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The most ethnically diverse Eurovision yet!

lavieenrose

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Hard to talk about this without skirting Rule 6, but both personal biases like LD’s* and systemic ones which stop people of color from breaking through impact the music industry and Eurovision as they do just about every other space, and it’s great that in this Eurovision a sizable number of PoC are not only participating but making an impact for every single one of the reasons listed in this thread. There’s a great quote I once read on representation that “you can’t paint with the color grue,” and may this Eurovision be a part of making sure that as many PoC Eurovision fans as possible in the future don’t have to try.

*A note on this: I think the time to stop trying to separate the fascinating ridiculousness of LD’s taste from the aforementioned personal biases which lay beneath is right about now.
 

DenizESC

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I liked this chat here guys, I think all of us have learned a lot from this thread at the end of the day and everyone elaborated perfectly, without going off-topic or diving into political discussions (maybe it did just a tiny tiny little bit but basically any discussion does if we wanna be that extreme). It's great we had this talk here and I hope it reached a fairly well audience which it seems it did and it wouldn't have otherwise, that's all we can hope for really. I see your point also Mainshow, I think all of us just misunderstood each other and are on the same page.

And I agree with you about LD rose.
 

RainyWoods

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The only thing I enable is the discussion of hot pops and all things Sammarinese.

@Alaska49 well, I'm not a fool. I've looked at too many of @LastDreamer's charts at this point. But that's all I've had to go on. A song with strong ethno elements, that's screamy, soulful, modern pop, R&B flavoured etc is going to be shat on by him regardless of the colour of the singers skin colour cause it's just not the music he likes. I've also seen him with kind words, support even for singers in the past from various backgrounds, Joan Franka (Turkish), Engelbert (Indian) etc. It's different though coming into a topic that's talking positively about how diverse this year's contest is to see him comment that he doesn't agree on the type of diversity that's being discussed, and then disliking everyone's comments. That's saddening and I will say something about it.

Rather than just going "blah blah blah *points finger* [insert name]" I like to ask people questions, and try to see inside their mind. We humans in general are crummy and full of fault. I myself have said and thought things throughout my years that I deeply regret and that people here would be disgusted by no doubt. I was discriminated against all throughout my childhood for my sexuality and for also being the sole white boy in my class at school. I still remember being cornered and beaten with slurs thrown at me which for a long time I didn't understand, and for years I hated myself because of it. I left school early even as I couldn't cope. Those experiences fucked up my life, and it's the same for many others the world over. I harboured a lot of hatred in my heart for many years, mostly against religion (that was my it's your fault). It's still something with all honesty I battle with today to an extent because I've never been in a position in which I've felt comfortable in my life just being myself. I'm still very scared of people and their judgement, and I still get angry. But one thing I learned is to always try and respect others if you can, to try and understand them if possible. I'm probably one of the most difficult people to work out so god I know if I expect people to give me time, I gotta give them my time. If you all think I've been enabling I'm sorry. I just wanted to be a friend. I consider anyone here who gives me five minutes of their time a friend.
 

yuya.rooo

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I just want to mention that not only Eurovision itself but also this forum is a great example of diversity in a sense of different ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, ages, life experiences and opinions. And yet we stand here together having a more or less calm discussion about an important topic. I’m a fairly new member but I already feel very welcomed here and I’m giving you all a big hug xhug
 

DenizESC

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@RainyWoods

You know I fully support you and really truly feel terrible for your story, which is a fairly unique one we both agree on that. What you have to start thinking about imo is that this is not a unique thing for poc, it is everyday, everywhere and at all times without a way to stop it. And you as someone who experienced this kind of terrible discrimination, racism ARE one to understand most of them exactly with your experiences and how they feel and will feel for the rest of their lifes. I know this must be kinda hard as it in your case might as well at times be the exact groups that were negative towards you to begin with and that's why I can understand you completely.

