Friday, 18 March 2016

New and Casual racism

After the lecture on Friday I was thinking about the term casual racism and new racism and how it is in seen in our contemporary lives. New racism is one form of racism and is seen as a joke but also includes the cultural appropriation. It is the underlying, indirect or subtle type of racism. It is understanding beliefs of racism that have been overcome and the inequalities of power, politics, economics and society as the consequences of culture, biology and individual choice. Casual racism is known as hipster racism. This was found once “racism had stopped” but really it didn't. It is about the ideas of racism changing and becoming more inferential racism and not as visible.

I personally I think casual racism relates to new racism. Both of these terms understand that racism is still “alive” and has changed over time. An example of casual and new racism is obviously seen in that statement “not to be racist but ...” this is because it shows that they are being a racist but in a hidden way. New and casual racism is also seen in the fashion industry and is further enlarged in social media. Celebrity Vanessa Hudgens wore bindis to Coachella and this became large fashion trend and was seen as ‘hip’ or ‘amazing and pretty’ and later on seen on other celebrities. This is seen as cultural appropriation. Things like this have already been discovered but are not acknowledged yet once a celebrity does something interesting with it, it becomes new and different. This can be seen as causal or new racism because Vanessa had no cultural understand of what the bindi is used for and what the cultural meaning of it is, she has no relation to it. 



The media then shows images of these new fashion trends and show it as something that is new and different. Social media suggest to do things like this and sometimes forgets to acknowledge the culture and forgets about the cultural history behind it. This type of racism is also seen a lot in music industries with music videos, for example Lean On by Major Lazer. People don't see this as racism and some believe that it's has stopped.


So I just created this post to understand how new and casual racism is the new type of racism in present times. Thanks for your time. 



photo retrieved from https://macaulay.cuny.edu/eportfolios/whatwewear/files/2015/05/Collage.jpg

1 comment:

  1. I read your blog, and it made some interesting points.... However I disagree with the point about people who say I am not racist but etc etc because I was one of those people that said this alot before sharing my point of view. Now I realise this simple statement can be misinterpreted as being racist (that word has come up alot now in this reply) anyways I myself was not trying to offend people as I was taking into consideration in what some people might think with my opinion. I did not forsee people would consider this racist... So now I tactfully use other words which seem appropriate on a political correctness type of level. I did enjoy the read as it gave me something to think about.

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