why are greaser aesthetics still used to depict “bad boys” in art and media, when it hasn’t been that way since the 50s. this is a real mystery, i’m a serious scientist.
thats probs right.
it’s a so frustrating because greasers were originally Mexicans or other latinxs, or Italians – either by subculture reclaiming, or slur. “Greasers” started out as the object of white fear.
Ethnically, original greasers were mostly composed of mostly Italian Americans in the Northeastern United States and Chicanos in the Southwest. Since both of these peoples were mostly olive-skinned, the “greaser” label assumed a quasi-racial status that implied an urban lower class masculinity and delinquency. This development led to an ambiguity in the racial distinction between poor Italian Americans and Puerto Ricans in New York City in the 1950s and 1960s.[6] Greasers were also perceived as being predisposed to perpetrating sexual violence, stoking fear among middle class males and arousal among middle class females.[8]
What most people remember is NOT the actual era of the greasers, but instead the 60′s and 70′s “sanitization” of who they were, why they were stereotyped against, and why they were used as villains.
so before the 40′s-50′s, greaser was heavily used to portray a racist stereotype of a Mexican/Chicano man as violent/aggressive. (at least in media). This term also got used against some other latinxs in general, as well as Italians and sometimes Greeks. At least in hollywood this “greaser” type promoted mexicans as bad/dangerous and while also promoting latin lover stereotypes:
The Mexican Government soon objected to Hollywood’s portrayal of its citizens as “bandits and sneaks” and threatened to ban all films produced by companies which offended its people. This 1922 threat caused screenwriters to treat their neighbors to the south with more care. The “greaser” swiftly lost his Mexican nationality in the attempt to diffuse potential complaints, but his ghost still haunted new screenplays which concerned Hispanic characters.
Clever subterfuges often placed an unnamed “greaser” in a new locale. Rather than use the name of an actual country and risk offending its inhabitants, screenwriters began to create mythical cities and nations. “The Dove” (1928) provided an obvious example. The film concerned Don Jose Maria y Sandoval (Noah Beery), who considered himself “the bes’ damn caballero in Costa Roja.” Costa Roja, as the title cards explained, was situated in the Mediterranean!
those images don’t look super like what you’d think of as “greaser” subculture, but…when you go forwards a decade or two, and then look at the actual people:
Wikipedia mentions that the Mexican American community was then…investigated to see if they had ties to the Nazis. (Yeah.)
On June 21, 1943, the State Un-American Activities Committee, under state senator Jack Tenney, arrived in Los Angeles with orders to “determine whether the present Zoot Suit Riots were sponsored by Nazi agencies attempting to spread disunity between the United States and Latin-American countries.” Although Tenney claimed he had evidence the riots were “[A]xis-sponsored”, no evidence was ever presented to support this claim. […] In late 1944, ignoring the findings of the McGucken committee and the unanimous reversal of the convictions by the appeals court in the Sleepy Lagoon case on October 4, the Tenney Committee announced that the National Lawyers Guild was an “effective communist front.”[15][27]
so that 1940′s look becomes this over time:
three Cholos showing off their outfits (1950′s). why? because zoot suits were deemed horrifically unamerican and “wasteful” during WWII.
but then ofc bitch ass racist white boys and motorcyles co-opted the look, add in a little bit of Travolta white washing of the radical pushback against racism in the origins of this stuff, and now we’re here.
01. Gypsy is a slur & there is no “positive” or “acceptable” way of using it if you aren’t Romani. It should not be part of your vocabulary – the same goes for the term “gypped”. If you want to talk about the slur censor it or simply call it “the g slur.”
02. Anti Romani racism exists everywhere and there is a slur for the us in every language. Gypsy is the slur used in the English language but there is also Zigan, Tigan, Cigan, Gitano, Zigeuner, etc. – a lot of them stem from the Greek word for “slave” and are considered even worse than the Gypsy slur. However all of them are still slurs and shouldn’t be used by you if you aren’t Romani.
03. Gypsy has never been anything other than a derogatory slur against Romani that has been screamed at us while we have been branded, enslaved, hunted down, murdered, put through a genocide and a holocaust, segregated and discriminated against.
04. Romani is the proper name of the people that are being targeted by the G slur. Some people write it as Rromani which is also correct. The term Roma/Rroma can be used too, however not all Romani are Roma.
05. Romani and Romaniando not mean the same thing. Romani are the people that are being targeted by the G slur and we are brown people originally from India. Romanians are people from the European country Romania.
06. The official term for racism directed towards Romani is called “Antiziganism”, that term however is offensive since it includes the word “Zigan” which is a horrible slur against Romani. Please do not use that term and instead use “Anti-Romani racism”, “Anti-Romanism”, etc.
07. Anti-Romani racism is very extreme in Europe (segregation in housing, education and health care, forced sterilizations, evictions and demolition of settlements, police brutality, etc), which is why we even received the title of “Europe’s Most Hated”, but it’s not an exclusively European thing. Anti-Romani racism exists in America and Canada as well. (Canada even has an immigration ban on Romani.)
08. “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding” does not display actual Romani people as far as I have heard so it does not represent Romani people/culture at all.
09. Your believes that Romani “don’t want to work”, “don’t want to send their children to school”, “steal children”, “are dirty”, “genetically prone to crime”, “are lazy”, etc. are nothing but racist stereotypes and left over Nazi propaganda. All of them are untrue as well. (Also: Romani would love to work and go to school but the extreme discrimination against us in the field of education makes that very hard. And the widely spread traditional anti-Romani attitudes and prejudices don’t make it any easier either.)
10. Stereotypes such as that all Romani women are “sexual temptresses” and promiscuous disregarding of age are obviously incorrect too. Virginity is actually considered important in Romani culture. Believing in those stereotypes is very harmful and dangerous as well because despite Romani being only a minority in most European countries we make up the highest % when it comes to sex trafficking victims.
11. Romani culture doesn’t have anything to do with witchcraft, wicca, paganism, etc. We didn’t create tarot, palm reading or crystal balls either. You can stop calling yourself a “Gypsy Witch” and faking Romani heritage now. The only reason why assumptions like that came to exist is because of racist believes and lies spread by the church. Our skills with medical herbs and palm reading were seen as “evidence of heresy” and from the 16th century onward we were outlawed, expelled and persecuted, culminating in the organized killing of our people.
12. Fortune teller costumes are racist. Romani women have always been stereotyped as fortune tellers which is why the stereotypical image of a fortune teller is always linked with Romani women – dark skin, messy black hair, a big nose, a “weird” accent, a headscarf, big hoop earrings, gold coins added to clothes and an “untrustworthy/deceiving” nature, etc. (A lot of people even use the term “fortune teller” like a synonym for the G slur nowadays.) A person’s race/ethnicity is not a costume, so if you ever consider dressing up as a fortune teller chose something different.
If you are Romani too please feel free to add things onto this list and please correct me if I made any mistakes.
Some people threw white paint on it a few years back.
They want to be a victim so bad.
Fun Fact: That’s a statue of the fist which Joe Louis used to knock out Max Schmeling, Hitler’s favored heavyweight boxer in 1938. Schmeling won the 1st bout by knockout in round twelve, but Joe Louis came back in the follow-up match and laid him the fuck out in the 1st round.
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