POC are usually born into a system that's ''against them'', there is no real way to get rid of it ever either, and it's been this way for 100s of years, they just have to learn to live/cope with it. They will be discriminated against, ''the whiter'' looking or acting ones will be more succesfull in this society and surprisingly that's also the ones LD prefers, as long as they're passable and not ethnic as much as possible I guess. LastDreamer is a perfect example of a proud racist and 80% of the forum saw this, when me and Ana confronted you with it, truly it felt you were neglecting our feelings to clear a name of this type of person. I remember even by other forum'ers being made out to look like a joke. "well you do have fights with everyone''.

I really want to push this video again and hope people really watch it:
This is how an average black kid feels, it is definitely thankfully becoming better.

We should hold people accountable for their views, actions and words when they're problematic like this. And such accusations should always at all costs be taken seriously, people don't go around claiming someone is a racist for no reason, saying no to them is a big slap in the face and honestly kinda is like the kid in class who wouldn't call you names but wouldn't stand up for you either to put it into perspective.

His beauty standards are... well I'm not going to say it again, but let's say they're very familiar to everyone. I'm more like mainshow that I don't even classify myself in a group at all but the concerns some people of certain groups have and have more often than others is valid.
 

BorisBubbles

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*A note on this: I think the time to stop trying to separate the fascinating ridiculousness of LD’s taste from the aforementioned personal biases which lay beneath is right about now.

The biases go beyond race. It's more about his warped view of what A Women Should Be Like. Race is only the tip of the iceberg. Take a look at where he ranks jews or muslims. Where he ranks the plus-sized women. Where he ranks the women with self-empowering/feminist messages. Where he ranks women who are liberal on the make-up, hair-extention, lip-filler or other modification. Where he ranks out and proud homosexual men.

It's not just about race. It's about the obsession of finding the ideal bride. Of prescribing what women should behave like and being viscerally negative towards anything that goes against his incel delusions. A few weeks back he said he wanted to "murder" The Backs for shattering his vision of "all Lithuanian women being beautiful" in a terrifyingly casual fasion, as if he were discussing what he had for breakfast that morning. Gabe may have cleaned up that post, but its contents are forever burnt on my retina and I will never look at LD the same way I did before.

But that's a discussion for another topic I guess.

Oh yeah, I also would like to address Rainy: I do not believe you have a malicious bone in your body and I don't think you need to defend yourself. You're a good person with a good head on his shoulders. But you can be so naive at times, honey. Don't let my words or anyone else's dissuade you from remaining yourself, but a little bit of ... eum... critical thinking from time to time wouldn't hurt. ^_^
 

Alaska49

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@RainyWoods as i said, i perceive you as someone who tries to see the best in everyone - and knowing your history now, i respect that even more. it's being a better person than i am (i might, well, find myself longing for attention, but i am a bit too jaded to believe every single person's best intentions). however, sometimes when we take someone in, in our desire to take everyone in, that person pushes others away from us. i have made that mistake before. i don't know if that could have happened here, but you are too good a person to have that happen to you, so i still feel like saying it. but your way of seeing things is still a quality. xheart

as for the topic at hand, i am glad it has been pointed out that constantly saying "the number of ethnicities stays the same" is deliberately misunderstanding the issue. this is clearly about the struggles and progresses of non-white people in this contest, which is not an unimportant subject.
 

A-lister

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I just want good music, and Eurovision to me has always been a place which should celebrate musical diversity, while I want the music to be a representation of Europe's full cultural spectrum, it doesn't matter to me if the singer is black or white or anything in between as long as the entries are good. Call me an idealist or something, but that's what should be important in this contest.

