magileine:

cityofendlessbridges:

adreus:

So at clairvoyantxatu​’s suggestion, here’s something more detailed and less spiteful about why the joke isn’t funny.

Here’s a secret you might not know about Aladdin: some scholars of The Arabian Nights don’t even think it’s a middle eastern story. It first appeared in a French “translation” of the work, and Aladdin was Chinese. White man creates “Arabic” story about “Chinese” boy. I’m not saying this is problematic and to condemn it or anything—I like to claim Aladdin as the Disney film closest to me, because the only other option I have is The Jungle Book, and it’s a good movie—it’s just something to think about.

Anyway, the Disney version of Aladdin is set in Agrabah, a fictional Arabian sultanate associated somehow with the Jordan River.

Now here’s something you might not realize about Khalil: he’s not Arab. He’s not an ambiguously middle eastern/brown-skinned boy.

He’s from LDS’s Anatolia branch, and Anatolia, if you google it, is modern day Turkey. His clothing may remind you of Disney’s Aladdin, but even if it had a hand in popularizing them for Millennials, Aladdin didn’t invent a vest or a fez or his pants, and it didn’t invent genies or lamps, either. They’re different cultures, different locations, speak different tongues. 

The jump is quick and easy to make. It’s understandable. But it’s a matter of being sensitive. Please think about your comparisons: a joke might be fun the first time around, but by consistently calling Khalil “Aladdin” and opting to make it permanent through a ship name, you’re basically saying there’s no difference between a Turkish character and an Arab one.

I’m not here for that. I’d like to think the designers of the show aren’t either, but I have no way of knowing for sure. Either way, we should be sensitive.

Now how come I’m not anywhere near as bothered by Olga and the Frozen reference?

Because all we know about her is she’s Nordic. And so are Anna and Elsa.

Please explain to me how calling Khalil “Aladdin” is Wrong and Not Funny while mislabeling a character named Olga who wears a goddamed ushanka as Nordic is somehow not as nearly bothersome to you. 

If I can jump in here, I think you’re absolutely right that we should also be aware of differentiating between European cultures—it’s ignorant to not be careful about those distinctions, as well.

However, speaking from my perspective as an Asian person living in the U.S. (and I assume a fair portion of the YGO fandom that OP is addressing here lives in North America), mistaking one European culture for another is absolutely ignorant—but the mindset of lumping all brown people together, on the other hand, often results in hate crimes. Violent ones that perpetuate historical, social, and institutional racism. Even murder, in fact. (I’m Vietnamese: let’s talk about Thien Minh Ly, whose white supremacist murderer bragged about killing a “J*p”.)

I understand your point, and I think it’s important that you made it known. But for me, that’s why it may be “not as nearly bothersome.” Hopefully that serves as some insight into the explanation you were asking for.

I’ll be honest with you - I find your post is extremely ignorant and coming from very… Americanized perspective. Now, I know that there are probably issues that plague you every day that I am absolutely ignorant about. I’ve never been to USA and I don’t even want to pretend that I understand the race dynamics that go on another continent.

The erasure of Slavic culture and that of Slavic people is not just an ignorance. You are assuming that this mistake is just an annoyance to me, a case of ‘lol Americans got it wrong, figures’. It’s not. There is a persistent myth on this website that all Europe is Western Europe, that if there are centuries of European blood flowing through your veins you are somehow exempted from any sort of racism or hate crimes. This is bullshit. There are millions of Europeans that had the misfortune of being born on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, grandfathers killed by Nazis, fathers killed by Communist Regime, all gathered and executed like cattle for daring to dream about freedom. And now, when the freedom is supposedly here, when the borders are supposedly gone, we go, finally, into the world and we find that nothing has really changed. Eastern Europeans find their nationality written on walls with the words like 'trash’ following. They face institutionalized racism the moment people take notice of their (obviously not pronounceable) names, that sound like leaves rusting or maybe they sound Russian, because all Slavic people are somehow Russian. They fill cases about said racism and they win, because it’s real and it happens, the pale skin that half of the make up companies don’t make shades for won’t protect you from being beat up (all what Slavic bumps are good for).

I am not Russian, but I am always mistaken for Russian if I go to the former West Germany or further west. I don’t want to be Russian, when I was born, the red nightmare was over (except it’s still not over) and yet I want to scream when I think about what opportunities it took from me. I am tired of all of us being lumped in this big red sea of dirty poor people that is coming to ruin Actual Real Europe for Actual Real Europeans. I am tired of people wishing Communism never fell so it could put me in my place, so it could teach me know my place, to understand that some borders never ever go away. 

Bad things happening to second worlders are somehow never as bothersome to first worlders as the same bad things happening to them. There is 1000 years of blood in me that signs of being erased, of erasure that started when Christianity came and decided our Pagan ways were not good enough to exist. There is no single written book about Slavic mythology, because it was not worth remembering, all we have are shreds of stories repeated in whispers during nights when they couldn’t hear us. I can read all about Greek mythology, that one was worth keeping, it’s classical and enligthed and the obvious foundation of all European culture. I sometimes dream of going into the woods, of connecting to the world as a Slavic girl, to name the holidays by names that were taken from us, to dance the night away for the gods that belong to my people, but all I have are those shreds. You can’t build an identity on shreds. That is forever lost to me, because that loss was not particularly bothersome to first worlders a thousand years ago. It starts there and it never stops. You say lumping brown people all together is terrible and sometimes leads to them bleeding to death and you are completely right. But there is a war going on in Ukraine right now and as I am writing this someone may be bleeding to death too and they are bleeding to death because people have decided their death is not bothersome enough to stop it. Why? What is it in this soil that makes blood spilled here less bothersome to people?