AA's "Fat Flier" Got Whole Row
Ashley Dupre On Tiger Woods' Babes: "At Least I Kept My Mouth Shut"
Same-Sex Marriage Blame Game Aims at Paterson, Addabbo
Wife Tries To Abort And Poison Husband's Lovechild
Rihanna's Random Airport Search
When we feel the need to get away from the city without actually leaving the city, we head up to the Bronx. Places like City Island, Wave Hill, The New York Botanical Garden, and The Bronx Zoo are some of our favorite places to visit in all of New York, and we realize that's only the tip of the iceberg when considering the Bronx's appealing features.
Unfortunately, the stereotype of the Bronx as a blighted cityscape is stubbornly persistent despite Borough President Adolfo Carrion, Jr.'s best efforts to serve as its goodwill ambassador. The negative image of the city's northernmost borough is also informed by the type of persistent racism that we just find depressing. The image above is a screencap from a video that was taken at a German Army training session and the voiceover describes an instructor telling a trainee to pretend he's in the Bronx: "“You’re in the Bronx, a black van pulls up in front of you and three African-Americans get out and start really insulting your mother… act!”" At this point, the recruit lets loose with a hail of bullets from his weapon while shouting obscenities in English.
City officials are outraged, especially Carrion, Jr., who was just in Germany a few weeks ago promoting Bronx tourism. And if you think the Germans would listen to anyone, it would be a guy named Adolfo. We love the Bronx Borough's official site, which is cheerfully named I Love The Bronx!
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
What were the obscenities? The stupid bleeps in the AP video prevent us from, you know, actually understanding the story. Also I'd wonder whether the instructor actually says "African-Americans", but I'd need someone who understands German to clarify that.
so the point of this post is racism, right?
so the sentence in the middle of the last paragraph is pretty stupid, right?
you guys need to supress all random urges to become Gawker. you don't so much need a proofreader as an editor, these days. or at least editorial direction.
I read about this on Stern.de - a German news magazine - and I'd like to clarify that this is not The German Army encouraging its trainees to hurt or shoot at African-Americans, like the AP makes it seem. The instructor first says "three African Americans" get out of the van (Afro-Amerikaner is the German word). The insult is "Motherfucker" said in English. You can watch it on myvideo.de uncensored.
[1] Posted by: Mithras The Prophet [2] Posted by: oracle monkey |
And Slavery was a myth right posters?
squidfly, I was questioning whether the instructor used the polite term, not the content of the instructor's statement.
aryn & jon, thank you for the clarifications. Can you further explain how this individual instructor is *not* encouraging his trainees to hurt or shoot at African-Americans? It sure seems that way. Of course it would be foolish to extrapolate from this incident to the German Army as a whole.
In the video, the instructor is saying shoot at African Americans, which cannot be aapologized for, nor were we condoning his comments, but the AP Video made it seem that this was an instructional video for the German army as a whole. It kind of sounded to us that Germany was a country just looking for a new minority group to target, as the comment about Adolfo seems to confirm.
about the bronx - it's such a beautiful boro up here. yet, way too many ignorant people who a) should know better, b) think it's funny, and c) don't know what they're talking about, like to talk up the bronx - especially all the neighborhoods in the south bronx - as if they're scary, burnt out, and fuckin' deadly - basically, as if it were still 1991 in the Bronx.
it's changed a lot since Jonathan Kozol's Amazing Grace.
it's lovely up here.
You might also mention The Cloisters in your list.
A really nice trip for a spring day.
@ pone:
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've lived in the Bronx for a decent amount of time now, and despite some of it's flaws, it is a great place that is underrecognized. Wait a few years and people will be fellating this place as much as Brooklyn is now.
When I read the title I thought it said "Dumb Cop".
The Cloisters is great, but it is located in Manhattan's Fort Tryon Park.
In the video, the instructor is saying shoot at African Americans, which cannot be aapologized for, nor were we condoning his comments, but the AP Video made it seem that this was an instructional video for the German army as a whole. It kind of sounded to us that Germany was a country just looking for a new minority group to target, as the comment about Adolfo seems to confirm.
You f@cking American TERRORISTS do EXACTLY the same thing, except your army tells its recriuts to "shoot the ragheads" and other similar niceties. You people are SO FULL OF SHIT, it's not even funny anymore.
PLUS YOU'VE GOT SOME NERVE being offended by anything, being that your country invades others, tortures people and bombs schools. You're the only assholes on the face of this earth that think you can bomb other people into democracy. Not to mention you are the MOST RASCIST ASSWIPES in the world.
You f@cking American TERRORISTS do EXACTLY the same thing, except your army tells its recriuts to "shoot the ragheads" and other similar niceties. You people are SO FULL OF SHIT, it's not even funny anymore.
PLUS YOU'VE GOT SOME NERVE being offended by anything, being that your country invades others, tortures people and bombs schools. You're the only assholes on the face of this earth that think you can bomb other people into democracy. Not to mention you are the MOST RASCIST ASSWIPES in the world.
You f@cking American TERRORISTS do EXACTLY the same thing, except your army tells its recriuts to "shoot the ragheads" and other similar niceties. You people are SO FULL OF SHIT, it's not even funny anymore.
PLUS YOU'VE GOT SOME NERVE being offended by anything, being that your country invades others, tortures people and bombs schools. You're the only assholes on the face of this earth that think you can bomb other people into democracy. Not to mention you are the MOST RASCIST ASSWIPES in the world.
"it is a great place that is underrecognized"
Shhhh be quiet! It is pathetic that they have to pick on the one specific area and people..
and El Che you should post one more time..
we didn't get it the first three times.
what's the "adolfo" comment supposed to mean? you guys can be such idiots. a) germany is still living down its shame over hitler, and, hey guys, not all germans were nazis! b) adolfo is italian or latino, not german. morons.
and yeah, this video is really awful.
Most non-New Yorker's images of the city come from movies, and are about 20 to 30 years out of date, or TV, and are about 10 years out of date. Its always been the case. I'm from Brooklyn, and used to get lots of questions on the lines of "why don't you talk funny like all other people in Brooklyn", long after all the people with that distinctive accent had moved to Long Island and New Jersey.
That said, lets not get too carried away about the Bronx. The more densely populated parts of the borough, where most people live, actually are pretty ugly, with lots of tenement housing and no or very scraggly trees. Plus there are major environmental issues there. The Bronx has never been a fashionable place to live, for a reason.
F*&kin' Germans. Nothing changes.
what the instructor said and did is a damn shame and should not be underestimated, no doubt!
but comments like "nothing changes" are simply ignorant and stupid.
i mean even your name is Sean... remember Sean Bell...? so i guess nothing changes in the USA neither huh?... wow thats easy!
i am half Black half White, lived in Germany for 5 years and loved it out there...
"The Bronx has never been a fashionable place to live"
Not true -- it may be a while, but the Concourse used to be quite the address in its day.
yeah we germans are wearing our lederhosen, eating bratwurst and sauerkraut all the time. isn´t that what most of america thinks of us? I consider this a stereotype. I´m sure, that if the instructor had used a phrase like arabian, or asian nobody would have cared. but I think that would not be racism, would it???! huh? can´t be, ´cause that would mean america is fighting a war considered racist. did anybody count the ethnic groups an average marine is offending in his career? certainly not! no german would support something like a nazi-regime today, but as long as countries like the US are stirring that view up, people will always see germany as the land where xenophobic bavarians and prussians with spiked helmets and death´s-heads on their collars are walking under black, white and red banners!