I can speak for myself from a Swedish context, I rooted for John Lundvik (adopted black kid) and Jon Henrik Fjällgren (adopted Native Colombian to a Sami-minority family in northern Sweden) to represent us last year , in 2017 Jon Henrik was also one of my favs, in 2016 one of my favs were Panetoz which consists of members originating from Gambia, Ethiopia, Angola, Congo and Finland-Sweden , and don't get me started on Loreen, who was born in Sweden and grew up with her Moroccan biological mother and Swedish stepfather, which I find the best Swedish entry to ESC ever ! My point is that, at least for me, music is color-blind, at least it should be.

On this forum I've seen both racial discrimination and also racial exotification, both are two varieties of racism (the latter don't even understand that it's racism), now luckily most forum members are above that and I also think that most ESC fans in general are. While I understand the original post, maybe again I'm being an idealist, but if we start to judge the music first, I think we will just rise above the rest, diversity and acceptance will come more organically.
 
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Zonne147

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I'm going to leave my ignorant opinion too...

Eurovision. I'm a recent fan of the contest and I have joined this forum on 6 March 2019 - exactly 1 year!!! (even more recently than being a fan of ESC)... That time was enough to know more about the essence of Eurovision in a deep way - apart from being a music contest it's all about acceptance. If you can't tolerate diversity (you should celebrate it too) you have two options - you can hide your feelings (which is really painful I think) or just say some stuff that will not be particularly accepted by ESC fans... If you do it, don't expect to be really supported by the Eurovision community.

About the main subject of the thread, I just want to advice some people to avoid judging a book by its cover. Having your beauty physical standards is acceptable and doesn't make you racist. But that becomes different when you can't accept others and their work...

I'm happy 99.9% in "our" amazing forum understand what Eurovision is. A free party!! Open for everyone no matter your race, gender, age, sexual orientation...

LOVE to every human out there - no matter, well, what I have stated above. Hope to have another great year here with you all xheartxlove
 
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EscGeek

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I couldn't care less about how many whites and non whites are in the contest, but interesting discussion. xpopcorn
if i like the song, i'm on board. For example: John Lundvik was soooo boring in 2018, but i really liked him in 2019. This year The Mamas are so cliche that my head hurts.
 

randajad

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Very simple topic went wrong. :lol: I have been watching Eurovision since age 9, I have seen so many different, good, bad, campy, fantastic, modern, over the top, current, bland etc. acts and not even once I thought about the skin colour, and never have I tought that that others did too. There are patterns regarding my taste in music that I like more entries from this or that country, but that is not important at all when judging a song. It is great to have such a mix of cultures, and that is beauty of both Europe and Eurovision. I am not articulate enough to put it beautifully as @Mainshow did, but I stand by every single word in these posts.
 
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RainyWoods

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I read everything since my last post and tried my best to take it all in. I think it's just all a bit too much for me to properly respond to right now as I'm in a bad place from things going on outside of the forum. I've been hit with multiple hard things all at once, so my head isn't quite right (more so than usual somehow). All I can say right this second is that I'm sorry if I've upset anyone here with things I've said or choices I've made. It was never my intention and I will try my best to avoid doing the same things in future. I don't mean harm and it looks like you understand that, so thank you.
 

Ana Raquel

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I read everything since my last post and tried my best to take it all in. I think it's just all a bit too much for me to properly respond to right now as I'm in a bad place from things going on outside of the forum. I've been hit with multiple hard things all at once, so my head isn't quite right (more so than usual somehow). All I can say right this second is that I'm sorry if I've upset anyone here with things I've said or choices I've made. It was never my intention and I will try my best to avoid doing the same things in future. I don't mean harm and it looks like you understand that, so thank you.
take your time kai. you are a great human being and tbh not everyone deserve to have such a good friend as you. hope things get better soon
 

DenizESC

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@RainyWoods what are you apoligizing for :D

