Negrotown: Generating 3/5ths of forum complaints.

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Negrotown: Generating 3/5ths of forum complaints.

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Dexo posted:

As an aside there is nothing more amusing than watching all the females in your family sit your cousin's white wife down and have a 4 hour long pow wow after Thanksgiving dinner on how the gently caress to deal with their child's hair. That Thanksgiving 2 years ago was funny as all hell. Like my aunts brought products and loving everything for her.

I find that really sweet

# ¿ Nov 8, 2016 19:24

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 3, 2024 13:50

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Mel Mudkiper posted:

Well, I actually teach Chinese Immigrants almost exclusively, so let me offer my perspective.

A. The first issue is that authentic Chinese is incredibly difficult for native English speakers to speak effectively. There are elements and signifiers to their pronunciation we don't have at all in English. Even if you listen to them say their name several times, it can still be very hard to mimic it because our ears actually aren't attuned to the subtleties of their pronunciation. Most Chinese students do it simply because its easier for communication on a practical level.

B. Its also become, for many young people, a form of personal expression. Some students have changed their English name several times. One guy changed it to a different rapper ever session. I think they see it more as an opportunity to reinvent themselves than seeing it as a sign of disrespect to their culture.

This has been my experience as well. Tonal languages are drat near impossible to speak correctly if you didn't grow up listening to them. My mother-in-law asked that I not use her native word for grandma when talking about her to my kids, because in English the intonation goes up at the end of a sentence that's a question, but in her language the same word pronounced with an ascending tone at the end was the word for 'dog' so saying 'do you want to go see grandma?' sounded like 'do you want to go see the doggie?' This is the case for a LOT of tonal languages, same word, same spelling, different ascending or descending tones means the difference between mother, dog, horse, go, etc etc. and some of the words are... not flattering.

# ¿ Nov 8, 2016 21:49

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Holy poo poo they were doing that in the eighties?

Hell there was a case in Oklahoma like, last year.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2016 21:09

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

MikeCrotch posted:

Guys, can't we just stop all the hate? American is divided and we need to be united

Something people have unironically be posting at me today

Naomi Shulman posted:

"Nice people made the best Nazis. My mom grew up next to them. They got along, refused to make waves, looked the other way when things got ugly and focused on happier things than �politics,�� wrote Shulman, whose mother Elizabeth was born in Munich in 1934 and grew up in Nazi Germany. �They were lovely people who turned their heads as their neighbors were dragged away. You know who weren�t nice people? Resisters.�

Daily Hampshire Gazette Editorial

# ¿ Nov 18, 2016 17:15

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

climboutonalimb posted:

Part two airs tonight btw.
https://twitter.com/KQED/status/801183601509285888

Is this on Passport? I missed part one.

Also unrelated but if you donate to your local PBS station you should get a free Passport account and its awesome. Basically Netflix for PBS shows. NOVA, Frontline, back episodes, documentaries, its all there.

# ¿ Nov 23, 2016 00:58

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Tiny Brontosaurus posted:

Dude, you can keep complaining that a mentally ill person made an irrational decision as long as you want, but it's never going to do anything but show you don't know how mental illness works.

It really is the tragedy of mental illness. If it were a busted arm you'd have physical proof but when its all in your head, well. The whole point of mental illness is that you aren't thinking clearly, and you are making irrational decisions. Even rich famous people can go nuts.

# ¿ Dec 9, 2016 19:43

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Rush Limbo posted:

The thing is, though, that "whiteness" isn't really a designation of race, it's a designation of power, and who has it. I'm not white. I can pass as white though, and I've had to because otherwise things in life would be closed off to me, often for good. I can't really openly practice my culture because of this. Many of the things that pass for normal in white society are completely denied to me.

A good example is the whole genealogy trend. I will never, ever be able to make a family tree, because the documentation that is required to even start doesn't exist. The only thing I have to go on is an oral history, which isn't going to be around forever. Most of my ancestors, due to their culture and their status outside of white society, might as well have not existed. I will never get to learn about their lives, their achievements etc.

