Sticks and Stones

November 14, 2015 12:47 PM

Donna Pinckley photographs interracial couples and writes the negative comments they have been subjected to underneath
posted by growabrain (34 comments total)

Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to "Post-racial America".

Like why do people even give a shit? Two people are happy. That's all that should matter and it should be celebrated.
posted by Talez at 12:54 PM on November 14, 2015 [8 favorites]

A heartwarming reminder that some people need to STFU.
posted by Artw at 1:01 PM on November 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

If people are happy, then its a great idea to attack them because they are obviously ruining your way of life and your ideas of how the world should be ran.
posted by wheelieman at 1:01 PM on November 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

They're excellent photographs. As I looked through them, I was more interested in looking at the pictures than seeing the captions, but now thinking back on the reactions people have expressed to something so simple and nice makes me want to cry.
posted by howfar at 1:18 PM on November 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

People who are happier than you while flaunting the artificial rules you place on your own life ARE the biggest threat to your life, liberty and pursuit or happiness. That's why these people need to be attacked and YOU need heavy medication and maybe a room that locks from the outside.
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:29 PM on November 14, 2015

Just let people people. Seriously, as long you're people-ing doesn't involve hurting another people/person or animal then just keep right on people-ing and enjoy being happy.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 1:37 PM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

Like why do people even give a shit? Two people are happy.

As awful as it is, I think people who do awful things like that generally are telling you, in essence: "I played by the goddamn rules and did what I was told and my life fucking sucks. How dare you buck the rules and be happy!"

It would be nice if we got more "Huh. It never occurred to me I could disregard stupid rules. Wanna share a few tips on how to do that?" instead of the usual shit.
posted by Michele in California at 1:39 PM on November 14, 2015 [39 favorites]

I thought this was going to be just photos on a blog with comments open and that the Internet was going to supply the ugly comments live.
posted by ignignokt at 1:45 PM on November 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I just can't with this today. I got about half a dozen photos in and just got too angry thinking about how stupid and ignorant you have to be to spout shit like those captions in 2015.

At the library I used to work at there was an old white lady who would scowl at anyone non-white who walked within 10 feet of her, but if she saw an interracial couple - or any two people who didn't appear to be of the same race in each other's company, really - she would just sit and *glare* at them. She'd never say anything, but more than a few times we had to tell her to knock it off because she was bothering people. One day she approached me at the reference desk with an innocuous question, and after I answered it she turned around, gestured at a couple of differently-coloured kids sitting together at a desk nearby and said "Makes you wonder what people are thinking, don't it?" First I told her she was violating the rules of conduct with her harassing language, and then trolled her by telling her my wife is half-Chinese (which she is). She turned beet red, shuffled back to her preferred seat in the periodicals section and got back on with her life's work of being a miserable, unpleasant person.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:49 PM on November 14, 2015 [14 favorites]

Also, for a moment, I thought this was going to be all pictures and comments from 1988, like the first in the series. It's not. Holy shit, I didn't really know "interracial couple" was a term in goddamn 2015! People that think that way, I find you disgusting. Get in the sea.
posted by ignignokt at 1:50 PM on November 14, 2015 [3 favorites]

I thought this was going to be just photos on a blog with comments open and that the Internet was going to supply the ugly comments live.

Anyone can build a mountain of shit on the internet. It takes an artist to find that one perfect, greasy, stinking turd and curate it for the rest of us.
posted by indubitable at 2:25 PM on November 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

http://www.donnapinckley.com/miscegenation/

I think Pinckley's trolling (in a good way!) with that URL. Bring the fuckwits out where we can see them.

Lovely photos, worth thousands and thousands of words.
posted by chavenet at 2:37 PM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

As awful as it is, I think people who do awful things like that generally are telling you, in essence: "I played by the goddamn rules and did what I was told and my life fucking sucks. How dare you buck the rules and be happy!"

Yeah... Some of them point to a particular kind of pain. Complicated.
posted by cotton dress sock at 3:00 PM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

The Card Cheat: "gestured at a couple of differently-coloured kids sitting together at a desk nearby and said "Makes you wonder what people are thinking, don't it?""

