you ?

 

This is one that I am not sure about at all. I was pulled up the other day for pronouncing 'mango' in a Carribean accent. Firtly I'm not exactly sure why I associate mangoes with the Carribean except that I have had a lengthy conversation with a friend from Trinidad about mangoes. They do grow in the country of my birth as well, though.


The reason I'm not sure about this one is because I'm not sure I did anything racist. The accent was bad, but then I'm really bad at accents. Still I do them all the time, different regional English accents, strong Australian ones and American accents. On this occasion I did a Carribean, I guess a Jamaican, accent. I suspect that the reaction was a politically correct knee-jerk one where she baulked at me for putting on an accent that I can not claim as my own, as part of my heritage.

There's an ad on tv at the moment for some breakfast cereal with lots of dried tropical fruit in it. Lots of white people are singing about the cereal to the tune of 'Daylight come and me wanna go home' (I'm not sure what the title of the song is but it's set in Kingston harbour). I'm not sure what I feel about it myself. It's not funny and its not witty but I'm not sure it's actually racist. Unlike the Solero shots ad, where the punchine about the tropical flavour is definately way out of line - actually offensive enough for the Complaints Commission to be informed, I think.


There is a differnce between PC posturing and actually doing something about racist language, but it can be subtle. It's sometimes not easy to know in yourself which one one it is sometimes. I'm still not sure about the accent one.

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