The white club also changes its boundaries quite a lot. See: Irish, Slavs etc.

They were not treated as white until they got political capital and then hey presto the door was open.

This is where the resident genealogy nerd comes in and says 'yes you can!' Because thanks to DNA and lots of records opening up/getting put online, its difficult but not impossible to do this. If you're truly interested PM me and I'll see what I can do.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2016 19:42

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Koalas March posted:

This is because you probably have some knowledge of your family heritage, where you came from, who was involved, etc.

African-americans do not have this luxury. We have had our original cultural identity erased, and have been forced to make new ones, that where immediately rejected by white people. We have not had access to the records of the sales of our family members until recently.

So a black person looking into their ancestry is looked at by a white man as "Why would you do that unless it's for a book? I, a white, know a fair amount of my family and would have no reason to go to great depths unless it was research for something, clearly this is what he is doing"

And speaking of which...

quote:

FamilySearch International, the world�s largest genealogy organization, has given a newly indexed database of the historic Freedmen�s Bureau Records to the Smithsonian National African American Museum of History and Culture in Washington, D.C. The database contains genealogical information of freed African Americans after the Civil War....
�For the first time in history, African Americans can now bridge the gap between freedom and slavery and reunite their families � on paper � that were once torn apart by slavery,� he added.

�Collaborating on the Freedmen�s Bureau Project is a fundamental expression of our commitment to family history,� explained Bunch. �At the end of the Civil War, formerly enslaved individuals went to great lengths to reunite their families. The records of the Freedmen�s Bureau are essential to understanding their desires and reconstructing the histories of the families they formed.�
During the past year, more than 25,000 volunteers participated in the project in the United States and Canada. Volunteers uncovered the names of nearly 1.8 million of the 4 million people who were enslaved.

Key to the project�s success were the nationwide chapters of the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society who partnered with local Mormon congregations, black churches and others in more than 100 indexing events.

Two volunteers indexed each document. Any differences in the entries were reviewed by a third experienced volunteer called an arbitrator, who made the final decision on the indexed data.

Using the index and document scans provided by FamilySearch, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has begun a collaboration with the Smithsonian�s Transcription Center, an online platform for volunteers to digitally transcribe and review transcriptions of Smithsonian collections. To supplement the indexing work done by FamilySearch volunteers, the Freedmen�s Bureau Transcription Project will transcribe word-for-word every document in the collection. When completed, the papers will be searchable online. This joint effort will help increase access to the Freedmen�s Bureau collection and help the public learn more about the United States during Reconstruction.

The Freedmen�s Bureau, organized under an 1865 congressional order at the end of the Civil War, provided assistance to freed slaves in many ways. Handwritten records of these transactions include records such as marriage registers, hospital or patient registers, educational efforts, census lists, labor contracts and indenture or apprenticeship papers and other documents. The records were compiled in 15 states and the District of Columbia.

Elder Christofferson said the documents were challenging to index because the records were not kept in a uniform way. �Some were registries, others were handwritten documents and still others were collections of letters. Anyone who has ever tried to decipher handwriting from that time period knows that it can be extremely difficult.�

African Americans can access the Freedmen�s Bureau Records online at no cost at discoverfreedmen.org.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 06:46

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Fluffdaddy posted:

Luckily my family pretty much stayed in one place, so the Pike County Alabama library has been a godsend.