Now I feel bad for overwhelming you in a time when I know you're not at a good place. I think too many people started responding to you at once and it felt like an attack because of it. My point has nothing to do with you as a person, I was merely trying to put into perspective the kind of struggles almost any POC, like the black people of Europe/USA have to deal with and how that 'issue' can correlate with ppl like LD's attitude. We had some disagreements, well discussions more than that actually about how and what we feel is acceptable and crossing the line. About how LD's earlier responses were problematic to some or not, however this whole threads direction is NOT about you at the end of the day. And hope you realize that as a human being you literally did NOTHING wrong. We can't blame you for being nice nor is that a wrong attitude lmao, even if it is a racist, it's not like we should go out and curse and hate on them all the time as if that were to solve anything... Your perfection is too much to take for all of us that's the whole problem, us bitter ones just can't xrofl

Also many people have emotional reactions to issues like this and that's obviously logical especially in the heat of the moment like yesterday.

Don't worry about this! It is not about you doing any wrong! We all know where the problem lays...
 

Miloutchi

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It felt like a punch in my face when I read that. I'm not an immigrant, but I have got family and friends who moved all the way from Brazil to Europe so I take these kind of comments against them very personally.
I always feel personally attacked too, even if racist or discriminatory statements don't even apply to me or people I know at all. I get that it doesn't make much sense and sometimes I feel guilty for feeling like this too, because obviously why am I complaining. But sometimes it would completely ruin my day. My boyfriend told me it is everything but healthy and that I should just ignore these people. So now I try to do that. I block everybody who utters any overly ridiculous statements and in real life I just walk away from such conversations (in a rude way if I have to). But even now I feel guilty, because at the same time I realize I have the luxury to ignore these statements and I also feel like if I won't tell people they're wrong, who will? How will they realize that what they say and think is wrong? So I guess the solution here is to only talk about it with people who are at least willing to accept that they might be wrong and LD is definitely not one of them.

At the same time, I am not a perfect human being either. I know I have said discriminatory things in the past and will definitely say them again in the future, but I guess being aware of it is eventually helps us to change.

(and this post is terribly cringe-worthy, sorry for that.)
 

Fluke

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Even more black performers now, with Sweden and San Marino! What can we make of this, and how is it going to turn out.... maybe they will all do poorly, because they kind of cancel each other out :LOL:
 

BorisBubbles

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Even more black performers now, with Sweden and San Marino! What can we make of this, and how is it going to turn out.... maybe they will all do poorly, because they kind of cancel each other out :LOL:
... oh dear.
 

Ana Raquel

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Even more black performers now, with Sweden and San Marino! What can we make of this, and how is it going to turn out.... maybe they will all do poorly, because they kind of cancel each other out :LOL:
their songs are different and there is not a rule of hey we can only vote for one person of color per edition so they should do fine
 

ShoeFlo

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I dont care if the artist of a country is white, black, yellow or green as long as he or she has grown up in the country he is representing or have lived there for a longer while. That's why I dont support our (Germanys) choice this year. I think it is pathetic we as a country of 80 million have chosen a singer whose only connection to the country is basically a participation in The Voice. But that's an entirely different topic.

Having POCs in Eurovision is a good thing cause it transports the message, that everybody who is talented and hard-working has the chance to enter the big stages of the world regardless of their skin colour. However, I just hope people dont start chosing POC artists because of their race and regardless of their music as this would be racism too, just in a different way. People and juries who are giving their votes in NFs and the main contest should still focus on composition and voice mainly, and the look of the singers shouldnt play a role at all. Don't get me wrong, I dont believe people are actually voting for POC for "empowerment" reasons but then again I dont get why for example The Mamas win the MF and according to the votings in the thread, the most people in this forum can't understand it either.
 

LastDreamer

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However, I just hope people don't start choosing POC artists because of their race and regardless of their music as this would be racism too, just in a different way.
100 % agree.

It's very unpopular opinion, there are not many people who will understand and support your point of view. But obviously it's not only relate to POC artists. Possibly it's only my prejudice, but sometimes we have "diversity for diversity's sake" voters. Just look at "Toy", do you really believe that professional jury honestly gave 212 points for song/vocals/performance, not for "diversity" ?
 
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