8 comments

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  Elayne Riggs

  1 year ago

  I've posted many times about the use of blackface in blogs, which I consider generally abhorrent. However, this isn't conscious blackface. Here, the fans have painted their bodies and faces with the team colors, which are yellow and black, as many sports fanatics are wont to do. If they were more intelligent they might have opted to paint each half different colors, but then if they were more intelligent they'd probably eschew body and face paint altogether.
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  Benjamin T. Greenberg

  1 year ago

  Hi Elayne. I understand this is about school colors and that the allusions to minstrelsy may be entirely unconscious. But I don't think no harm intended makes it okay. The not so well stated point of my statistics is that these white students can afford to be clueless because they are in a racially exclusive environment. At another school in another town, they would have to think twice before marching around in blackface.
  
  I would even go so far as to say that these are white guys in the South and, even if they have no historical awareness, they are likely to have an intuitive sense that there is something socially transgressive about painting themselves Black.
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  John

  1 year ago

  Its hard to read this article and give it any credit when their are so many typographical errors. Also its call school spirit. Way to bring race into something totally irrelevant.
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  Benjamin T. Greenberg

  1 year ago

  John, I'm not sure how "school spirit" justifies offensive behavior.
  
  On rereading I counted two typos: a missing article and a repeated word. Thanks for noting them. Now I've fixed them.
  
  Anyway, I probably should not give your comment any credit, since your writing is not exactly typo free either.
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  Elayne Riggs

  1 year ago

  Benjamin, it's my experience that many students don't really need any sort of impetus to be clueless.
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  Jim

  1 year ago

  As I was going through the headlines this morning and came across a description containing Appalachian State and the website of Hungryblues.net I thought I would find an article from a disgruntled Michigan fan making excuses over their loss this past weekend. Instead, I find an article from a person who is offended by students painting their bodies with their school colors and celebrating a historic victory for their school. You know what, that is all it is. A bunch of ASU students celebrating a victory. It has nothing to do with demographics or the racial make up of the school or the UNC system. App. State definitely doesn't encourage or discourage applications based on race and I am offended that you would insinuate such a thing. The UNC system offers many schools with different emphasis or study and curriculums.
  
  If you are offended by this picture then you have bigger issues to deal with. Why did you even go to the trouble of turning this into a race issue? You should spend your time dealing with real issues and problems instead of creating more.
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  Caroline

  1 year ago

  Benjamin, I think you need to double check the stereotypes you hold before commenting on someone else's. If these fans had been from a northern college with those same school colors, would you have taken their act of school spirit to be an act of racism?
  Probably not. But, because App State is in the South, in a rural area in the South, you jump to the conclusion that this is a race issue.
  Let's say it is a race issue. Were the students painted yellow discriminating against people of Asian decent? When students at my alma mater paint their faces red are they discriminating against Native Americans?
  Ben, you're right, there is discrimination going on here, but I think it is coming from you.
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  Jed Clampett

  1 year ago

  Dude. We go to Hillbilly U. We know a few things about poverty, oppression and false stereotypes. C'mon and be honest. You're just trying to be a muckraker, aren't you?
  Be a journalist and call give ASU's Associate Vice Chancellor Harry Williams a call and see what he has to say about this image before you spew your own bias all over the internet.
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