Ancestry.com has a lot of free resources, but also a few paid ones that are worth the money if you are willing to dig deep.

familysearch.org is the big free one by the Mormons. Ancestry tends to keep most of the good stuff under subscription. Also something like 10% of records are actually available online so tracing your lines back as far as possible to a point of origin even a county or what have you then going there (or hiring a researcher to go there, or joining a group like Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness and asking nicely for someone local to go there) and researching in actual land title records and wills and microfiche of newspapers and such (newspapers published EVERYBODY'S business back in the day, like down to the 'so and so are having cousins visit from the Big City for two weeks' type gossip stuff) will often get you further than a lot of random googling, though sometimes you get lucky and hit on a branch of your family someone's already researched (though you can't necessarily take that as gospel, lots of people want to find that great-grandma Indian princess or connection to royalty and will play fast and loose to get there). DNA can also help when you're unsure of where to look and ancestry and FTDNA have both dropped their prices permanently as of this year to like 59 dollars for the basic test (FTDNA has more extensive testing but it rapidly adds up and some is more useful than others).
There are also black-specific organizations and Facebook groups you can join (remember a lot of older people pick up this hobby because it is time-intensive and retirees have nothing but so be patient), here's a few:
http://www.afrigeneas.com/
http://www.aagg.org/
http://bbaaghs.org/
And a nice basic how-to guide from familysearch:
https://familysearch.org/wiki/en/African_American_Genealogy

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 07:13

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Fluffdaddy posted:

From what I understand, Washington didn't leave ANY direct descendents, but a few cousins and a lot of mixed children.

I went deep diving into the tree last night and got to the Starling family, whose head patriarch George Starling (4x Great Grandfather for me) was born in 1820 and lived til 1918. He never left the town he was enslaved in and sure enough, he was originally owned by a white family of Starlings who he kept up with even after the end of the Civil War, because they lived a few blocks from one another.

One of his sons, Ransom Starling, ended up joining the Union Army and after the war spent a hot second in Pike County Alabama, where he met a family and convinced some of the girls to come back to Georgia with him and marry him and his brother Wesley, who is my 3x Great Grandfather.

Just digging through newspaper archives and census reports got me this info in about 7 hours. I am going to Alex Haley this poo poo

Let me know if you need lookups on anything behind any paywalls on ancestry I got a good deal on a subscription around Black Friday (don't have the newspapers/fold3 because every time they were free access I never found anything pertinent but I have world). Also I have myheritage but never found anything there that I couldn't on ancestry though it does link to more free sites like familysearch and wikitree.

Also apparently there's a genealogy thread in DIY we can post in if this is getting too far offtopic.

Oracle fucked around with this message at 21:48 on Jan 9, 2017

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 21:38

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

negromancer posted:

Check and see if I'm related to someone who did something badass during the Civil War, like burn down his slavers house tia

Gimme yo deets I will hook you up (or at least get you back to the 1870 census).

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 21:50

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

MariusLecter posted:

Noted!

Also,
https://mobile.twitter.com/ILLCapitano94/status/818546009928241153

With almost 2000 less screens and a huge snowstorm in major metropolitan areas to boot. drat.

# ¿ Jan 9, 2017 22:04

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

FactsAreUseless posted:

Rural Michigan is really bad, and I say this coming from Idaho. It's honestly way worse than most of the Midwest and even parts of the South. I have no idea why.

Because a lot of poor white Southerners moved up to Michigan to work in the factories same as black folk during the Great Migration in the teens and twenties and brought their lovely beliefs with them. People already here tended to look down on them.

Michigan actually had a pretty significant role to play in abolition and the Underground Railroad, as I'm finding out while researching Koala's family tree. can read about some of it here; its interesting stuff.

Oracle fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Jan 12, 2017

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 03:31

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Tesseraction posted:

C'mon man it was even on the previous page

Black people are people!

Sorry; edited.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 04:09

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Wow, this popped up on Facebook and I was thinking it should go in the OP cuz how many times does this happen in this thread goddamn.

I�m Not Your Racial Confessor
The black person�s burden of managing white emotions in the age of Trump.

McMillan Cottom posted:

I only owe people as much good faith as they extend to me. Part of that good faith is Googling before you waste my time because you value me and my time.

My momma always said that until people asked the right question, they weren�t ready for the right answer. If you ask me a broad, unspecific, basic-rear end question, then you aren�t ready for a serious answer from a serious person.

# ¿ Jan 18, 2017 19:20

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Koalas March posted:

I think the Milstuff would be a good thread. That said if you aren't talking about how it impacts black folks keep it out.