This and the entry "I'll bet your parents are really proud of you." reminds me that (second to the racism itself, of course) I'm so annoyed by the way racists will presume other people are as racist as them.
posted by RobotHero at 3:05 PM on November 14, 2015 [5 favorites]

White men have taken everything, including our women

I'm not sure if it's fair to call this statement racist. hurtful, yes. disempowering, yes. problematic at the individual level? definitely. but I don't know if it's racist in context of history
posted by runt at 3:23 PM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

runt, even if you want to look at it as not being racist (which I disagree with), it is undebatably WILDLY sexist, to the point of misogyny. "Our women", meaning the objects we possess, have been " taken", meaning stolen, as possessions can be. Women in this way of thinking have no agency.

I remember actually reading a line from a history text book in high school (so this would have been late 80's/early 90's) that actually stated that the pioneers moved West with "their" women and children. So apparently only males were pioneers, and they took their things--furniture, horses, sub-human women and children--with them!

I also read at least one of the quotes ("why are you with her?") as quite possibly indicative of hatred against fat women, rather than referring to the race difference of the couple.
posted by mysterious_stranger at 3:31 PM on November 14, 2015 [12 favorites]

I also read at least one of the quotes ("why are you with her?") as quite possibly indicative of hatred against fat women, rather than referring to the race difference of the couple.

Yeah, I kind of read it as "Why would you buck social expectations to get with that fat fuck?!" Sort of an implied "I could understand this interracial choice if I thought she looked hot. But, ew!"

Which has all kinds of ugly dehumanizing baggage attached to it, including both racism and sexual objectification of women.
posted by Michele in California at 3:50 PM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

gestured at a couple of differently-coloured kids sitting together at a desk nearby and said "Makes you wonder what people are thinking, don't it?"

One of my hobbies is responding to statements like this by pretending to misunderstand and think they're complaining about racism.

"Yeah, it does. I mean, it's just two kids sitting together. Why would anyone have a problem with that? People sure are prejudiced around here."
posted by mmoncur at 4:07 PM on November 14, 2015 [6 favorites]

About the photos: I can understand the artist's intention, but I wish we had a bit of backstory or a description of the incidents in the couple's own words. As it is, I can't help looking at it as "Donna Pinckley photographs interracial couples and then writes rude things below the pictures."
posted by mmoncur at 4:09 PM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm kind of an artist (albeit a crappy one). So the "eye" of things is something that fascinates me. Someone upthread mentioned that the woman in the picture where it stated " why are you with her" - seemed like fat shaming. My first thought was- what a hot couple. If only I could invent some kind of glasses that make people see the beauty instead using the filter of resentment.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 4:39 PM on November 14, 2015

I also read at least one of the quotes ("why are you with her?") as quite possibly indicative of hatred against fat women, rather than referring to the race difference of the couple.

Possible. There are a bunch in that vein that aren't as ambiguous.
posted by cotton dress sock at 4:55 PM on November 14, 2015

My friends once told me about a restaurant they went to in Pennsylvania, in 2015, where they sat all the interracial couples in the basement.

Incidentally, he's a black Muslim, she's a white Jew, they've been together for seven years, and they're the closest couple I know. That's love that I feel privileged to witness.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 5:04 PM on November 14, 2015

Couple years ago, I was out shopping for something computery with a good friend, who's one of my go-to computery guys. (He does something involving databases and SQL and other acronyms for a living.) I'm 5'2", blondeish, and startlingly pale white; he's 6'4" and black. We were shopping in southwest Virginia. I lost track of all the stares and whispers. There were several comments that we pretended not to hear. But when a store manager pulled me aside to inquire about my personal physical well-being, that was the last straw. He was trying to be hush-hush, since I was obviously being mind-controlled by this large black man, so I responded as loudly as I could manage without blatantly yelling.

