometime, and from some reason it's been down for a while. To replace the broken image/link I created this:
I've linked this to the EFF website on the spying issue. But this gave me the idea to create a t-shirt. With a slight twist of course:
I showed this image to a friend of mine and I wasn't met with the usual humor, they relayed that I should be careful because someone might take offense.
So I thought about it, and thought about it, and asked if I were African American would they have told me to be careful? Of course the answer was no. Somehow it would be 'ok' if I were African American and created this image.
This made me think about all the other situations where saying or doing things as one minority is ok but for other minorities (or the majority?) it's frowned upon, and even labeled as racist (or other -ist or -phobe).
This makes no sense to me at all, if one person or group shouldn't say/perform a word/phrase/action then no one should. right?
This also made me think about how using these possibly offensive things in a positive way is somehow perfectly ok. I haven't heard anyone crying out against the "Obama is my Homeboy" shirt or "Black is the New President" or even the "Yo Mamma" shirt. I'm not even going to begin to list of the questionable t-shirts that touch on gay topics.
So would me creating a shirt that promoted Obama... something along the lines of "A Brother for President" be ok, or is that like my use of the "put the X in X" joke to indicate he's aiding or becoming Big Brother something that should be considered possibly racist?
And is it possibly racist because I'm not the right minority or because it's racist for everyone?
Do you consider the image racist?