Iirc, Oracle traced my family back through Nat Turner's rebellion, WW1and WW2. I come from a long line of fighters

Further back than that, if this drat book ever comes in. I am 75% sure you are directly descended from one of the black Revolutionary War patriots (yes there were some. Yes, they got shafted when it came to pensions too. Its a story as old as the hills).

# ¿ Jan 19, 2017 18:18

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Lowtax posted:

Okay how about this: Negrotown can have its own subforum, and KM can mod it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQPokCpMWxg

# ¿ Jan 19, 2017 22:21

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Taerkar posted:

I was going to make a 'Separate but Equal' quip but was expecting to get beaten to the punch.

Then when you don't sell your property they can just declare a Forums Emergency and appoint someone to buy your stuff up for pennies on the dollar.

Gonna build a bridge for the expressway and eminent domain the whole subforum.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2017 22:29

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

botany posted:

loving call it bantustan. at least be honest about this poo poo

Liberia.

# ¿ Jan 19, 2017 23:08

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Squashing Machine posted:

Haha, right? I didn't realize criticizing the implicit cheerleading of a broken justice system would be enough to rustle the jimmies of whoever keeps buying these things.

Said person aims for the reasonable in order to try to stir poo poo and drive wedges/make others in this thread look unreasonable. Don't fall for it.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2017 21:37

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

Wonder if this might help explain the disparity in life expectancy for minorities in general in America.

quote:

My physician explained that ongoing adversity in childhood leads to a chronic state of �fight, flight or freeze.� Researchers at Yale had recently shown that when inflammatory stress hormones flood a child�s body and brain, they alter the genes that oversee our stress reactivity, re-setting the stress response to �high� for life. This increases the risk of inflammation, which manifests later in cancer, heart disease, and autoimmune diseases like mine.

# ¿ Apr 4, 2017 15:22

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 3, 2024 13:50

Oracle: Oct 9, 2004

How about some GOOD advertising to wash the taste of the NRA ad out of our collective mouths.

Meet some of the descendants of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, arranged in the places of their ancestors in John Trumbull�s iconic �Declaration of Independence� painting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1PMt8bnz34
This is the ad ancestry.com, arguably the world's biggest genealogy company, will be running over the 4th of July holiday.

quote:

Everyone in the spot, which is the first work for the brand from Droga5 New York, is a descendant of the one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Droga5 was officially named Ancestry.com�s lead creative agency earlier this month.

�Declaration Descendants,� which will run in 60- and 30-second versions, makes its broadcast debut today. The campaign, which will be supported by digital, social media, out-of-home and cinema components, as well as media collaborations and PR initiatives (via PR agency Weber Shandwick), will run through July 13.

Droga5 pitched the concept in response to its first brief and began working on the idea in early May.

�Fourth of July is a time of great national pride, and our new campaign is a portrait of how America has evolved. Diversity isn�t just something we value as Americans; it�s quite literally part of who we are,� Ancestry chief marketing officer Vineet Mehra said in a statement provided to Adweek.
<...>
�We made the decision that we wanted to re-create a version of the painting that felt relevant today,� Meates and Glover explained. �That gave the sense that these people were re-stating the values of the Declaration of Independence, rather than simply dressing up as their forebears. That led to a lot of questions about what did and didn�t still feel relevant.�

For example, they point to the decision to mimic the original furniture used in the painting, which feels like something you�d still find in historic building today, but replace the antiquated powdered wigs and stockings with �a modern day equivalent that felt serious but natural.�

�One of the descendants [who is descended from Philip Livingston] said something � on set that really stuck,� the creatives added. �He said he knew he was going to see people who looked like him [he�s African-American] and people who looked more like the founding fathers themselves at the shoot, but had not been prepared to meet people of a wide range of other ethnicities there.�

# ¿ Jun 30, 2017 18:11

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Negrotown: Generating 3/5ths of forum complaints.