I don’t really feel like I’m defending this definition as much as I’m defending the very concept of definition (pretty much all of my commentary on this site that isn’t straight-up jokes is centered around it), but I realize that yes, it is very much a losing battle in our contemporary climate. Things mean precisely…

♫ He’ll be there for brew-ew ♫

I’m doing both what?

“You’re welcome to not be offended by blackface”

“where a white person tries to become another race”

Right on. A wise man once said, “Believing black people think and act in a monolith sounds a lot more like racism to me than people who acknowledge than some people have darker skin tones than other when doing an impression.”

Pimpin’ organized, multiplayer video game competitions ain’t easy.

And wearing makeup is not a piece of graphic design. Thank you for acknowledging that comparison is not equation.

How about a black person who says they don’t care if someone uses makeup to appear darker to dress in a costume, like Dwyane Wade said when Julianne Hough went as Crazy-Eyes for Halloween one year?

You understand he said that to Britta, a person he truly loved, right?

Yes, I recognize by not meeting your racial purity standards, I am not allowed to have my own attitudes and feelings about things as pertains to race, and that if I were black, these beliefs would make me an Uncle Tom.

If you can’t see the difference between smearing greasepaint all over your face, painting on big white lips, and doing a grotesque racial caricature and dressing as Diana Ross for Halloween, I don’t know what to tell you.  These things appear vastly different to me.  It must be how much I subconsciously hate black…

And since racism is rooted in belief, then that would make me correct.

I see more nuance in the distinctions between an immutable piece of graphic design and an act rooted in the acknowledgement that some people have darker skin tones than others. I could also say that once someone beat my brother to death with a hammer, therefore if you use one to build a treehouse, you are a murderer. 
…

There is absolutely nothing racist about any component of my argument.

A swastika is a swastika.  People don’t tend to look at any piece of graphic design involving intersecting lines and 90 degree angles and say, “That’s somewhat similar to a swastika, so whoever drew it must be a Nazi.”

“so you can do all the other versions”

Ugh not this shit again. Yes, language can change. Healthy cells can change into cancerous ones. And unless you pine for Orwellian newspeak, I would hope you could concede that changes to language are not universally beneficial or even neutral; that they can in fact be very bad. I see the casual hyperbolization of the…

I’m not sure what’s racist about fidelity to definition. If you don’t like something, don’t like it. If you don’t like Al Franken, don’t like him, but if you were to call him a rapist because he squeezed a few fannies in photo ops, I’m going to push back. And you know what? I don’t like Al Franken either, just like…

Is a terrible comedy star doomed to be equally inept when they try their hand at going dark?