"Honey, are you ok?"
"Oh my gosh yes, I'm doing great! I'm out shopping with my friend and we're having a good time.
"Are...are you sure you're all right? With him, I mean?"
"With him? What do you mean? Is it because he's in the National Guard? Or because he teaches taekwondo at the community center? Is that why you're asking if I'm ok with him?"
"Well, no, because he's....he's one of them..."
"One of them?? Oh, I get it. You must know he's from the DC area. He's totally not a politician."
"No, no, because he's...well, he's just not like us."
"Not like us? Oh, ok, because he's tall? I get a sore neck sometimes looking up at him, but that's it."
"No, no...he's...well...he's black."
"You're asking me if I'm safe with my good friend here because I'm white and he's black? Seriously? We'll be taking our business elsewhere now."
posted by The Almighty Mommy Goddess at 5:46 PM on November 14, 2015 [31 favorites]

Mommy goddess- I just about peed laughing at that one- you are amazing! When I worked in Virginia as a waitress my friend Calvin and I used to sing in the kitchen during service(actually, he put up with my singing, I was in awe of his operatically trained voice. )

We shared of love of Billy Holiday. We went out for drinks after work as servers are wont to do. I forget the bar, but they served me, and ignored him. I went out of my mind and gave them what was left, leaving in a royal huff, tossing money we just made on the bar and sweeping out.
posted by LuckyMonkey21 at 7:50 PM on November 14, 2015 [1 favorite]

At one time in many states there were legal barriers to mixed couples. That has changed. But attitudes toward this have mostly not changed. Many of any given race do not like those of that race to get involved romantically with people of another race. Given demographics, with more and more Asians and Latinos in the U.S., we will doubtless see more "race mixing" down the road. But as far back as our early days as a nation, people often looked down upon the offspring of mixed relationships, ie, the "half breed," scorned by Indians and by whites.

I am old so can recall that living in the Village in NY was about the only place where it was acceptable and more or less casual to see mixed couples walking casually down the street together.

Like so much else in our society, we will see more and more mixing of the races.
posted by Postroad at 7:57 PM on November 14, 2015

qcubed: "The vile comments thrown at interracial couples doesn't exclusively come from white people, too. There's an unfortunately vocal and troubling part of the AA male community that... is not very enlightened about this stuff, largely stemming from their own issues and projecting it onto the women."

Judging from at least one of the comments in this gallery, not just AA men, but AA women too.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 12:58 AM on November 15, 2015

I've been in a so-called interracial relationship/marriage since my early 20s. We've been together for over a dozen years. What's interesting is that the older "grandpa/grandma" generation was by far the most supportive. We were young parents and married which I think that might have played into it. Regardless, that generation on a whole was fully supportive of us and we felt a good deal of love and respect. The "mother/father" generation was less supportive and understanding. Our actual parents were fine, but the generation on a whole was clearly less comfortable with our choices. But by far the worst was the "peer" generation. You could FEEL the disapproval before people even said anything. Almost all of it was "he/she is poaching our potential mates" thing you see here. Looking for mates obviously fades as you get older which explains why the older generation, if not hopelessly racist, just sees it for what it is without a sense of entitlement or competition. It has reduced over the years, but it was a very real thing. And not just from strangers. You could feel it from institutions, schools, etc.

This was in the early 2000s in NYC, too. I can't imagine doing it all in a less accepting area. It would surely be a daily thing rather than weekly or monthly. "Interracial marriage" is not objectively meaningful, but to many it's very very real and very very threatening
posted by milarepa at 4:19 AM on November 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

I think that AA was meant to stand for African American not Asian American.
posted by RobotHero at 9:20 AM on November 15, 2015

I have heard these types of comments *far* more often from African-American women than anyone else--like to the point that it didn't surprise me anymore about twenty years ago or so. (I think this sort of thing has died down maybe a bit?) I have heard white people say things about interracial couples, but it more often had to do with pseudo concern for their children. Black women that I talked to definitely felt "under siege" and as if there were limited numbers of dateable black men and that any that were "snapped up" by white women were being stolen from the community.

It's messed up, but it's not impossible to understand.
posted by RedEmma at 10:07 AM on November 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

That plus the difficulties many black women experience with dating in general (per OKC's horrible stats & anecdotal report from friends) make it not hard to understand at all.
posted by cotton dress sock at 11:15 AM on November 15, 2015

I will briefly note that it is fairly universal for "exotic" looks to be considered "hot." This holds true even for very ordinary, not striking people. Plain white boys go to Japan and the women tell them how exotic and hot they are. Suddenly, they have popularity they couldn't achieve with their own race in their own country.

