this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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Question: How is a "xinnie the poo" joke racist when it refers to one individual specifically?
Has it already advanced to be used against all chinese?
It isn't. It's not saying Chinese people look like Winnie the Pooh. Or even than he looks like Winnie because he's Chinese or asian. It's just a coincidental resemblance. And people wouldn't use it as a pseudo-insult if it didn't upset him so much. Which is kind of baffling why anyone would be upset at that comparison; it makes you seem lovable.
Have some perspective my dude: nobody saying this shit on the internet in English is doing it because it “upsets him”. Xi Jinping isn’t reading this. You are not in communication with him. He doesn’t know who you are. White anglos say it to each other because it makes them feel good to have a license to make racist jokes in a context where their peers won’t shame them for it.
Is it racist? Or is it mocking someone among others and delighting in the known fact that it makes a deplorable person upset? Same thing with mocking Trump for small hands.
Also, it doesn't seem like it originates from racism: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/xi-jinping-winnie-the-pooh-comparisons
I don't hang around in racist circles, but I've never seen it used in what others have said below. Have you seen it used that way commonly?
Yes I've seen it used that way commonly. I'm seeing it used that way commonly right now. The "joke" originates from a picture of Xi Jinping and Barack Obama in which the Asian man is compared to a yellow bear, and the black man is compared to an African cat named "Tigger". If you saw people calling Obama "Tigger" (or "a tigger", so be a bit less subtle about it) as an epithet, I seriously doubt you'd be willing to accept claims of ignorance, or that "catch a tiger by the toe, if he hollers let him go" is just a harmless phrase that people say because it "upsets" him in a totally race neutral way.
I'm glad you mentioned the Trump hands thing too, because while there's not an analogous racial component, you make the joke for the same reason: it's not to "upset Trump", who absolutely doesn't know you exist and is totally unaffected by anything you personally say or do. You do it to identify yourself to other American liberals as a consumer of John Oliver or Stephen Colbert's TV shows. I think it's petty and stupid to substitute fandom for politics, but at the end of the day, correcting you on that isn't terribly important to me. Trump is a white American whose deliberate actions have made life materially worse for most people I personally know, and who has no shortage of public statements that are repugnant on their face. The entire US political and economic system exists to protect him and people like him.
Why do I give a shit what petty superficial shit you say about Xi then? I promise it's not for his benefit. I don't know the guy, and crucially, I don't think you do either. I believe that you hate him, but I don't believe it's for anything specific that he personally said or did. I'm no expert, but by all accounts he seems to be a pretty boring guy that says pretty normal generic shit about development, stability, and cooperation. I'm willing to bet you don't speak Chinese, or have some terribly deep personal connection to China, so I'm also willing to bet he only exists for you as a vague symbol of "badness" constructed through your consumption of English language capitalist media. Media produced by Euro-American companies with a direct financial stake in manufacturing consent for a war against China. I think if Xi were replaced tomorrow with a literal mannequin, you'd still believe you had good reasons for hating that mannequin. The reason I wasted my time typing all this isn't because I believe Xi needs to be protected from you (maliciously or not) making racist jokes on the internet. It's because I would really prefer it if English speaking people that probably believe themselves to be kind and good and caring didn't invest their time and effort and energy into dehumanizing and othering one of the most populous nations on earth toward the end of justifying a nuclear war that will probably end human life on earth. There are simply less destructive ways to get your lulz online.
Wait, what? Tigers are not native to Africa. They are an Asian cat.
And yet you still do it.
He can be the nicest dude ever but he leads a control with an iron-grip on speech and media consumption, which is anathema to most english-speaking countries. Also you know, the genocide.
Aaaaand there we go. Tankie talking points.
Scare tactics! If you knew the first thing of geopolitics, you'd know this would never, ever happen. If russia isn't going to lob nukes when it's getting its ass handed to it, China won't have a reason to.
This whole little diatribe is full of inaccuracies, huge ass-pulls and insinuations that are so wild as to be ridiculous. And as soon as you actually get a little specific, you throw your entire argument away.
Are you really asking why it’s racist for white settlers to call the Chinese head of state a yellow animal? Do you think it wasn’t racially motivated when people made similar “jokes” about Barack Obama because they “just referred to one individual specifically”?
whut
Also I thought the joke originated from China
Ok, I never thought about the "yellow animal" angle, so thanks for bringing that up. I just always assumed he didn't like the comparison because it was like insisting he was short and fat and since he didn't like it, everyone sorta just ran with it as an insult. Meanwhile I was thinking "who the hell doesn't like Winnie the Pooh? He shoulda embraced the comparison"
So yea, thanks for the extra info.
I'd say regular people in general don't think that deeply about these things.
And though the skin theory sounds correct, i still think it's about the short and fat part more. It affected his dignity and image, and as i understand it, the concept of 'giving face' is of great importance in chinese culture.
White settlers? Some brief searching tells me the origin was from Indian social media and then taken for use by Chinese citizens who disagree with him.
So in the same vein, all those monkey caricatures of Putin are also racist as well then.
I mean yeah, depicting people as monkeys is generally rooted pretty explicitly in racism, and even white eastern europeans have been subject to racism from western Europe. Read what Emma Goldman wrote about that "conniving slanty eyed Asian"(paraphrased) Stalin.
When have racist depictions of Eastern Europeans as monkeys been a thing?
In the origin of the meme, by your logic, Obama was compared to a tiger.
Is Obama orange and striped with a white belly?
Tigger is very similar to a slur used against black people.
LoL that's such a stretch.
Plus everyone knows Tiggers are marvelous chaps, and loaded with vim and vigor. Tiggers are wonderful things, and so, hardly an insult.