My reservation was specifically that the MeanwhileOnGrad comm has a charicature of Xi Jinping where his skin is colorized to be yellow. I think that turning an Asian person’s skin yellow as a charicature is racist, and I felt that allowing that on a comm reflected poorly on the instance. I don’t mind that people hold different views from us (as many on lemm.ee and lemmy.ml do), but we don’t tolerate racism or bigotry. Despite that, I did vote to federate, in part because it’s such a small comm.
While the comparison to Pooh originates from a meme in China, many of us would argue that the comparison in general has racist connotations especially when used in the West, and that that image is a perfect illustration of why we think that.
We’d also say that the Pooh story has been exaggerated pretty wildly, along with many redditor memes about China. Rumors can get out of control sometimes, especially when people get dismissed for fact-checking and accused of being bots or paid agents, and so on. Winnie the Pooh isn’t banned in China, as some might believe, and it’s pretty easy to verify that by looking at the website for Shanghai Disneyland or searching “Pooh” on any Chinese platform such as baidu.com or weibo.cn.
My reservation was specifically that the MeanwhileOnGrad comm has a charicature of Xi Jinping where his skin is colorized to be yellow. I think that turning an Asian person’s skin yellow as a charicature is racist, and I felt that allowing that on a comm reflected poorly on the instance. I don’t mind that people hold different views from us (as many on lemm.ee and lemmy.ml do), but we don’t tolerate racism or bigotry. Despite that, I did vote to federate, in part because it’s such a small comm.
While not a subscriber to that community, I’m 99% certain that’s merely to enhance the Winnie the Pooh comparisons he notoriously hates.
Yes, upon reflection, them depicting an Asian person as yellow isn’t great, but I think the majority will see it just as Pooh.
While the comparison to Pooh originates from a meme in China, many of us would argue that the comparison in general has racist connotations especially when used in the West, and that that image is a perfect illustration of why we think that.
We’d also say that the Pooh story has been exaggerated pretty wildly, along with many redditor memes about China. Rumors can get out of control sometimes, especially when people get dismissed for fact-checking and accused of being bots or paid agents, and so on. Winnie the Pooh isn’t banned in China, as some might believe, and it’s pretty easy to verify that by looking at the website for Shanghai Disneyland or searching “Pooh” on any Chinese platform such as baidu.com or weibo.cn.
Pooh may not be banned, but some gifs get intercepted on Wechat and that’s enough to be notable.
This is such a reddit urban myth, in reality I’d be surprised if he’s even aware of the comparison.
Also “it’s not racist to depict him as yellow, because it’s referencing another instance of us depicting him as yellow” doesn’t make it better.