What are your thoughts on this?

When I first started to read it I was outraged, even embarrassed by it but then as I read further down I began to think hang on why is one racist and not the other. It left me thinking perhaps we are all getting a bit over sensitive to matters of race.

http://uk.eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/early-doors/abramovich-partner-sparks-outrage-incredibly-racist-picture-112342550.html

 

It's an awkward discussion now, because if it's the other way around most people would say that's OK, or not bad an eyelid...as you say, people are far too quick to draw racial connotations from everything these days.

 

My first thought was 'that's a bit of a kinky chair', before the racist thought kicked in (I don't know what that says about me). The black one is going to cause a bigger uproar though because of the thoughts it conjures up about slavery. Before anyone starts on me, I'm sure lots of white people have been/are still being enslaved too, I just wasn't taught that at school.

 

Sticks and stones when I was a lad nar days people are offended by everything and most of the time on somebody else's behalf

 

where do I buy one, not bothered what colour it comes in...

 

There are people who are professionally offended. I just fail to see how the picture is racist, if the woman was white, yellow or red then nothing would be said.

 

That's an awful chair, don't care what colour it comes in, it has no posture control, can't make it shorter/higher, no arm support. If you intend to do any work on it for more than a couple of minutes it is going to leave you with back trouble and RSI.

But it' not racist. It may be sexist and not very good though.

 

"Abramovich’s partner sparks outrage with ‘incredibly racist’ picture"

That's the headline. So I spent 5 minutes studying the picture on the wall behind her head. I thought it must be three Nazi officers or summat. It was ages before I noticed the chair and realised the 'picture' in the headline referred to the whole photograph.

Is the chair itself racist? Absolutely not, it's a piece of art. The subject happens to be a black woman, but there are others in the series that depict white women. I'd be hard pressed to argue it's not misogynistic though, if someone was throwing around such accusations.

However, in the context of this photo, with a rich white woman, posing serenely in her palatial apartment decorated in various shades of white, sat on a black woman in bondage, it screams slavery.

It's a brilliant photo. If it was taken to cause controversy or to highlight an issue, it's extremely powerful. Django Unchained, Lincoln and 12 Years A Slave have all been released to huge public discussion this past year. News stories the world over are highlighting how slavery still exists, whether it be women sold in to the sex trade, immigrants forced to hand over all their earnings to the gangs who smuggled them in to the country, or individuals locked away by genuine psychopaths. Slavery is the topic of the moment.

If this photo was taken to add to the debate, it's a hell of an image. Dasha Zhukova looks every bit the modern day plantation owner's wife. Roman Abramovich himself is the modern day plantation owner, making billions on the back of a corrupt state at the expense of the Russian people. I suspect it's not that though, as why would they then apologise for it? I suspect the photographer, and the magazine editor likewise (and probably Dasha Zhukova herself), just thought the image looked cool, which makes them at best naive, but in reality ******* stupid.

You can't view an image in isolation, it's part of our collective history and as such subject to all the connotations and nuances of our global society. If they wanted to spark controversy, fine, I'm all for that. If they wanted to help highlight an issue that the entire world are engrossed in at present, even better. If they simply wanted a cool picture and they didn't realise the kind of accusations that would be thrown at them then they want their heads banging together.

 

<img src="http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/Kp9gogxc95FDYTEnYl1_WQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7cT04NQ--/http://media.zenfs.com/en-GB/blogs/early-doors/RTXTLTS.jpg"/>
"Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich (R) with his girlfriend Dasha Zhukova"

He's the one on the right, then? Helpful clarification.

His halo seems to have slipped a bit, too.

 

I wonder if they will make one with a man, so when a woman (on maybe a man) sits on it they can talk about the first thing that pops up !!!

 

^^^What Jay said, but done with far more eloquence than I could possibly muster.^^^

 

I have just done an interesting experiment with this issue.. Imagine the white lady chair with a black lady sat on it... is that racist I think most would so no... so why is a black lady chair with a white lady sat on it racist??? Thes people are sick and they try to find racism where it clearly isnt...They are more screwed up than the blatent racist...

 

Agree completely.

Jay's post sums it up better than I could, so I'll not bother going through it again, but essentially it's an issue of context and history.

 

It isn't racist at all. It is distasteful to some as the idea of a human being as a piece of furniture is not to everyones tastes for obvious reasons however to suggest that it is racist just because that human happens to be black is crazy and says more about the offended person than the person in the image.

I saw the image and saw a woman as a piece of furniture, someone else saw it and saw a BLACK woman. The colour of her skin means nothing to me but to the other person the colour of her skin was a big deal. Who is the racist? The person who didn't care what colour she was or the person who noticed the colour straight away and saw the two people as different because of it?