This is not some new phenomenon. Iirc, the one black guy traveling with Lewis and Clark got all kinds of action. A lot of Native American women expressly were hoping to have a baby by him. Furthermore, there is some weird birthmark common to Mongols that is surprisingly common in France, though I forget the details behind how that happened.

I strongly suspect this trend reflects the value of genetic diversity. Inbreeding is known to do really bad things to a population.

If you go back far enough, most folks got a few "foreign" genes in their lineage at some point in the distant past. We tend to sweep that under the rug. I am part Cherokee. No doubt my great great great grandparents (or whomever) were given hell for being a white man and an "injun", but no one reads me as anything but white American these days -- except my German relatives. I looked vaguely Native American to some of them. But Americans have to be told I am part Cherokee. Everyone just reads me as a white woman. Done.

When I talk to people, this seems to be the norm. Coworkers at my old job that I just thought of as "black" would mention being part Chinese or part Indian (from India, not Native American), etc.

The "races" have been "mixing" since the invention of sexual reproduction. We need to get over it already.
posted by Michele in California at 12:42 PM on November 15, 2015

Hell. I'm a Polish Jew and my husband is a Maltese Catholic. Does that make us an interracial couple? Or does it not matter because we're both white.

Loved the photos, hated the captions.
posted by prettypretty at 8:47 PM on November 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Young and naive, I married someone of a different race. I assumed the rascism and negativity we would face would all be coming from white people (I told you I was very naive) and I was really shocked when I found out how wrong I was.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 9:01 PM on November 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

I can understand the artist's intention, but I wish we had a bit of backstory or a description of the incidents in the couple's own words.

I, an Indian-American, went out with my white then-girlfriend to go have a drink and see a movie. There used to be a martini place near the movie theater which also had a small patio with tables to the left and right of the front door. As we approached, we could see through the windows that the place was pretty packed inside, but the patio was mostly empty, except for one older white couple. A server was by the host stand, clearing things up. I asked her if it was ok if we sat outside. She said, "Sure, just over on the left side of the doors though, we're closing this side."

The older couple was sitting at the first table to the left, so we'd have to squeeze by them. As we approached, the woman said, "Sorry, they're closing up this area, you can't sit out here." We stopped, my girlfriend and I looked at each other, and I said, wait, we just asked the server, she said it was ok to sit out here. The man said, "She's wrong, this area's closed." They were in our way and there was no way to get to the other tables except go past them. So we said, "Um, ok, thanks" and walked away. We started walking around the block in uncomfortable silence, looking for another place to go. After a minute, my girlfriend turned to me. "Was that what I think it was?" I said, I don't know, but it kind of seems like it. I don't know though.

After about ten minutes or so of walking around, we passed by the place again. The patio was empty, but there were a couple empty seats inside visible through the window. We went in, sat down, ordered some drinks. The couple had moved inside too, a few tables away, so, I thought, maybe the patio was closing after all? Ok, whatever, we're here now, let's just have fun.

We hung out for a bit, had a couple drinks. About fifteen minutes before the movie was supposed to start, I said, I'm just going to go to the bathroom, and then we should go to the theater. I went, came back, and my girlfriend said, "I just want to go home. Let's pay for our drinks and go home." I said, what are you talking about, you've wanted to see this movie for a month, you're always saying we don't have enough date nights and we're right here, what's going on? She said, "I really don't feel good. I just want to go home." It was kind of inexplicable to me, but ok, she didn't feel well, fair enough I guess. We paid and left.

Later, she told me what happened. When I went to the bathroom, the guy from that couple got up from their table and walked past ours, ostensibly heading to the bar. Suddenly he turned, slammed his hand down on the table in front of my girlfriend, and shouted in her face, "You should be ashamed of yourself. Those people are our enemies."

Pretty good caption, huh?
posted by Errant at 12:43 PM on November 16, 2015 [5 favorites]