i used to dance my little brains out to this when i was about 4 or 5.
i realize now that it's a little racist, but it didn't cross my mind at the time.
Joe Primal
There's nothing racist about it.
Tahoe Nevada
Egypt is a country, not a race.
deathtokoalas
that's a bit of a loaded statement, as it's not clear if you're referring to indigenous egyptians (who have distinct language and customs) or the colonial arab presence in egypt.
it's not really a meaningful point. there's a significant amount of cultural exploitation going on in the track. way-ooo-way-ooo?
Joe Primal
"The old paintings on the tombs, they do the sand dance, don't you know." The song is just a fun spoof about ancient Egyptian artistic style. Nothing more. 'Cultural exploitation.' LOL.
deathtokoalas
it's more, take it in a bit more critically.
i'm not suggesting it's a type of hateful or supremacist racism. it's the kind that converts meaningful cultural ideas into campy commodities for western markets - a type of colonialism. exploitation is the right word.
the band may have thought they were being "open-minded", and the basis of that position is laudable, but it's important to be aware of the cultures you're drawing on so as to not do so in a way that is insensitive to them.
the fact that the egyptian culture has been extinct for thousands of years doesn't really matter. it means there really isn't anybody to get pissed off about the appropriation of symbols for profit, except maybe egyptologists. but the reality is that the symbols aren't even really well understood. egyptologists are mostly bullshitting their way through life. it doesn't mean it shouldn't be avoided, whether the target is a dead culture or not.
did it cross your mind to ask what those hand gestures actually meant?
wuzzum
i see no racism, stereotypes at most
deathtokoalas
you know, i don't want to sit around and split hairs over the precise meaning of "racism"; i've studied a bit of math, and i know that things get really circular and kind of meaningless when you try and define your axiom system too strictly. racism should be left as an undefined term. maybe nobody's entirely sure exactly what it is, but you know it when you see it.
insofar as the relationship between stereotypes and racism goes, there's somewhat of an overlapping region....you're supposed to use venn diagrams in public because everybody took first year psych....so, think of each as a circle with a non-trivial intersection point. so you can't really define one in terms of another, you have to look at them as distinct but related things. it's certainly entirely wrong to suggest that stereotypes are never racist - that intersection point exists. whatever racism is.
in fact, the kind of racism i was thinking of was the kind that's mostly stereotypes. again: it's not a hateful kind of way, it's more of a belittling, trivializing sort of way.
again: there aren't any ancient egyptians around to get upset about it. but that doesn't really work itself into the equation as to if it's racist or not.
